bigrichry

This starts in 1928 with a young Chinese female student and a perhaps slightly older Japanese male student in Manchuria. He is at least being groomed to promote reactionary Japanese interests prior to a war and she is just a tender thing sucked in by the more worldly man. They go to bed together before he announces he is being recalled to his own land.

Four years later the foreign conquest is underway and another love story is shown with less emphasis on sex.

Another 5 years and things are boiling. The Japanese are more or less in control and a well concealed "Purple Butterfly counter insurgent group is hard at work messing up the new regime.

The first girl is quite involved in the native movement when she sees her prewar lover returned for direct management action especially getting rid of the resistance. She now has quite mixed feelings remembering her schoolgirl love and wanting to further the protection of her country. Like a good girl she reports her finding of the Japanese boy and is taken aback when instructed to reaffirm a relationship with him to help the local cause. As this is very much a life-and death business, her quandary is interesting to watch. There is not right-or-wrong answers or even good-or-bad. Further the young Japanese man is confused whether she is a lover to be counted on or a detested spy to be destroyed. Watching this story unfold keeps the movie alive despite the desolation of the times and the destruction of war all acted out in constant downpour and dull and smoky lighting.

As much as I would also like to have seen more light and life, I am not sure the important love-hate story could have been maintained therein.

I had debated whether to pick this up at Blockbuster and am not sure I made the right choice. My heart aches for these people.

David McCullough gave us a stupendous story of the life of this early American and of his times and his territory. Without being tedious he laid out the situation that produced John Adams, Abigail Quincy Adams, their children, John's colleagues and opponents and his unstinting efforts to found a new country for us while in serious danger from a mother country under the reign of a challenged king. He had to make a living for his family while spending years of his life first confronting his own desire to remain a loyal British subject, then helping the fledgling nation define itself, declare its freedom, establish laws and rules to ensure long survival with equity for all citizens, rule the country as president for one term, and define its role in world politics. Each task involved huge mental and moral strain and multitudinous stages.

Now come the movie makers with their rules of thumb to assure a significant audience while limiting costs to create profit for the studio. Then a director has to cut a long story into a few short ones and fit current actors into the personae of old legends. Usually a good book becomes a mediocre film. Sometimes a good film is possible.

Here the life episodes have become somewhat disjointed. Then the director sometimes seems to fall back on stereotypes and clichés to make sensitive tale clumsy enough for general consumption. The casting department must have been required to use untalented performers at times to get such a poor representation of George Washington. Seldom have I seen such a shoddy attempt to fill a major role. Many lesser roles seem to be poster caricatures of important historical figures.

Abigail was fairly well presented as far as things went, but her classic heritage and great personhood was still underdone. Nabby was darling. JQ was rather lacking and haphazard.

The depth of Charles Adam's efforts to cause mischief was not adequately drawn and his almost single-handedly pushing the colony into full revolt didn't get shown.

The film seems to take for granted the eventual outcome which was much more in doubt in real time.

I have always avoided horror films and material about them until meeting this biography on IMDb. Suddenly I see what the genre is about. Depp is fantastic in the role of Ed. His angora'd girl friend is so soft and fuzzy. Bill Murray is naturally great. The direction and cinematography are excellent. The attempt to be horrible is outrageously comical.

This is about a small collection of real people doing what Hollywood does and doing it badly but very really. Only the Bela Luigi part seemed hammy. Maybe a serious addict could be like this in tinsel town. An Oscar was awarded for it but that often doesn't correlate with art. You can feel the desperation to get into production and through the final scene before the resources are spent.

Appealing to the Southern California Baptists for production costs is a scream. The story has only one possible ending and there it lands.

The art of life is never better presented. Ed Wood is Hollywood's Hamlet.