2003 Talk About Movies
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Contents © 2003
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

TALK ABOUT MOVIES
September 2003

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Directed by Stephen Daldry. Starring Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, Meryl Streep. 2002, 114 minutes, USA, Color, English. Available at Blockbuster Video.

Matthew: Throughout, choosing life means choosing me.

Ernie: And everybody else be damned.

Matthew: And it leads to death, most obviously in Woolf's case. The ultimate demand is made of her, to deny her very self for the sake of another. Her husband asks her to sacrifice what she regards as her very life for the sake of staying alive -- with him. She says that if it's a choice between Richmond -- where he has brought her to maintain her sanity -- and death, she chooses death. They go back to London, which she equates with "facing life," and she eventually goes mad again and kills herself.

Ernie: But Laura thinks of killing herself, then chooses life by fleeing her marriage and her children.

Matthew: But it doesn't make her happy, and she feels unworthy to survive them all.

* * *

Matthew: Clarissa has replaced Richard as a father with an anonymous sperm bank donor, and as a spouse with a lesbian lover. She's playing at life because she can't have the love she really wants.

Ernie: But the kiss with her lover after Richard's death seems to signify that she thinks that relationship is what's really good and worthwhile in her life. She's finally thinking of herself.