monabe

Anyone who has been captivated by the poetry of this great poet, and wondered about the man and the context in which such memorable verse was written, will want to see this film. It shows T S Eliot as a tormented man who is forced to make decisions about how to deal with the mental instability/illness of his wife. The performances are uniformly faultless, and the awful tragedy of mental illness in a marriage is chillingly depicted with deep sensitivity. The film challenges the viewer to judge Eliot as a man - Dafoe's performance brilliantly portrays the anguish of Eliot the man living in what apparently was an impossible marriage, and Eliot the public figure . The film also throws light on Eliot's fascination with the Church and the role it played in providing a still place in a world of personal mental turmoil. Highly recommended.

This telemovie from the 1970's deserves to be better known. Based on a novel by Aidan Higgins, it has a masterly script by Harold Pinter (who himself plays a small but significant acting role). If you enjoyed movies based on literature (such as James Joyce's wonderful story from "Dubliners" : "The Dead" directed by Huston) you should find this film well worth watching. A melancholy tale of frustrated love set in the 1930's features top acting performances from all. A young Jeremy Irons plays the German student of philosophy writing his precious thesis with excruciating preciousness and cynicism. (Irons slow pedantic accent is reminiscent of Marlon Brando's choice of accent for his "Burn".)He embarks on a relationship with a woman who is trapped by a family of sisters who - fallen on hard times since the death of the father- seem destined to live lives of slow desperation in their old house in the country. There are many wonderful scenes in this slow but engrossing production.

The world knows Percy Grainger mostly for his folksong settings: of which the one about the English country garden is probably the most popular. Some know one or two of his more individual compositions, but (I suspect) relatively few know of his early explorations of electronic music and musical ideas that place his name with the pioneers of the avant garde of twentieth century classical music.

Percy's eccentricity was matched with a tortured(sic)sexuality that embraced a close relationship with his mother and a penchant for flagellation. The brief display of the latter is( I suppose) the reason for the "R" rating.

Richard Roxburgh's performance as Percy is excellent, and (apparently) very close to the real thing. Barbara Hershey is less convincing as Rose.

In my opinion, don't be put off by the "R" rating for this film.

I am sure many of those who stumble on this release will want to find out more about Percy Grainger and what made him and his music tick.

Not a great film, but a very entertaining one. It is very much more intelligently made than some more sanitised or fictionalised attempts to depict the nature of those who brighten our lives with their creativity.

If in Melbourne : do not miss the Percy Grainger Museum in the grounds of the University of Melbourne. It has lots of Grainger "artifacts" that document how close this film -flawed as it is - manages to recreate the setting, the times and the relationship with his mother.