IrishOboe

I’ve had a slight relapse of my arm problems from thinking I’ve healed more than I have.  I must write about the movie I just watched so I’ll try thinking more than typing.  Here goes . . .

Ladies in Lavender was recommended to me by Andy Bonner and he is on a roll for great move suggestions.  I loved Her Majesty, Mrs. Brown, and thought The Importance of Being Ernest was hilarious and revealed deeper truths about humanity in its silly way better than films that are actually trying to take themselves seriously.

My frustration with most of the movies I see is that increasingly, the there little or no character development.  The Lord of the Rings is a most beautiful tale of friends on learning and growing, loving and laughing through a terrible journey together.  The movies leave this dimension out almost entirely and it leaves the story flat.  Sure, you have to cut something, but why not the battle scenes?

Most characters I see in movies these days are either good or evil, pretty or ugly, and are motivated by love or lust, revenge or greed.  I don’t know anyone who is that simple.  Though the story might resemble a fairy tale, the characters in Ladies in Lavender are complex and believable.  Judi Dench portrays her character with tender effectiveness.  She and her sister find a young Polish man washed up on their Cornish beach and nurse him back to health.  She displays tender affection for him and it is unclear exactly what kind of love she bears for him.  Does she pity the poor lad in his situation?  Does she love him as a girl who adopts a stray cat?  Does teaching him English grow in her a teacher’s love for her student?  Does he awake a yearning for the son she never had?  Does she bestow familial love as he becomes a part of the household?  Does this 70-year-old woman actually fall in love with the lad?  All these reasons knit together form her love and illustrate how complicated love is, and how the desire for children or companionship can be as strong as the desire for romantic love.  She knows the ridiculousness of being in love with the boy, but all her loves are confused and fused together and she cannot help loving.

An old woman confused about her feelings can be just as impossible to deal with as a teenager with the same problem. The sisters’ relationship becomes strained but we see how sisterly love and years of sharing a home teach forbearance and patience and continually bring peace, if not understanding, at the end of the day. 

Even the minor characters have character.  There’s a beautiful artist on holiday who must deal with the advances of men who see her only for her beauty and unaccompanied status.  Yet she is ostracized by the women for being friendly and outgoing and undoubtedly her beauty has something to do with it.  She has no friend until she meets the Polish lad, who tries a move on her as well.  She refuses, but remains faithful to him, introducing him to her violinist brother who gets our Polish hero starting on his own violin career.  That’s not the common view of the life of a beautiful woman, yet she is not full of self-pity, but rather remains outgoing and lighthearted, only showing her loneliness in unobserved moments.

As for more technical aspects, of course I appreciate that they use some German to communicate with the Polish boy who doesn’t know English, and the actor does a great job of looking lost but aware of emotional undertones in the speech between the sisters.  Apparently, the actor had one month to learn to fake playing the violin and he does it rather better than any fake job I’ve seen.  Joshua Bell plays beautiful music by Nigel Hess throughout the movie, but the climax at the end is a concert in London that moves both the audience and the villagers who gathered to hear him on the wireless.

Finding Forrester follows the story of a young boy who becomes an author.  The climax of the movie is a moving speech that we hear a few words of before the cut fades and the rest is left to our imagination.  That is the proper technique for a love scene, not a stirring public performance!  In Ladies in Lavender Nigel Hess and Joshua Bell provide the extraordinary art that is necessary to avoid such a copout.  The piece is only a few minutes, but it’s a gem.  The camera glides from face to face revealing a rather startling variety of ways to appreciate great music: some are completely still, some teary-eyed, some set in concentration, some lost in wonder, some seem to understand the music, others seem to be appreciating it for the first time.  I know it’s a fairy tale, but the characters are so real I’d like to think it’s possible to move an audience thus . . . 

(I know you’re thinking: She thought more than she wrote?  Really, I did, and it still didn’t prevent me from writing too much.  I typed with many little breaks and I’m almost in no pain, but I suppose I still have much to learn.)