Prejudice and pride.

I must have watched Pride and Prejudice at least 10 times now, and there are a few things that always happen to me when I watch it:

I always laugh at some parts, like, for instance, when Mr. Collins, the ridiculous cousin of the Bennet sisters comes to visit them and he tells Elizabeth at the ball that he intends to remain close to her during the course of the evening. I put my self in Elizabeth’s skin there, and I realize it must have the worst party she ever went to: the boy she fancies doesn’t go, her cousin “harasses” her, and almost all the members of her family make a fool of themselves.

At this party, all the women are wearing white, and I haven’t found a well-documented explanation for that. The logical reason for it to appear in the story itself might be that it’s a theme party, or one of those requisites that they put in invitations to snob parties or weddings nowadays. A more profound reading for me would be that at this party Elizabeth is more innocent, and she acts like a teenager, so I would say she is more naïve. Here also takes place the first attempt of Mr. Darcy to come close to Elizabeth, asking her to dance with him.

The scene where Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth are dancing alone is a technical challenge, I must say. At first I thought it must have been done with tracking rails, which would allow the camera to go around the couple as they dance. But then I thought that it wouldn’t be possible to do that back and forth movement that the camera does toward the characters, as it was also dancing with them. So my final guess is that it has been filmed with a steady-cam. This doesn’t make things easier. A steady-cam is a very heavy artefact, and to “dance” with it must have required a lot of rehearsing for the camera man (or woman, I just think that it has most probably been a man, because of the physical strength that managing a machine as a steady-cam involves). This way of developing this scene makes me feel closer to the characters, and it also gives me the impression that they are a bit lost in their feelings for each other, like the camera when it goes closer and farther, closer and farther.

Using the angles or the movements of the camera to indicate what the characters feel has always been used. In the scene where Elizabeth and Wickham have just met, and they are talking by they river, the angles indicate us the hierarchy of the characters. Not in society, but in that moment, Wickham is superior to Lizzie. She is sitting down, and he is standing up, randomly looking at her and playing with the tree’s leaves. He’s telling her his relationship with Darcy (which we will learn later that is completely different as he portrays it), and the camera shows him from a low angle, making him look bigger and powerful, handsome. He controls the situation. He’s fooling Lizzie. The clever part here was to have Lizzie sit down during this conversation, in order to be able to have the low angle in which Wickham is portrayed also be a point of Lizzie’s view shot.

In the last viewing I did of this film, I realized that there is a turning point in the movie, almost in the middle. This is, obviously, when Mr. Bingley leaves Netherfield. It’s almost as restarting a computer. The sisters are where they started: with no prospects of matrimony, only this time Jane is broken hearted and has a specific way of trying to solve her problem.

Going back to the things that always happen to me when I watch this movie, I will address the earlier party in Meriton, the one where Mr. Darcy, Mr Bingley and his sister are introduced. In this party, Mr. Darcy is all but a sympathetic character. He hurts Lizzie’s feelings, but then she gets back at him. I feel empathy for Elizabeth when she turns around and leaves Mr. Darcy, probably wanting the Earth to swallow him for having been so rude.

When the group makes its entrance in the hall and everyone stops dancing, the camera looks for Elizabeth’s reaction, that is, it’s almost as a point of view shot, where the camera is a pair of eyes trying to find Lizzie in the multitude.

One of the most intriguing scenes is the visit of Lady Catherine de Bourg. This is the critical scene where Elizabeth Bennet suffers a crisis, provoked by the questions of Lady Catherine. She is asked to swear she won’t accept a matrimony offer from Mr. Darcy, and she has to decide yes or no right there, on the spot. Interestingly, the scene begins almost as a theatre scene would begin. Dim-lighted, just enough to see the two main character’s faces and bodies, we can see both of them facing each other in an establishing shot. Later, we move back and forth from close ups of Elizabeth to close ups of Lady Catherine. The actresses have so much power in their acting that the scene doesn’t need any extra music or sounds, and we can’t see very well the environment where they are talking. There is nothing to distract us from their argument, and that makes this scene so powerful.

From here we go directly to the scene where Darcy and Lizzie come together, which I will discuss later. What I want to say about this scene now is that this is actually the end of the story. What follows in completely unnecessary: when Darcy and Lizzie ask Lizzie’s father for permission. We already know that they are together, but this part of the film helps ask wrap up with the beginning. It has the same tone: the opening and the closing scene of a movie often give us the gender of the movie, in this case a romantic movie set in the 1700’s in a beautiful countryside background.

This sensation of being a spectator of the main story is portrayed in the movie in different occasions. At the opening sequence, we follow Lizzie as she goes to her house. When we get there, the camera, that is, us, wonders around the interior of the house and encounters Elizabeth’s sisters. When we finally come back to Lizzie, is only to see how she looks through her father’s office window and listens to a conversation that her parents are having. The sequence continues with the rest of the sisters listening clandestinely at the door (us too). This looking at the situation through windows happens again when Jane and Mr. Bingley get engaged, and we see how life goes on for the rest of the house. Similarly, when Elizabeth visits Mr. Darcy’s home, already feeling an intruder, she spies through the door into the room where Georgiana is playing the piano, and then gets discovered.

This leads me to a part of the movie that I think is indispensable: the music. Dario Marianelli did a great job creating the soundtrack, and most of all alternating the moments when that music was diegetic or non-diegetic. That helps us feel that the music is as part of the story as the character, actually as if it was one more character, that leads us smoothly through the changes of scenes.

There is yet another character that is not directly implied by the natural development of the story: the sun. This was a choice of the director, but exactly what his motivation was I can not say. I can guess, though.

This is a romantic story, and a happy romantic story, for that matter. The main character of this romantic story, Elizabeth, is a beautiful and intelligent young woman that shines alone. She also brings light in the life of others (she leads Jane in her pursuit of happiness, she has an evident complicity with his father that the rest of the sister don’t have, and she is the object of Mr. Darcy, that cold and stiff rich man’s love). I think light is the alter ego of Elizabeth.

But apart from these hypothetical meanings of the sunlight, the main point is that it is extremely beautiful in the screen. The most breathtaking part for me is the scene where they reunite in the very morning, at dawn. The rising of the sun in this scene is like a metaphor of he rising of their love. And of course, the script helps a great deal to make this scene one of the best love scenes I have ever watched.

Elizabeth is wandering in the prairie in the cold morning with a very small jacket. She’s cold. Suddenly, from the mist, comes Mr. Darcy, walking with his sad “quizzical” brow. They encounter. He talks.

Mr Darcy: “I will have to tell you. You have bewitched me body and soul, and I love, I love, I love you. And I never wish to be parted from you from this day on.”

She smiles, comes closer to him, takes his hands in hers.

Elizabeth: “Well then, you’re hands are cold.”

She kisses his hands. The sun is slowly rising in the horizon. They put their heads together, and the sun shines between their eyes, closed, and their mouths, that we never see meet. We have seen enough.

click here to read the novel

A great journalist gone.

Ryszard Kapuscinski, a great polish reporter and writer died yesterday at the age of 74 in Warsaw.

He's main work was on Africa, where he lived and worked for many years. From this experiences he wrote many books, one of them EBANO, very valuable for the understanding of the African culture.
He was a great example on how journalists can help understand the world, comunicating people things about places and other people they might never get to know otherwise.
Clic here to read an article in BBC News.com.

Good Bye.

Trailer for Mr. Magorium

I am looking forward to his movie, because Natalie Portman is my favorite actress, and I think that here she will do a very different role of what she has done in previous movies. I also love fantasy, and after you've seen the trailer, you'll understand that this movie is appealing for me.

365 days... 365 movies... at least.

One of my purposes for this year is watch at least one movie a day. I know I can't make it, but some days I will watch more than one, and that will make for the days I don't watch any. The goal is 365 movies for 2007. So let's begin:

• The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) -1st January.
• Nanny McPhee (2005) -2nd January.
• Arthur and the invisibles (2006) -3rd January.
• Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001) -5th January.

• Match Point (2005)- 5th January.
• Luther (2003) -7th January.
• Wallace & Gromit. The curse of the were-rabbit (2005) -8th January.
• Indiscreet (1958) -9th January.
• Volver (2006) -10th January.
• Proof (2005) -11th January.
• Flushed away (2006) - 11th January.
• Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) - 13th January.
• Marie Antoinette (2006) - 14th January.
• Unconcious (2004) -20th January.
• Run, Lola, Run (1998)- 22th January.
• Dangerous liaisons, 1st part (2003) -23th January.
• Pride and Prejudice (2006) -26th January.
• Rent (2005) -27th January.
• Volver (2006) -28th January.
• Crash (2006) -29th January.

That's all for January: 20 out of 31. Considering that I came back from Spain to the U.S.A. and that I have moved to an apartment, plus a crazy schedule for this semester, I think I'm doing pretty good. Let's see if I can make up for some of them in February.

Total: 20/365

Este post en español.