Now that the audience can "look" beyond the "frontal" male nudity along with Ken Russell's staging of D. H. Lawrence's "wrestling match" between peers, male at that, the film itself stands on its own as a "brave new world" of sexual "ideologies." Methinks the switching of genders in the title would obviate much of the confusion amongst the audience of this film. Lawrence was not so much a "writer" as he was an explorer and pioneer in the psychologies of "sex," the "frictional" variety that is, as he himself puts it. As the Aztecan? guru spiritually sublimates the physical needs of the matron in "Plumed Serpent" so does the Alan Bates character overtly name his love, as in "I offered him." Women find one answer in Gudrun's cool/"cold" acceptance of her own polarities, even as she trots off to sample Teutonic variations on a theme called "love." But I found the Bavarian? exemplar of "gayness" herein a bit too fey and much too overt, for his day surely. All in all, a literally beautiful evocation and visualization of times and personae past. Figs, anyone"?
I have just watched this Lswrence/Kramer/Russell movie again, and I find myself, perforce,"moved" to bring my personal. subjective reactions "up to date," belated as it is. Which is to say, again, that this "flick" eludes EVERYone, onsofar as each of us brings to our individual "witnessings" our own idiosyncratic "baggage" of preconceptions and presumptions. The naysayers here, the "macho" types who cannot see themselves as a Gerald, haven't a clue and not a hope of ever achieving one. The subtleties AND the "truths" Lawrence enounced will ever elude them, which, of course, is what they deserve. Gerald's realization that he never really "wanted" the "frictional" fruition of his lust for Gudrun before he traipses off to his need for "sleep" is just one of the profound insights herein. Gudrun's perfervid knowledge of same and HER need for self-validation is equally insightful. But it is the closing two "scenes" that aptly sum up Lawrence's vision and Lawrence's perceptions: 1: The author's fictional personification who, tearfully, pronounces: "He should have loved me. I offered him." 2: The closing dialog between "man" and "wife," that,ruefully, evinces the "gulf" between "normality" and "perversion. Alan Bates was a revelation in "Georgy Girl," and his performance here is no less full and professional AND persuasive. Lawrence was much less "physiczl," forget healthy, but Bates captures the essence of the author's "spirituality." Some find Reed "hammy" and one-dimensional, but his performance here is deeper than that. Finally, I believe that, in its own inimitable way, this conjunction of author, fan, and cineaste is nonpareil, likr the Merchant/Ivory "Maurice" or "today's" "Brokeback Mountain." That Glenda Jackson looks like Tony Curtis in drag is amusing of course, and that macho types can't abide the slow "pace" of superficial crawlings must be expected, as in "get on with it." They will NEVER perceive, much less understand, just exactly WHAT is that is ongoing. "Love" and "lust" and fruition and loss are herein embodied in the ripemess of a mere "fig," as in figment or figurative.
I have just watched this Lswrence/Kramer/Russell movie again, and I find myself, perforce,"moved" to bring my personal. subjective reactions "up to date," belated as it is. Which is to say, again, that this "flick" eludes EVERYone, onsofar as each of us brings to our individual "witnessings" our own idiosyncratic "baggage" of preconceptions and presumptions. The naysayers here, the "macho" types who cannot see themselves as a Gerald, haven't a clue and not a hope of ever achieving one. The subtleties AND the "truths" Lawrence enounced will ever elude them, which, of course, is what they deserve. Gerald's realization that he never really "wanted" the "frictional" fruition of his lust for Gudrun before he traipses off to his need for "sleep" is just one of the profound insights herein. Gudrun's perfervid knowledge of same and HER need for self-validation is equally insightful. But it is the closing two "scenes" that aptly sum up Lawrence's vision and Lawrence's perceptions: 1: The author's fictional personification who, tearfully, pronounces: "He should have loved me. I offered him." 2: The closing dialog between "man" and "wife," that,ruefully, evinces the "gulf" between "normality" and "perversion. Alan Bates was a revelation in "Georgy Girl," and his performance here is no less full and professional AND persuasive. Lawrence was much less "physiczl," forget healthy, but Bates captures the essence of the author's "spirituality." Some find Reed "hammy" and one-dimensional, but his performance here is deeper than that. Finally, I believe that, in its own inimitable way, this conjunction of author, fan, and cineaste is nonpareil, likr the Merchant/Ivory "Maurice" or "today's" "Brokeback Mountain." That Glenda Jackson looks like Tony Curtis in drag is amusing of course, and that macho types can't abide the slow "pace" of superficial crawlings must be expected, as in "get on with it." They will NEVER perceive, much less understand, just exactly WHAT is that is ongoing. "Love" and "lust" and fruition and loss are herein embodied in the ripemess of a mere "fig," as in figment or figurative.