'Gabo' Casts an Irreversible Spell in 'Cholera'
Added 10/12/2009
Part epistolary romance, part case study of a furtive and nerdy Casanova, Love in the Time of Cholera (El amor en los tiempos del cólera) reveals a male protagonist's optimistic and cynical perspectives of love. Portrayed with eloquence, charm and emotional complexity by Javier Bardem - who comes from a long line of thespians in Spain - Florentino Ariza surveys love's progression as an incurable disease. Hence, the cleverness of the film's title, for cholera during the periods depicted in Love in the Time of Cholera brought death quickly whereas love festers indefinitely.
In one of the most poignant moments of the 2007 film, a middle-aged Florentino utters to his dementia-ravaged mother: "You confuse cholera with love." Florentino's longing for the beautiful Fermina Daza was so intense, that his mother believed cholera to be the blame for his frequent bouts of vomiting and melancholia. That Gabriel García Márquez, author of the 1985 novel El amor en los tiempos del cólera, upon which the epic film is based, likens love to a terminal disease is an apt comparison. Such a romantic concept reverberated (with no small debt to John Barry's sweeping score) throughout Jeannot Szwarc's 1980 film Somewhere in Time, adapted unfaithfully from the 1975 novel Bid Time Return by Richard Matheson. In Somewhere in Time, a playwright (portrayed by Christopher Reeve) is described as having "died of love" after obsessing over a photo portrait of Belle Epoque actress Elise McKenna (portrayed by Jane Seymour) and willing himself back to her time in order to meet and fall in love with her.
In both films - Love in the Time of Cholera and Somewhere in Time - the viewer is challenged to redefine time beyond a cold, scientific certainty and to explore the interrelatedness of memories, emotions and metaphysics. Without relying on the special effects that action, sci-fi and horror flicks have conditioned our minds to accept as a requisite for magical occurrences, "Gabo" - as García Márquez is affectionately known in Latin America - asks us only to open the four chambers of our hearts, figuratively speaking. He implores us to feel the love (Lion King reference unintentional) that makes life worth living despite the social and economic chaos that often surrounds and threatens to desensitize us.
Love is the unseen but omniscient character in Love in the Time of Cholera, Somewhere in Time and another period film: Como agua para chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate) from director Alfonso Arau and adapted from the same-titled novel by Laura Esquivel. Esquivel's story is enchanting because it shouts from the rooftops that love holds the power to heal the wounded hearts of distanced lovers - whether the pair is separated by geography, disapproving parents, envious third parties, or any combination thereof. In fact, in Como agua para chocolate, when forbidden lovers Tita (Lumi Cavazos) and Pedro (Marco Leonardi) finally come together, Marco's voice booms: "TE AMO!" What follows in the barn is a literal combustion. Well, the fact that Tita had swallowed nearly an entire box of matches prior to their consummation was an eerie clue.
Another dose of "magical realism" - an artistic technique first recognized in American visual art of the mid-20th century and later employed in progressive literature by Latin American writers in the '60s and '70s - that transferred well from Esquivel's story to Arau's picture was the series of haunting sequences which result from Tita psychologically battling her destiny. Tita's fate may have been to become a spinster, but with Pedro's sensual aid she finds her way. As the youngest daughter, she is fated to take care of her widowed mother, Mamá Elena (Regina Torné), until her death. But when Tita reciprocates Pedro's flirtation to the point of infusing eroticism into the scrumptious dishes that she prepares for the family (which expands after her sister Rosaura's marriage to Pedro), a curse about which Mamá Elena warned is cast.
Speaking of Como agua para chocolate, much in the way Pedro professes "amor" from the top of his lungs in that torrid barn scene mentioned earlier in this review, hoodlum-Romeo Antone a/k/a "Tony" (Richard Beymer) in West Side Story painfully shouts his beloved's name, "MARIA!" on an urban street. In the first half of West Side Story, however, Tony envisions only love's promise, not its sometimes tragic consequences. The agonizing truth of the controversial affair between Tony and María (Natalie Wood) comes across as brutally honest as an admission in a long-avoided confessional booth when the youths perform "Somewhere." And María's divinity, in Tony's eyes, rings as true as a cathedral bell when his dubbed voice sings the ballad "María": "The most beautiful sound I've ever heard, María, María, María ... Say it loud and there's music playing. Say it soft and it's almost like praying."
Holiness takes a holiday in the motives of Florentino, however. Though he frequently refers to Fermina as his "crowned goddess" to anyone willing to listen, he indulges in mucho carnality throughout Love in the Time of Cholera. He is deliberate in going about a purely sexual catharsis in order to alleviate emotional pain caused by Fermina's rejection. When he first spoke of his love for her, Fermina felt honored, but after a while, enough is enough!
The rape of Florentino (in his 20s, presumably) is presented by director Newell and screenwriter Ronald Harwood as a misogynistic justification for Florentino's debauchery. After Florentino beds down (with desks, walls and leafy forests sometimes replacing mattresses as props) more than 600 women well into his 70s, he loses the viewers' sympathy with the abruptness of a Victrola's needle skidding across a vinyl record.
A second chance at love often requires much suffering on the part of the one whom love was denied. In that sense of murky optimism, Love in the Time of Cholera elevates love to the most sublime affliction. "Gabo" probably would agree with that diagnosis.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Latin love
Added 10/7/2009
I had some trouble with the book. The rich descriptions and time changes were wonderful but did confuse a trifle. So, I purchased this DVD, watched it and went back to the book and enjoyed it far more. The movie is well made and manages to follow the story line reasonably well. The acting is of a very high standard and the scenes do credit to the film makers---follow the authors descriptions quite well.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Made my day
Added 9/4/2009
I received the product in the good shape promised, in the time promised and it was well packaged.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
A fine adaptation of the novel
Added 8/30/2009
I read the book many years ago and was transported by Marquez' prose into the world of late nineteenth century Latin America. One aspect of the book, the longtime "affair" with the child (she was something like 12 when he rapes her) who ultimately commits suicide when Florentino dumps her, was upsetting to me and I have never been able to recommend the book because of that segment.
I was curious about the movie, though, mainly because of Bardem. And I'm glad my husband and I watched rented it. I'm 59 and he's 73, and it was nice to see a movie about "aging" people falling in love (this is our third marriage, each, and we've been together 20 years). There is no way a movie can depict all the affairs of the protagonist, but you definitely get the point of the novel, without the distasteful man/child saga. the book did a better job of depicting Latin America, so if you see the movie first, all the better. You will love the book, for the most part.
And by the way, we LOVED the Italian actress who played Fermina. The only miscast person was John Leguizamo, and I didn't even know that's who it was until the credits at the end.
So rent the movie, get lost in the atmosphere, watch the whole thing - give it a chance - and decide for yourself. Anyone who expects a movie to be true to a book, especially an epic, is a fool.
Maybe some people just want to watch things blow up, as my husband jokingly said when we began watching, him reluctantly. We both ended up loving it.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
It's just possible that the great Spanish language novel, cast with Spanish actors, ought to have been made in...Spanish
Added 8/7/2009
In the "Making Of" featurette, all the actors Spanish-speaking actors relate that Garcia Marquez's work is one of the masterpieces of Spanish language literature. To a person, they say it should have been made in Spanish but, well, they're happy to just have made it all.
So, what's a producer to do? How about assembling a first-rate collection of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese speakers and cast them as your leads in an English language version of one the great Spanish language books. Does that make even one lick of sense? You can hear Javier Bardem practically apologizing for the movie when he notes that none of the main actors (he, Unax Ugalde, Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Fernanda Montenegro - all world-class talents) speak English as their first tongue. Result: Mike Newell's film oozes uncomfortableness. It has a stilted, stop-and-go feel that doesn't work from the opening frame. It never finds its rhythm.
If you want to see this approach succeed, rent Julian Schnabel's brilliant Before Night Falls, featuring Bardem as Reinaldo Arenas. Then again, he's Julian Schnabel. And you're not.
Another thing that works against the film: the characters are supposed to age 50+ years, but Giovanna Mezzogiorno (Facing Windows) is just so beautiful that no amount of latex and make-up can make you believe it.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
'Gabo' Casts an Irreversible Spell in 'Cholera'
Added 10/12/2009
Part epistolary romance, part case study of a furtive and nerdy Casanova, Love in the Time of Cholera (El amor en los tiempos del cólera) reveals a male protagonist's optimistic and cynical perspectives of love. Portrayed with eloquence, charm and emotional complexity by Javier Bardem - who comes from a long line of thespians in Spain - Florentino Ariza surveys love's progression as an incurable disease. Hence, the cleverness of the film's title, for cholera during the periods depicted in Love in the Time of Cholera brought death quickly whereas love festers indefinitely.
In one of the most poignant moments of the 2007 film, a middle-aged Florentino utters to his dementia-ravaged mother: "You confuse cholera with love." Florentino's longing for the beautiful Fermina Daza was so intense, that his mother believed cholera to be the blame for his frequent bouts of vomiting and melancholia. That Gabriel García Márquez, author of the 1985 novel El amor en los tiempos del cólera, upon which the epic film is based, likens love to a terminal disease is an apt comparison. Such a romantic concept reverberated (with no small debt to John Barry's sweeping score) throughout Jeannot Szwarc's 1980 film Somewhere in Time, adapted unfaithfully from the 1975 novel Bid Time Return by Richard Matheson. In Somewhere in Time, a playwright (portrayed by Christopher Reeve) is described as having "died of love" after obsessing over a photo portrait of Belle Epoque actress Elise McKenna (portrayed by Jane Seymour) and willing himself back to her time in order to meet and fall in love with her.
In both films - Love in the Time of Cholera and Somewhere in Time - the viewer is challenged to redefine time beyond a cold, scientific certainty and to explore the interrelatedness of memories, emotions and metaphysics. Without relying on the special effects that action, sci-fi and horror flicks have conditioned our minds to accept as a requisite for magical occurrences, "Gabo" - as García Márquez is affectionately known in Latin America - asks us only to open the four chambers of our hearts, figuratively speaking. He implores us to feel the love (Lion King reference unintentional) that makes life worth living despite the social and economic chaos that often surrounds and threatens to desensitize us.
Love is the unseen but omniscient character in Love in the Time of Cholera, Somewhere in Time and another period film: Como agua para chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate) from director Alfonso Arau and adapted from the same-titled novel by Laura Esquivel. Esquivel's story is enchanting because it shouts from the rooftops that love holds the power to heal the wounded hearts of distanced lovers - whether the pair is separated by geography, disapproving parents, envious third parties, or any combination thereof. In fact, in Como agua para chocolate, when forbidden lovers Tita (Lumi Cavazos) and Pedro (Marco Leonardi) finally come together, Marco's voice booms: "TE AMO!" What follows in the barn is a literal combustion. Well, the fact that Tita had swallowed nearly an entire box of matches prior to their consummation was an eerie clue.
Another dose of "magical realism" - an artistic technique first recognized in American visual art of the mid-20th century and later employed in progressive literature by Latin American writers in the '60s and '70s - that transferred well from Esquivel's story to Arau's picture was the series of haunting sequences which result from Tita psychologically battling her destiny. Tita's fate may have been to become a spinster, but with Pedro's sensual aid she finds her way. As the youngest daughter, she is fated to take care of her widowed mother, Mamá Elena (Regina Torné), until her death. But when Tita reciprocates Pedro's flirtation to the point of infusing eroticism into the scrumptious dishes that she prepares for the family (which expands after her sister Rosaura's marriage to Pedro), a curse about which Mamá Elena warned is cast.
Speaking of Como agua para chocolate, much in the way Pedro professes "amor" from the top of his lungs in that torrid barn scene mentioned earlier in this review, hoodlum-Romeo Antone a/k/a "Tony" (Richard Beymer) in West Side Story painfully shouts his beloved's name, "MARIA!" on an urban street. In the first half of West Side Story, however, Tony envisions only love's promise, not its sometimes tragic consequences. The agonizing truth of the controversial affair between Tony and María (Natalie Wood) comes across as brutally honest as an admission in a long-avoided confessional booth when the youths perform "Somewhere." And María's divinity, in Tony's eyes, rings as true as a cathedral bell when his dubbed voice sings the ballad "María": "The most beautiful sound I've ever heard, María, María, María ... Say it loud and there's music playing. Say it soft and it's almost like praying."
Holiness takes a holiday in the motives of Florentino, however. Though he frequently refers to Fermina as his "crowned goddess" to anyone willing to listen, he indulges in mucho carnality throughout Love in the Time of Cholera. He is deliberate in going about a purely sexual catharsis in order to alleviate emotional pain caused by Fermina's rejection. When he first spoke of his love for her, Fermina felt honored, but after a while, enough is enough!
The rape of Florentino (in his 20s, presumably) is presented by director Newell and screenwriter Ronald Harwood as a misogynistic justification for Florentino's debauchery. After Florentino beds down (with desks, walls and leafy forests sometimes replacing mattresses as props) more than 600 women well into his 70s, he loses the viewers' sympathy with the abruptness of a Victrola's needle skidding across a vinyl record.
A second chance at love often requires much suffering on the part of the one whom love was denied. In that sense of murky optimism, Love in the Time of Cholera elevates love to the most sublime affliction. "Gabo" probably would agree with that diagnosis.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Latin love
Added 10/7/2009
I had some trouble with the book. The rich descriptions and time changes were wonderful but did confuse a trifle. So, I purchased this DVD, watched it and went back to the book and enjoyed it far more. The movie is well made and manages to follow the story line reasonably well. The acting is of a very high standard and the scenes do credit to the film makers---follow the authors descriptions quite well.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Made my day
Added 9/4/2009
I received the product in the good shape promised, in the time promised and it was well packaged.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
