Events - 30 Avr 16
|
Bright Star, film by Jane Campion. With this account of John Keats’s love affair with Fanny Brawne, played by Ben Whishaw and Abbie Cornish, Campion has made a fine and even ennobling film: defiantly, unfashionably about the vocation of romantic love. She has Whishaw and Cornish actually recite poetry – which, for most actors, is as difficult as walking on your hands or juggling with knives – and even proposes a kind of secular martyrdom for them in the movie’s final act. Their love is murdered by the false choice between love and art, and sacrificed to a petty tangle of money worries, social scruples and irrelevant male loyalties. The movie is vulnerable to mockery or irony from pundits who might feel that Campion has neglected to acknowledge the primal force of sex, or from those who feel their appreciation of the poet exceeds that of the director. Nonetheless, I think it is a deeply felt and intelligent film, one of those that has grown in my mind on a second viewing; it is almost certainly the best of Campion’s career, exposing The Piano as overrated and overegged. Very few films allow you to listen to the sounds of silence, or near-silence, between the lines of dialogue: the sounds of birdsong, or the rustle of clothing, or footfalls in a country lane – but that is what Campion’s does. Her film proceeds at a quiet, measured tempo and with a lucid calm. Another type of film would have supercharged its narrative moments with surging music and the engine-roar of dramatic acceleration, but Campion simply lets each scene unspool evenly. There is something coolly unobtrusive about her cinematic staging. Silently reading a letter in a picture-window is allowed no more ostensible weight than the flirtatious conversation at a ball, or even the final announcement of Keats’s death. And the action of the film proceeds largely within the summery pastures of 19th-century Hampstead, occasionally switching to the crowded squalor of Kentish Town. When Campion suddenly takes us to Keats’s silent funeral procession in Rome’s deserted Piazza di Spagna, it is the nearest thing to a flourish that she allows herself. But what a brilliant coup. Screening begins at 15:00 sharp. This activity is free of charge for all library members. Please reserve sign up at the front desk in advance. A discussion in English will follow the film. |
|
|
Saturday April 30th (3-4:30pm) — Room by Emma Donoghue *we will discuss the book AND the 2015 film nominated for Best Film and winner of Best Actress at the Academy Awards
Book summary: To five-year-old-Jack, Room is the world. . . . It’s where he was born, it’s where he and his Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.
Room is home to Jack, but to Ma it’s the prison where she has been held for seven years. Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in this eleven-by-eleven-foot space. But with Jack’s curiosity building alongside her own desperation, she knows that Room cannot contain either much longer. Saturday May 21st (3-4:30pm): Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn *we will discuss the book AND the 2014 film nominated for Best Actress at the Academy Awards
Book summary: On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn’t doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife’s head, but passages from Amy’s diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media—as well as Amy’s fiercely doting parents—the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he’s definitely bitter—but is he really a killer?
Saturday June 18th (3-4:30pm): The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
Book summary: Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She’s even started to feel like she knows them. “Jess and Jason,” she calls them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost. And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now everything’s changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel offers what she knows to the police, and becomes inextricably entwined in what happens next, as well as in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good?
When and where: Meetings will be held in the library once a month on Saturday afternoons starting at 3:00 from March through June. Cost: FREE to all members of the library. To join: Please contact Anne Kaar at bookgroup@ellia.org |
|
