Short-ish post tonite. LOOOONG day of paperwork and policy. Starting new jobs gives me a headache.
As a test for my new schmancy On Demand cable thing, I decided to watch the old Stanley Kubrick version of Lolita. Just to be up front about it, I must confess, I far far prefer the newer version with Jeremy Irons and Dominique Swain. First of all, despite what the credits say, I can't believe the Nabokov himself wrote the screenplay for the older version-- the new one is so much more subtle, so much more faithful to the novel! The old version is sanitized, even. I mean, the novel doesn't shy away from revelling and rolling in its famous dirtiness, its illicit obsessions, and yet Humbert and Lolita never so much as kiss in the Kubrick movie. OK, so the newer version borders on soft porn now and again (oh, that amazing scene on the rocking chair? The one in which Lolita gropes for loose change, naked, on the bed? Is it warm in here?) but it commits to its story in a way that gives me the willies in all the right ways. And by that, I mean the great thing about the novel is that Nabokov forces his reader to sympathize with Humbert, who is clearly a monster-- which is compelling beyond belief-- and outside of my comfort zone in the same vein of all those incest movies I talked about several posts ago
And the Lolita in the old version? She's, well, cute and stuff. But Dominique Swain's Lolita? She's not nearly so poised and grown-up-- she's actually still a child. She's dirty,messy, covered with food and she smacks her gum and she wears stupid little-girl outfits and she is completely childish while still being complicatedly and overtly sexual. You can practically smell her little-girl sweaty smell. It's a rough, raw, nuanced performance that blows the haughty little blonde princess in the other version out of the water. And, also, with Jeremy Irons, you can understand why he's appealing to both Mother and Daughter Haze-- he's struggling so hard to contain all his lustful-and lusti-ness and yet he smolders.
Perhaps my preference for all things new and shiny over things weathered and grainy is coloring my opinions here but I gotta say-- the real heart of the story surrounds the dymanic between Humbert and Lolita-- the way they own each other and manipulate each other and eat each other up and run each other into the ground. And Kubrick, for some reason, decided to spend notably little time on this relationship in favor of dwelling in loooong scenes between Humbert and Charlotte and Humbert and Quilty and Humbert and everyone else. Who cares? Nabokov knew where the energy behind the novel was-- how could it have become so dilluted in his own screen adaptation?
2 comments:
It is simply the difference between 1962 and 1997.
Perhaps. But it makes me wonder... why do people always talk about how much better old movies are than new ones? Old ones are so squeaky clean and so overly emotive in acting style. I am a girl of my own era, I suppose.
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