..Gary
Dretzka
..Noah
Forrest
..Leonard
Klady
..R.J.
Matson
..David
Poland
..Douglas
Pratt
..Ray
Pride
..Michael
Wilmington
Being Julia
Directed by István Szabó
You wonder where Being Julia is going, but the answer comes in the marvelous final act, where Annette Bening's character, a stage actress coping with middle age, gets her revenge on all of the people who have been taking advantage of her. Based upon a W. Somerset Maugham story, the film is set in London in the Thirties to give it some class, to add a touch of make-believe to its tone, to include an album's worth of wonderful period songs, and to increase the vitality of its sexual conflicts. The film runs 104 minutes and is mostly about Bening's character having an affair with a younger man, but at the same time, you get a portrait of her lifestyle and a good sense of her psychology and feelings. There is a vague sense that not much is really happening, but if you just hang with it and soak up the atmosphere, the delightful payoff is worth the wait.
The 2004 feature, which earned Bening an Oscar nomination, has been released by Sony Pictures Classics (09174, $27) and is in letterboxed format only, with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. The cinematography is inconsistent and unappealing. There are flares, grain, ghosting and other flaws, and they don't appear to serve any artistic purpose. One presumes that the image transfer has done the best it can with the available source material. The 5.1-channel Dolby Digital sound supplies a basic but satisfying dimensionality. There is English captioning. Included as well are 5 minutes of wisely deleted scenes, a 9-minute promotional featurette identified as 'Behind the Scenes' footage on the 'Special Features' menu, and 6 minutes of great behind-the-scenes footage identified as a promotional featurette on the same menu.
Bening, co-star Jeremy Irons and director István Szabó provide an excellent commentary track, sharing anecdotes about the shoot, discussing the challenges in each scene, providing a reasonably clear description of the production, and, most importantly, exploring the complexities of the craft of acting. Bening points out that laughter is sometimes even more difficult than crying to pull off in a performance and talks about other acting challenges. She speaks extensively about the art of 'listening,' but also reveals, without naming names, that some very prominent and successful screen performers don't bother with it and play only to the camera.
Irons also has many insightful and reflective things to say about his profession. "This is period acting on stage, and stage acting changes with fashion. What's happened nowadays is that audiences are trained to watch the screen. They're trained to see the close-up. They're trained to see naturalistic acting in a way that in the Thirties they weren't, and so what you were doing there on the stage is very much period theater work. You wouldn't see that in the theater nowadays. It has changed. It's meant that the bigger theaters are now not so useful for many modern plays, which require a great naturalism. There is still a difference between theater acting and film acting, but it's now a more subtle difference I think than it was during this period." He speaks as well about the delicate difference between 'preparing' a performance for the stage, and 'discovering' a performance for film.
Szabó does not acknowledge the film's image quality shortcomings, but he does explain their context. "The real power of film is an actor's face and that's why I believe in close-ups. So if I ask myself, what is unique in filmmaking, which is different from theater or literature or music? This is a human face, with emotions. You know the human face belongs to somebody. This somebody's an actor who portrays a character. That's why I think for a feature film, for portraying somebody who we would like to introduce to the audience, his or her destiny, his or her emotions, is an actor, and that's why I think actors are, to me, the most important thing in a feature film. This is the most important thing, to feel yourself free. Acting needs this kind of freedom and that's why, even 25 years ago, when [I started to work with my crew], we decided, and this is maybe the most important thing between us, we decided that we follow actors, and not actors should follow the camera."
April 19, 2005
DVD Roundup: This Week's DVD Releases
The Review VaultDouglas Pratt's DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter is published monthly.
For a free sample, call (516)594-9304 or go to his website at www.DVDLaser.com
