Product: Nora [VHS] (2000)
Rating: 5.0
THE BARNACULAR JOYCE
I too at first wished to hear more of Joyce's famous comments and phrases ("Ireland, the old sow that eats her farrow"). When he writes "The Dead" I'd hoped to hear the glorious final paragraph about flakes falling into the mutinous Shannon. And so on. But this was a filming of Brenda Maddox's book, not a gathering of Joyce writings. The point of "The Dead" in the film is to light up Joyce's compulsive jealousy of "Gabriel", Nora's first lover, not show how that lover later splintered into Blazes Boylan. The Joyce here begins as the callow Stephen Dedalus figure, then matures into a much weightier character with a genius for honesty who must never avoid the worst in human nature and, indeed, must hold it dear as a source of inspiration--even if he finds it in his wife. Dublin has bleached him white and he must write the gray prose of "Dubliners" to match his feelings, and then the photographically gray prose of "Ulysses". Earlier films had already dramatized Joyce's prose, Joseph Strick's "Ulysses" and John Huston's "The Dead"--so why repeat what had already been done? Furthermore, when Joyce complains that Nora never reads his stories, she cries back, Why should I when I see how you twist my life in them? So Joyce's prose is not part of Nora's mind, not even the lovely end of "The Dead"--so it would be out of place in Nora's universe in this film, as would her reactions to any sublime prose moment. We don't want to see Nora saying what a wonderful writer Jimmy is--although in later life she did enjoy the world's opinion of her husband. I found Ewan McGregor fighting against body type in trying to capture the slender figure of Joyce but that at times he did catch the Joyce silhouette balanced on his cane. McGregor's lighting was splendid, with artful shadows at times molding Joyce's features and even reaching into his head to see Joyce's cold gray torment. Since the film ends before "Dubliners" is even published--or rather with the type being smashed by the printers--there can be no reason for working some of Joyce's later writing or glories into the the script. The focus is on Nora, and Susan Lynch, also working against body type in trying to figure forth a robust Nora, does wonderfully. She may never again have as great a role to play. The film successfully plays Nora's burly richness of feeling against Joyce's complexity and writerly distraction snd I for one loved it. Let me add that as I watched it, alas on tape, I kept thinking "Here is a film that will never earn back its costs--except emotionally for what Stendahl calls 'the happy few.'" As movies go, this is a treasure and I plan to see it again on DVD. Rosettes to Ewan McGregor, who produced as well as starred, and to Susan Lynch for her unwavering flow of feeling that lapped at my heart like a cow's tongue.