Pandering and not philandering, alas. One would think that a movie about a debauched, sister-loving, clubfoot-hiding misanthrope would at least share its subject's interest in indifference, even if it cannot equal his exquisite taste for scandal. One would be very, very wrong. (Below, an astrological reading of Byron's life proves it could not be otherwise.)
And it's long, too long. Even for its much appreciated gratuitous nudity and scenes of Byron wildly swinging canes at wine glasses as his baby is born upstairs, too too long. However! I did not know that Annabelle Milbanke secured a legal separation from the man on grounds of marital sodomy. (Attaboy, Byron!) And why, why does a movie stink like unworthy fish for two hours, and then, when Shelley finally dies in the last twenty minutes, things get good. I mean, yeah, Shelley drowning makes anything better (see below, where Shelley burning on a beach after washing ashore makes all Italy bloom a gorgeous, gloomy waste):
But! Why make us sit through two hours of Elizabeth Gaskell to enjoy five minutes of Thomas Hardy? This will not do! Next time, Shelley goes down in the first act; in the second act, Byron is resurrected from his panty-wringing histrionics and emerges as the fake Greek hero he actually is; for the third act, we all sit mute as we read the one beautiful stanza from Childe Harold, which somehow ended up as Byron's epitaph despite lurking among thousands of other godawful lines in that wretched poem.
Clown-Headed Tucan: Koko, this is one fucking hilarious post. Personally, I think his epitaph should be all of Don Juan, carved out with infinite labor by the descendants of Elizabeth Gaskell. Shelley's epitaph should be all of Prometheus Unbound, carved by the weeping ghost of Shelley himself.
No comments:
Post a Comment