The French Lieutenant's Woman

 

The French Lieutenant's Woman is on Amazon Prime -- last Friday it said on there that it's only on for six more days, so must play it tonight and tomorrow before work -- I don't know if they started counting the six days on Friday or on Saturday, and don't know whether on the sixth day, that's the last day it will be on, or, on the sixth day that's when it disappears, one second after midnight.

(Those people are so non-specific in their communications....)

That movie is a mood.

A "vibe," as the Kardashians might say.

I saw it in the movie theater when it came out, soon after reading the novel.  I read about it beforehand (in TIME magazine, I think) and waited and watched for it's arrival.

That was near the start of Meryl Streep's career.  (It seems funny to think about that now, as she's an icon....)  At that time I had seen her in two movies before -- 

Kramer vs. Kramer

and

Woody Allen's Manhattan.

In the book, which was published in 1969, the author John Fowles "breaks the fourth wall" at the beginning of chapters, speaking to the reader, telling him what life was like for people living in Victorian England, in the 1800s, when the story takes place.  He describes it with the voice and point-of-view of the twentieth-century author that he is.  It's a lot of social history and social commentary -- when you get done reading it, you feel like an expert.

The question in 1981 was:  how would you do the author-speaking-to-audience parts in a movie?  You can't just put type-script up there on the screen -- well, you could, but they weren't going to.

So what they did for the film was make it a film within a film:

Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons play actors who are shooting a movie of the story about the fictional characters in the novel:  Sarah Woodruff and Charles Smithson.

I thought it was perfect.  Intensely involving for the viewer, memorable, and haunting -- the music gives the atmosphere, the visuals so beautiful, spooky, and  affecting, and the dialogue and style in which it is spoken -- spectacular.

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