Potentially Life Changing Movies or Plays What has been your experience?
Potentially Life Changing Movies or Plays
What has been your experience?
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Come Back Little Sheba has always saddened but not depressed me.Doc was forced to marry Lola when she became pregnant. Abortion was not an option and was against the law.
Following marriage , Doc was forced to leave medical school and become a chiropractor instead of a physician for financial reasons. Shortly thereafter the baby died. To cope with his stressful life Doc became an alcoholic and unfaithful husband.
Sheba was a little dog, who disappeared, but was repeatedly sought out by Lola during the play. I do not understand the symbolic significance of tne little Sheba. but it may relate to the ebb and flow of the events of human life
In.many ways Come Back Little Sheba reminds me of the play, An American Tragedy.
Both The Death of a Salesman and Come Back Little Sheba emphasized to me, the importance of empathy to the human soul and buman life.
Didn’t Shirley Booth star in the movie version? I remember watching this on late, late night tv when I was in junior high. My mom wasn’t too happy about me watching it…and late, late to me back then was anything on past 9:00 p.m.!
And now, I have spun full circle. Late, late to me is anything after 9:00 p.m….lol!
Yes, Shirley Booth. was one of many actors to play the role of Lola.
Another LoLa was a very famous Broadway jazz dancer among many other excellent performers inluding one very famous actor in the SVU TV series.
Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 film, Ikiru (“To Live”). Kurosawa used The Death of Ivan Illyich by Tolstoy as a loose starting point. The hero is a petty bureaucrat who discovers he has stomach cancer, with only months, perhaps only weeks left to live. The film traces his existential quest for meaning. I watch this film every couple years.
https://youtu.be/2m9RdEnm1M8
A Doll’s House by Ibsen really makes you think about traditional marital roles
Another great Kurosawa film, at the other end of his career, the 1985 film, Ran (“Chaos”), based on King Lear, but set in medieval Japan. The score, the acting, the cinematography, everything about this film is perfect. It’s also quite an emotionally exhausting film, a bleak record of human folly and cruelty. And the character Lady Kaede is simply stunning.
https://youtu.be/nLbSKfkpGBg
Wim Wenders’ poetic film Wings of Desire. The Hollywood flick City of Angels was based on the German original, but there is no comparison — the original film far surpasses it. The plot is tenuous, almost not even there. It is a poetic reflection on what it is to be alive, from the perspective of some rather Rilkean angels.
https://youtu.be/wHFEeVKjHGw
Two other great films are from Michael Cacoyannis (who directed Zorba the Greek, another great film based on the novel by Nikos Kazantzakis). Cacoyannis adapted Euripides’ The Trojan Women and also Iphigenia for film in the 1970s (The Trojan Women is in English). Both films are great critiques on war. The Trojan Women stars Katherine Hepburn, Vanessa Redgrave, Genevieve Bujold, Irene Papas, and Brian Blessed — you can’t go wrong with this.
Katherine Hepburn as a Trojan woman? ☺
She plays Hecuba — just heartbreaking.
The timing of the film…. during the height of Vietnam War protests (and with Vanessa Redgrave!) Is not a coincidence. Fitting, since Euripides likely wrote the play in response to the Athenian’s massacre at Melos.
Was that film in color?
Yes, that and Iphigenia both (but Zorba was b&w).
I remenber Hepburn in Suddenly Last Summer and On Golden Pond with her strong Yankee accent and I can’t see her playing the role of a Trojan woman.
@Kathy I loved ‘On Golden Pond’ I just remembered going to see this play in Glasgow when I was in my early 20’s, it was really good, the tense relationship between the father and daughter and the older couple in their twilight years. I also enjoyed the movie and thought the actors were perfect for the roles.
As for films, it was Much Ado About Nothing directed by Kenneth Branagh. It made me fall in love with Shakespeare, theatre and filmmaking. As for books, it’s probably Harry Potter, because it changed my life in lots of ways – gave me amazing friends, helped me with my English, got me interested in British culture and actors etc.
Goldfinger made me want to be a spy. The Lost World made me want to be an adventurer. The Mod Squad made me want to go steady with Peggy Lipton.
The Last Lecture, Randy Pausch. The book is based on a speech he gave at Carnegie Mellon. It was part of a series of lectures where academics were to talk about what wisdom they would impart if this was their “final talk.” Pausch gave his not long after receiving a diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer. It is an emotional roller coaster from a man who set forth to achieve his childhood dreams. An amazing short read. I know it’s not a play or movie, but kind of fits. I believe you can watch the lecture, google Really achieving your childhood dreams or Randy Pausch.
Who was tbe other tech giant who also died of pancreatic cancer?
And now, tbe star of jeopardy is also dying of the same cancer.
@Kathy who is Steve Jobs?
I grew up out in the country in the days before satellite television. We could only pick up two channels, so my parents bought a beta player and some tapes. The 1978 animated version of Watership Down was just randomly given to us by my mom’s friend. It wasn’t really a kid’s movie, but my mom was open-minded enough to let us watch it. It taught me so much about perseverance. I still watch it once a year.
I find Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia pretty mind-blowing regarding the nature of the universe, and the writing is glorious
“Dear Evan Hansen” grabs you by the throat and squeezes your heart until you can’t breathe. The overwhelming sadness of children who struggle socially and feel invisible, paired with the frustration of parents who do their best but it’s never enough reminds us how we must become kinder and more understanding when dealing with one another. “Hamilton” tells its story brilliantly in song, dance, and dialogue, demanding your undivided attention from beginning to end…and ever after.
Empathy and kindness…both so very important.
Doctor Zhivago. Saw it when I wasn’t mature enough and I am still haunted by some of the images of war.
I can remember growing up as a child, my mother would change the TV channel, whenever film depicting war was shown.The same thing at the movies, when war films were shown about war , my.mother left the film and waited in the lobby till the news was over.
And even to this day I remember looking out the window of a commuter train as a child in Chicago across the tracks at traincar after traincar , covered with.the American flag, as tbey pulled into the station carrying our deceased war time soldiers.. TrainCar after car pulled into the Roosevelt Road station.
The Elephant Man. There are books about Joseph (John) Merrick, but the movie really hit me emotionally.
The ones that actually change me I value more than the ones with mere potential. (Smart-aleck answer, I know!) 😉
So many, but often the friendship in Beaches.