I'd use the word "deliberate" rather than slow though this might be a distinction without a difference. I suppose there are a lot of places where Haynes and company could have picked up the pace, or gotten to the point faster.
But I didn't want them to. For me the filmmaking was mostly precise and meticulous and sometimes as in that seaside scene majestic, operatic -- almost decadent in its willingness to go inside a moment, linger there, and let you experience Mildred's shifts in emotion as they happened. That moment at the seaside, for instance, could have been wrapped up in about two minutes.
But it went on much longer, and I was glad it did. It had an operatic power, not just because of the glorious music coming out of the radio, but because it was all about what we might call "the musicality of the moment. What did you think of the central relationship, Mildred and Veda? I had an interesting conversation with a friend last night who said he didn't understand the constant obsession among critics and viewers with whether or not Veda was a "believable" character or whether Mildred and Veda's interaction was "realistic.
She doesn't talk like anybody else in the miniseries. Everything she says sounds like it could be Mildred's insecurity talking.
When they talk to each other it's almost like Mildred is talking to herself. I think that's spot on; in these final two episodes, particularly, Veda reminded me in a strange way of Iago in William Shakespeare's "Othello. He's a demonic force whose sole purpose is to torment Othello. When put that way, what other choice is there but to get stinko?
Already a subscriber? Log in or link your magazine subscription. Account Profile. Sign Out. She confesses but the cop realizes that the true culprit is her daughter, Veda, whom Mildred has been loyally trying to protect. Motherhood is therefore presented as wholesome, self-sacrificing, virtuous. Her only crime, if she had committed one, was that she had loved this girl too well.
The new adaptation by Haynes and Jon Raymond is very faithful to the novel but there are additions. Consider this one, in part 4. You shrew! You hideous cow! Which could be called a psychoanalytic perspective. Making the best of the more-than-five-hour running time, Haynes gives us a much deeper, many-layered reflection on the vicissitudes of desire.
Instead, what about creativity? These scenes are put into dialogue with ones of Veda playing piano or singing. Back to Veda: As played by Morgan Turner and starting next week, Evan Rachel Wood she's a musically talented and beyond-precocious child, and very much the dark mirror of her mother's ambition -- a little monster of entitlement who takes without giving. I ascribe at least part of her awfulness to the gender politics of parents and children.
Little girls have been known to dote on and even idealize their dads while piling all sorts of negative feelings onto their mothers,. O'Byrne , as a flesh-and-blood saint and her mother as scum. These dynamics are made even more acute by a couple of traumas: Mildred and Bert's divorce which took Bert away from Veda, except on visitation days and the death of Veda's younger sister, Moire "Ray" , which occurred when Mildred was off doing the horizontal mambo with her new lover, the playboy mooch Monte Beragon Guy Pearce.
Last night's episode, which opened in the aftermath of the youngest child's death, contained an agonizing moment where Ray saw her parents in the kitchen and immediately embraced her father, ignoring her mother until she finally looked up at her and demanded, "Where were you? As more than one commenter pointed out in last week's recap, Ray died from sudden and catastrophic illness.
Mildred's absence from the house had no effect on that one way or the other. Veda's implied accusation and other relatives' pointed anger at Mildred last week amounted to a generalized statement of disapproval and resentment, aimed at a middle-class s woman who was breaking all sorts of taboos getting a job, starting her own business, taking a new lover soon after a divorce while still raising kids.
The scene in this week's episode in which Veda tongue-lashes her mother after failing to receive a piano for Christmas brought all those resentments out.
As Veda admitted, her more cutting remarks came straight from Monte, with whom she'd bonded.
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