That Left-Out Feeling
I’ve always respected and admired director Todd Haynes, and I realize that Mildred Pierce (Sunday, 9 pm) has been well-reviewed, and I accept that I’ll be seeing all five episodes…but I just can’t get it up so far. I respect James M. Cain but I don’t relate to women-suffering-in-the-’30s atmosphere. Plus I didn’t get any screeners or screening invites and…I don’t know. I just don’t feel involved.
Michael Curtiz can explain your ennui.
Now if only someone else can explain how a guy who made a half-dozen GREAT films was never regarded as a “serious” director.
The Crawford movie transcends genre to achieve something completely magical and rare; its own world, its own rules, its own reality.
As a self-contained slice of noir Malibu/L.A. conciousness, its ability to transport one to that crazybeautifultroubled place in Mildred’s heart will not be matched, nor is it needed.
We’ve punched that ticket, taken that trip, like the journey Reed took us on in “The Third Man” and Peckinpah took us on in “The Wild Bunch” and Fellini with “8 1/2″ ad infinitum, don’t look back, unless you’re in the marketing department of a place that only wants to make what has been presold .
Jeb Rosebrook, the screenwriter of “Junior Bonner” told me mucho moons ago, “You know, Steve, you can only go to a great party once.”
Throw another party, I think, is what you’re saying, Jeff and I couldn’t agree more.
You can’t get up the gumption to watch a 5 hour movie by one of our major living auteurs starring one of our most talented actresses. Got it.
Only the Movie Gods to answer to, right?
i’ve seen all five hours and it was well worth the time…. a completely different animal than the curtiz version, haynes hews much closer to cain’s novel….and, while the entire cast is great, evan rachel wood knocks it outta the park as the sociopathic daughter….it will be hard to beat this when awards are handed out for television work….
You sound like a spoiled child. You didn’t get a screener and now you’re acting pissy.
Oh, but Limitless was worth paying for.
zumpano
I don’t think Jeff is saying “Don’t bother,” but rather asking, “Why don’t I feel like bothering?”
For the record I will bother, but as a Cainiac and journalist, not because I desperately need to go into another cinematic exploration of the novel.
Some actually view “Mildred Pierce” as misogynist, citing it as a work that underlines why women can’t step outside their social boundaries. I’m a huge fan of the Curtiz/Crawford version, and I’m very much looking forward to tomorrow night.
On an aside, I just got back from “Limitless” and I didn’t think much of it at all.
Chase, that seems to be the norm right now. Better things–or rather more innovative things–can be found on the little screen than at the cinema. I really believe Hollywod is becoming an old dinosaur like Broadway.
“Now if only someone else can explain how a guy who made a half-dozen GREAT films was never regarded as a “serious” director. ”
I have a simple explanation for that — Curtiz absolutely was regarded as a serious director, you just don’t know what you’re talking about.
“Some actually view “Mildred Pierce” as misogynist, citing it as a work that underlines why women can’t step outside their social boundaries.”
I have a feeling those people didn’t finish the book. I kept waiting for that to happen in the book, just based on the time period it was written in, and it never did.
It would’ve been better if Lisa Bonet, David Bowie, Charo, Lawrence Taylor, Meryl Streep, Rodney Allen Rippy, Sarah Silverman and Justin Beiber all played Mildred Pierce in different scenes.
The series is excellent. Winslet is absolutely amazing: She’s in virtually every scene and her performance is entirely different than Crawford’s characterization, much more earthy and vulnerable. The story is similar to the film for the first three episodes or so, but Haynes is able to follow Cain’s original plot more accurately than the censors would have permitted in 1945. I thought it might be like “Far From Heaven,” with everyone trying to emulate the 1930s style of acting; it’s not at all. If anything, Haynes is trying to envision what a 1931 film might have been like with modern technology and no Hays Code around. Marvelous period atmosphere throughout, but what really connects is the theme of hard-working, smart people being forced to lower their standards in the face of a horrible economy. When Mildred tells her friend, “I’m a waitress in a hash house!” I heard the voices of so many people I know who have recently had to accept low-paying, low-status jobs that they never would have considered five years ago; 1931 doesn’t seem so long ago.
(one year from now……)
“I’ve just spent $300 for an imported, FedExed, available-only-in-PAL Region 12 version of the HBO’s miniseries ‘Mildred Pierce’ on BLU-RAY (!!!!!!!). It won’t be available in the states for another two weeks and the word from Blu-Ray Beaver dot com is the reds on the Region 12 version have a bit more pop to them than the version due to be released domestically.”
- Jeffrey Wells 3/26/12
I like Haynes and LOVED “Far From Heaven” but I know what Jeff is saying. I’m not overly jazzed for 5 hours of this and will watch it… eventually… at my leisure, (yay HBO-on-demand) rather than being glued to it every Sunday nite. thatmovieguy’s exegesis above has def raised my anticipation a notch or 2, however.
here’s a question that came up while we were watching it: in the curtiz film, mildred’s specialized in fried chicken…in both the book and haynes adaptation, it’s ‘chicken and waffles’…. why would curtiz have changed that?…was it too ethnic…too obscure…. it’s a pretty widespread concept these days but thought to be ‘urban’…was that the case then?….
Am I the only one who thought Far From Heaven felt like a technical exercise? Formidable mastery on display, but in the service of a quotation of Sirk… I dunno, I didn’t sense much blood pumping through its veins.
I felt the bloodsource of Far From Heaven was Dennis Haysbert. Quaid got all the good press (as did, from the female side, Moore and Clarkson) but Haysbert seemed real, even while staying true to the tenents of melodrama, where as the others were shooting for iconography.
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