So what's this movie about then? At one point, Jennifer Connelly's character, who makes unspecified documentaries, interviews a child whose father has been killed in Baghdad. The child says something extremely profound which leads the workaholic Connelly to realise the value of her own family and she calls home in a frustrated attempt to speak to her neophyte house-husband Patrick Wilson.
This could be a conservative message as much as a liberal one. Family matters, blood is thicker than oil. The nominative liberal angle is the sympathetic take on the paedophile, McGovery. These days just to show a paedophile and not have him stoned to death is a badge of liberal conviction, and the clever exploration of his relationship with his mother establishes this movie as several degrees to the left of centre in its sensibility.
Probably. Because, again, the movie is about family. It is set in an anonymous, pseudo-Lynchian middle America, where mothers are bored and rich and fathers can see no reason not to indulge their desires, which have become no more than commodities. The two lead characters, Winslett and Wilson, would appear to be stepping into line by consumating their tender affair. Or perhaps Winslett is actually emulating Madame Bovary and asserting her feminine independence. They both appear to get away with their affair, the paedophile loses his penis, the bully his aggression, status quo returns to a chastened middle America.
It is part of the strength of this movie that these questions buzz around it like flies at the scene of another Bagdad bombing. It's perspective might be considered Humanist, in response to recent ideological leanings of the mother state. The fate of these none-too-likeable characters might be considered trite or insignificant. But its hard not to suspect that the film is not entirely about its characters. It's about the parameters of desire, the way in which desire binds and releases us. The things it can make us do or not do.
It might be noted that Winslett is described by the anonymous narrator (a late editorial choice to echo American Beauty or always part of the plan?) as being small-chested and dowdy and not Patrick Wilson's type at all. The fact that the red swimsuit she wears for large stretches of the movie shows her to be neither particularly small chested, nor particularly dowdy, is typical of the neat contradictions the director either gets away with or provokes.
This could be a conservative message as much as a liberal one. Family matters, blood is thicker than oil. The nominative liberal angle is the sympathetic take on the paedophile, McGovery. These days just to show a paedophile and not have him stoned to death is a badge of liberal conviction, and the clever exploration of his relationship with his mother establishes this movie as several degrees to the left of centre in its sensibility.
Probably. Because, again, the movie is about family. It is set in an anonymous, pseudo-Lynchian middle America, where mothers are bored and rich and fathers can see no reason not to indulge their desires, which have become no more than commodities. The two lead characters, Winslett and Wilson, would appear to be stepping into line by consumating their tender affair. Or perhaps Winslett is actually emulating Madame Bovary and asserting her feminine independence. They both appear to get away with their affair, the paedophile loses his penis, the bully his aggression, status quo returns to a chastened middle America.
It is part of the strength of this movie that these questions buzz around it like flies at the scene of another Bagdad bombing. It's perspective might be considered Humanist, in response to recent ideological leanings of the mother state. The fate of these none-too-likeable characters might be considered trite or insignificant. But its hard not to suspect that the film is not entirely about its characters. It's about the parameters of desire, the way in which desire binds and releases us. The things it can make us do or not do.
It might be noted that Winslett is described by the anonymous narrator (a late editorial choice to echo American Beauty or always part of the plan?) as being small-chested and dowdy and not Patrick Wilson's type at all. The fact that the red swimsuit she wears for large stretches of the movie shows her to be neither particularly small chested, nor particularly dowdy, is typical of the neat contradictions the director either gets away with or provokes.
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