Dorathen
Better Late Then Never
Yash Wade
Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.
Taha Avalos
The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.
Joe K
The play absolutely deserves every award it has received. It's a serious but blackly humorous -- or humorously black -- discussion of politics, philosophy, and just what constitutes sanity, with enough madness to hold our attention and enough roots in the real world that we can't easily dismiss the points it makes.In the film there are few directorial choice that I might quibble with, and there is one (not very important) change I definitely disagree with... but overall it's a surprisingly good job of translating the first Broadway production to the screen.(I have both the Caedmon complete recording of the Broadway production and a copy of the film, and I've played de Sade, so I'm a bit more aware of the details than most viewers would be. Alas, I can't read German so I can't compare any of these to the "real" original.) If you can find a good live production of Marat/Sade, see it. If you can't, or if you want to revisit it, the film isn't too far behind.
Scarecrow-88
The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum at Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade.The title pretty much sums up this powerfully visualized "play", set in 1808, during France's supposed success rate at educating the insane. This play by de Sade which is a scathing dissection of the French Revolution using Marat as the voice for the war as the Marquis takes the role against it. Morality obviously being this is a play from Marquis de Sade is also under the microscope as those that are insane fulfill certain roles under the celebrated masochist's direction. Monsieur Coulmier(Clifford Rose)is the mediator watching de Sade's behavior regarding what his script can and can not say. Blasphemy in this supposed golden age of France can not be warranted so Coulmier, with the assistance of nuns and guards inside, try to keep the deranged--and de Sade--in check.The play itself is told through not only the characters written on page, but from the insane themselves who often intervene on their own behalf. The ending is a fine slap in the face of the so-called success the French asylums seemed to have employed as the maniacs, after finishing, attack all the normal folk inside(two aristocratic women are audience members inside the cell--what were they thinking?)as Marquis relishes the chaos with glee.The staged film is disturbing, bleak, but profound and spellbinding. The way the camera moves throughout the cell(and several shots through the bars and on the darkened audience outside the cell)is hypnotic and deeply luridly fascinating. The cast is so good, they really convinced me I was watching a directed play using loonies!
onitsoga
So I get off work late and I'm sitting in the big chair around 1:30 a.m., flipping around, looking for something to fill a half-hour gap until a rerun of the X-Files comes on. Next to me is my wife, passed out on the couch. Normally, I choose a benign History Channel doc on Hitler or something and my wife sleeps through it all until about 4 a.m. when her maternal instincts take over and we go to bed. But tonight was different. Tonight I came across this movie in the TV guide. Not only had I never heard of it, it was supposedly a four-star job. I did not think those last two things, in conjunction, could be possible, so I tuned in. Soon I'm manipulating the volume control -- louder during the quieter parts to try to make out what they're saying, or softer because my wife wakes up, shrieking, asking me what the hell I'm watching.I could not make heads or tails of it, and I'm a college grad-u-ate (albeit it from the Jethro Bodine School of Brain Surgery). The 'Glenda Jackson and the knife scene' made me edgy. The odd partial close-ups were a technique I never had seen before in cinema. The longish (in movie time) commentaries had me falling asleep. A couple of reviews here helped me understand what I was watching a lot more than any opinion I could conceive from having watched it that half hour. In conclusion, I know for sure only this: It's not a date movie. After a half hour, I switched to the X-Files, so it didn't enthrall me to any acceptable degree. However, during the half hour of viewing time, I kept hitting the summary button in order to write down the long, wacky name, in order to investigate further. But most telling was the fact that my wife went to bed without me -- for the first time in 12 years -- because it disturbed her in/out dream cycle to the point of pushing her over the edge.I can't recommend this movie. I also can't stop thinking about it.
T Y
I'm surprised that this rated so high and receive such universal praise. It's virtually unwatchable in terms of mainstream entertainment and shouldn't have found any audience to appreciate it. It's shrill, endless and stagey.But it's conceits (The context and meaning of the murder of French Revolutionary figure Marat by Charlotte Corday, enacted as a play by post-revolutionary mental patients & penned by the similarly imprisoned Marquis de Sade) are unique and provocative. The play within the play has musical numbers; a trifle given to Corday (Glenda Jackson) as de Sade supplies her with the murder weapon is really nice; "...but love meant something... to you, ...I see, and something much different to me..." The bench duet between Charlotte and her sex-crazed nemesis is memorable.You will need a working understanding of the major players of the French Revolution and a willingness to listen to Marat expound on political theory at length. I own the DVD and even I can't sit through the damned thing. I also really hate some of the typical thespian casting (the all-clown Greek chorus giving it their all is excruciating) but I pop it in now and again to watch it in twenty-minute bursts. There's plenty to think about and though the Bourgeoisie are clearly portrayed as villainous swine, it still doesn't offer any easy answers to the long, painful aftermath of the French Revolution.Sadly, Patrick McGhee (A Clockwork Orange) is the type of leading man who would never again be seen after the advent of focus-groups and the blockbuster. What teen wants to look at anyone over thirty on screen?Les Miz is shallow cream pie compared to this.
