SeeQuant
Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction
Rio Hayward
All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.
Janae Milner
Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.
vldazzle
I was reminded of Ken Russell's Music Lovers, and was beginning to wonder "how many women marry men to associate themselves with success?"(Hillary Clinton). And how often does this choice lead to some form of dementia? Russell is one of my favorites and I LOVE some of his best (Music Lovers, Devils of Loudon, Tommy, Altered States & Gothic). But back to the subject- Do we know of other women who have attached themselves to (potentially) famous men who did so while being mentally unbalanced? I need to watch this film again and re-evaluate, but it seems that everyone may have neglected the real relationship issues in this. And like the afore-mentioned film, the relationship may have been totally one-sided.
kemmellie
Tom and Viv is a powerful story centered on one woman's fight to be an individual in mid-nineteenth century British society. Miranda Richardson does an excellent job of portraying the emotional depth of an intelligent, carefree woman forced into living a conventional, traditional life while her doctors, husband (acclaimed American poet T.S. Eliot), and family believe her to be suffering from mental illness. Richardson captures the rage, quirkiness, and strength of a woman trying to make a difference in the world when nearly everyone she meets tries to keep her in her place. William Dafoe, as Tom, brilliantly shows the effects of Viv's upstarts on a man seeking to maintain traditional societal values and blend into a conventional, though artistic and intellectual, world. While the movie does not delve too deeply into Eliot's poetry, it centers on his life and the life of the woman he claimed to love; perhaps, making a statement on how life blends into art. Ultimately, Tom and Viv is a tragic story about the inadequate health system offered to women in the 1930s and how societal conformity put a wrench in the love and marriage of two brilliant people. It enrages the feminist, humanitarian, and author in me, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in a deep and compelling story of both a poet and a woman's fall.
sol-
A reasonably well done and fairly well acted biopic of T. S. Eliot, the film is at times delightful to watch, but it is always lacking. The information it presents about Eliot feels insufficient, as his background feels uncomfortably unknown, and there is also no real indication of the setting and time of the film. It is a bit long too, not always be interesting, and really a bit ordinary at times. But it is still well acted and it does have something to say about the position of women in society. Harris and Richardson were both nominated for Oscars for their performance, but Dafoe is the one who really shines here.
kerridv
I hardly recognized Willem Dafoe in this biopic about T.S. Eliot and his mentally ill wife Vivian. His face was very long, thin, and gaunt; with every lean on his cane Dafoe managed to capture the weariness Eliot must have felt. Miranda Richardson plays his wife, his poetic inspiration, his chief critic; however she suffers from an illness given a ridiculously silly name and tries to kill herself often. Today she would have been put on prozac and given a spot on Ricki Lake. But since this was post WWI-era, we instead get to watch Viv wave a gun around and pour melted chocolate into a mailslot. The movie takes place for the most part in London, moving to America when Eliot takes a position at Harvard. The other characters, a priest, a family friend, and a few socialites, seemed cardboard and uninteresting. This is not a fast-moving film; at times the sound was terrible and the plot a little confusing. We're never really quite sure what is making Vivian nuts; but then, I guess that reflects real life. It made for a great rainy afternoon flick, especially for poetry lovers, art lovers, and biography lovers.
