Word: annaud
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...director Jean-Jacques Annaud does deprive the audience of emotional stimulation of any kind, whether from cinematography or character development, until Harrer reaches Tibet. In one tense mountain-climbing scene in the Himalayas (or "Himilias," as Pitt refers to them), we see no panorama and remarkably little scenery in frame. Annaud keeps only the climbers in shot, and instead of majestic mountainscapes, only the snow and gray, gravely rock for a backdrop...
When one of the climbers falls and hangs for his life by a rope, Annaud seems determined not to cash in on the moment's cliffhanger potential. There's no music to augment the tension, no exciting swooping pans--only matter-of-fact, straight-on shots of the climbers on both ends of the rope, accompanied by the sounds of scraping and strained breathing. Later, too, as the action proceeds through unavoidably beautiful terrain, Pitt and other characters are shown on uninspiring rocky stretches or in close-quartered caves, tents and villages...
Perhaps that mirror is blurred by tropical humidity and nostalgie de la boue. Whatever the reason, the French view of Southeast Asia is less wide- and wild-eyed than Oliver Stone's version in Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July. The perspective in Jean-Jacques Annaud's The Lover is as cloistered in its 1920s Saigon love nest as the French were from awareness of the impending revolution. Pierre Schoendoerffer's Dien Bien Phu (yet to open in the U.S.) meticulously restages the climactic French defeat as if it were all about artillery and not national destinies...
...Annaud at first seems an odd choice for director. The variety of landscapes and eras in his Quest for Fire, The Name of the Rose and The Bear suggests he is less an auteur than an explorer. And one with an imperialist bent: he pumps this intimate memoir into a David Lean-size epic. But once Annaud locks his movie in the dark bedroom, he finds metaphors of gesture for convulsive passions; he creates cliff-hanging drama from each shift of the girl's whim...
...Annaud trusts Duras's words -- the book's famous final declaration of passion fulfilled and love unrequited -- so that this tale of two people at their pleasures achieves the gravity of a medieval myth. Lionel Trilling wrote that Lolita was "not about sex, but about love." The Lover, on page and screen, is not about fornication; it is about fidelity, when an obsession becomes a religion...