Word: banally
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Love Games. To Francis the quest for an identity is almost identical with the opening of a fall college term. At 39, he is one of those banal people who believe that life is graded like a test, and that if one does one's homework, one will pass. He believes that his mythical titled parents are on watch and will claim him as their own once he passes the test of haute Kultur. He becomes a culture grind, slaving ardently at French cooking, memorizing the Almanack de Gotha, and mentally building a pyramid of ancient trivia...
...suspect that the subtitles we are given (which quite properly reproduce Shakespeare rather than re-translating Pasternak) are in many cases non-literal. If they are literal, the staging of this film is preposterous beyond belief. As Polonius delivers his parting advice to Laertes, and as we read his banal, senile lines, what we see is a purposeful, vigorous man hustling his son to the door in no uncertain manner. When Hamlet first plays mad for Polonius, his final "Except my life," appears to be addressed to the old man's parting back. It just doesn...
...Lelouch, 28, composes some stylish scenes and tosses in enough cinematic tricks borrowed from older New Wave directors-abrupt switches from black-and-white to color, for example-to have won this year's Cannes Festival Grand Prix. But his does-she-or-doesn't-she story, banal to begin with, sounds like nothing so much as an existentialist "Dear Abby" column in which sentiment has melted into sentimentality...
...chaotic rendering: a bluesy "baby, please come home" message that seems to justify the song's format, a blues repetition of each stanza's first line. But, as always, Dylan has bad luck with the blues format. The license for repetition seems to attract him to lyrics more banal than usual, when what is needed is something singularly well-chosen and repeatable. The other song, "Leopardskin Pillbox Hat," has the loose, talking-blues, shape of the "I Shall Be Free" and theirs, its jokes are mostly private or unfunny...
Benjamin Britten's The Turn of the Screw is an anomaly among operas. The plots of most are so banal or insignificant that opera lovers are notoriously satisfied with the often glorious music and the thrill of elegant productions; the plot becomes merely a vehicle for the rest of the work. But Britten has taken the Henry James novelette and written beautiful music which emphasizes its essential enigmatic horror. The score is absolutely perfect for the story: eerie, elusive, with a constant undertone of brooding malevolence...