Word: butley
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...BUTLEY Directed by HAROLD PINTER Screenplay by SIMON GRAY Ben Butley, who teaches English literature at a London university, is generally befogged and intermittently besieged. An arch ex-wife seeks him out with the news that she plans to remarry. Students descend on him for tutorials, inundate him with papers like "Hate and Redemption in A Winter's Tale. "Edna Shaft (Jessica Tandy) is upset because Butley(Alan Bates) encouraged a student to quit one of her stifling seminars. Joey Keyston (Richard O'Callaghan), a junior member of the department, is planning to move in with his lover...
...trouble with this movie, as with Simon Gray's original play, is that Butley's abrasive quips remain an impregnable line of defense. His manic sense of humor is the means he uses to make things matter not quite so much. His jokes stop him short of anything really serious, and they stop the movie as well...
Gray's dialogue has a graceful bite, but it does not have the edge of desperation that would have given it depth. Butley's life ravels like the end of his shirtsleeve; it conies undone in the single day we watch him. But Gray is less successful at evoking anxiety than in getting down the sort of dizzy, antic quality of academic life...
Alan Bates makes a fine, fleet Butley. "Oh, if only they'd get on with it and let us teach!" he moans as he invokes the weight of spurious administrative duties to dodge yet another tutorial. He never allows the irony to become too heavy at moments like that; he always keeps quite the proper balance, making the ruse believable but also hypocritically funny. He is also a master of the throwaway and can brush off a fast line like a piece of dandruff off his rumpled suit. Confronted with a thick M.A. thesis entitled "Henry James...
...middle-aged male in a psychic or physical funk is very much in vogue this season on Broadway. We have seen that theme treated in That Championship Season and Butley, and now in Finishing Touches. Each of these plays fires off salvos of laughter, and yet each also imparts an unsettling mood of deep, free-floating anxiety...