Word: haze
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Following the obsession of 45-year-old Humbert Humbert (Jeremy Irons) with 12-year-old Dolores Haze (Dominique Swain) the girl Humbert dubs Lolita, the film shows Humbert doing everything in his power to be near her--even marrying Dolores' mother, Charlotte Haze (Melanie Griffith). Following Charlotte's death under questionable circumstances, Humbert takes off on a cross-country journey with his young love, only to find that he is being pursued by a mysterious stranger, Clare Quilty (Frank Langella...
...Lolita, Dominique Swain is a little too pouty; she chews gum and candy so perpetually and is so addicted to comic books that her character becomes rather tiresome. Similarly, Melanie Griffith, in the role of Dolores Haze, is so flaky that we are bored of her presence all too soon. Neither is a particularly likeable character, although this seems to have been a calculated move on Lyne's part. The effect of this is to turn our sympathies to Humbert, played perfectly by Jeremy Irons, whose expressive face beautifully conveys his longings and inner torment. Reserved and elegant, Irons' character...
...works is that it focuses upon the potential of film to beautify even the morally grotesque, ensuring that Nabokov's broader message about the power of art has not been lost, only translated to another medium. Visual images take over for book's words; for instance, the idea of "haze," a play off Dolores Haze's name which is so prominent in the novel, transforms itself into visible haze in the film, from Humbert's grainy remembrance of his first love, Annabel, to the ever-present cigarette smoke blowing around Quilty and Charlotte Haze's heads. Ethics become obscured amid...
...whether they're sitting around the house or going off to work. As for the atmosphere--well, let's just say that for every one part oxygen, you'll find three or four parts sexual energy. Down here, it's a force that's as visible as the haze that pervades the surrounding swamplands. And you thought that dorm rooms without air conditioning would be the only hot and steamy thing you'd encounter this summer...
...choking. "Sometimes it is so bad the planes can't take off," says Wang Ren, a taxi driver in Chongqing, the first major city on the Yangtze's course. After barely an hour driving through the city, eyes begin to sting and throats get sore from the brown haze that hangs in the air. Wang says he cannot find another job; layoffs from state-owned industries have been heavy in Chongqing, and several times this year the unemployed have blocked traffic in the city center. "But," says Wang, using a time-honored phrase, "Chinese people know how to eat bitterness...