Word: isabell
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Social science, however, is an imperfect discipline. Referring to programs for young children, Isabel Sawhill, a scholar at the Urban Institute and former official in the Clinton Administration, has written, "The evidence is always mixed. We simply do not know whether they work. In these cases, one must weigh the risk of doing something and having it not work against the risk of doing nothing and missing an opportunity to improve lives. It can be just as costly to not fund a potentially successful program as it is to fund a potentially unsuccessful...
These questions are inherent in the book as well, but there is more psychological penetration in James than in Campion, even if the same ambiguities remain. Watching the film, you may wonder once or twice whether there isn't a strain of masochism underlying Isabel's sexuality--or vice versa...
...then there are the dream sequences: a fairly tame but eerie sexual fantasy near the beginning; and later, a dream involving a series of black and white images, beginning like an early '20s film reel but dissolving into even more dreamlike images of whispering lips and a hand gripping Isabel's waist--first clothed, then naked...
...director's style enshrouds the story in an atmosphere of mystery that is further accentuated by Kidman's engimatic remoteness. The pain of Isabel is evident, but not the inner spirit that makes her so attractive to Ralph Touchett (and so aggravating to Osmond). This may be due more to the scripting of the role than to her acting, but in any case it is Isabel more than any other character whom we find fundamentally unfathomable. Why does she submit to such a wretched marriage? What is it that she wants? Whom does she truly love...
...other hand, the character of the superlatively cultured and corrupted Madame Merle, Osmond's female counterpart and ally, is as complex as Isabel's yet far more comprehensible and as effectively conveyed, if not more so, in the film by Campion as in the book. The rest of the acting is good as well, though Malkovich's Osmond is a bit too repulsive to convince us that Isabel could ever have fallen...