Word: jhabvala
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala...
...film is a work of fiction, rather than the documentary it might have been, and it creaks to beat the band. Writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala tells three stories about Roseland habitues without revealing a valid emotion. The first anecdote, which resembles an episode from TV's old Twilight Zone series, concerns a widow (Teresa Wright) so obsessed with her past that she and the audience see a vision of her youthful self every time she gazes in a mirror...
...Jhabvala, a talented novelist (Heat and Dust) and scenarist (Shakespeare Wallah), knows better than this. She and Director Ivory should also be aware that audiences distrust booming epiphanies of the cruel demands made by human affections. Still, Roseland is probably immortal. It has survived much in its long history, and it will doubtless survive the film that bears its name...
Unfortunately, once he has provided the detailed backdrop, Ivory and his co-scenarist, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, neglect most of the objects in the foreground. A face outlined here, a figure there, and they consider the task completed. It is not. The guru and the singer may be alive; the rest are actors sitting for sketches with only the vaguest dimension or purpose. Moreover, lines like "I feel so trapped. No one here understands me" tend to mock the film's painfully straight face...
...Author Jhabvala gets comic sparks out of the cultural short circuits when East plugs in on West, e.g., a professor bent on art criticism ("His use of green for trees is especially remarkable"). Best of all, everyday life bustles through the pages of Amrita with all the clatter, chatter and haggling delight of an Eastern bazaar...