Word: motif
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...know nobody's gonna pull no punches this time. Let the tide of bloody dead babies commence: let there be impalings, gougings, slashings, stakings, necks broken with an appetizing CRRRUNNCHH in Dolby stereo, John Williams conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, repeating the same goddamned nine-note musical motif like a lobotomized organ grinder, bats tearing faces and crucifixes burning the flesh of latex-scarred vampirellas. "It's a love story," explained Frank Langella...
...savior, he sneers, "You must be joking." No comforting re ceived wisdom for Tippett. Lev's dying wife Nadia recalls from her Russian childhood the sound of ice breaking on the rivers in springtime. As Lev and Yuri achieve a provisional reconciliation, the orchestra sounds the ice-break motif, suggesting a perpetual cycle of division and healing, death and renewal, neither hope less nor entirely hopeful...
...characters are more three-dimensional and very finely drawn; they espouse philosophies, instead of embodying them, as is so often the case with Shavian types. Often, in fact, they seem to echo characters of other plays by Shaw, only they turn out not to be what they seem. This motif runs through Heartbreak House...
...abandoned-warehouse routine at the end doesn't even appear schematic (well, it does, but we're still scared to death). You gotta credit Alan J. Pakula though, who here, as in All the President's Men and the Parallax View, conveys the someone-is-always-watching-you motif with incomparable creepiness. Donald Sutherland is an intelligent, if pallid detective, but the protagonist is Jane all the way, the frustrated hooker trapped by the emotional and physical perils of her profession. Her best performance to date...
...characters are more three-dimensional and very finely drawn; they espouse philosophies, instead of embodying them, as is so often the case with Shavian types. Often, in fact, they seem to echo characters of other plays by Shaw, only they turn out not to be what they seem. This motif runs through Heartbreak House...