Word: painfulness
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...involved such a multitude of self-centered interests: "Every Congressman on the Hill has a gasoline station on some corner that he wants taken care of." Telling Americans to cut down on energy, he shrugged, is not easy. "I'm trying to sell an unpleasant future by offering pain today...
...that Antonelli has none of the fire in her eyes that might be expected of a revenge-bound wife in a farce. She plays her scenes as if they were high drama. Another is that Mastroianni, though not quite so sober, lets us see too much of the pain that an actual man would feel under such circumstances...
What follows is much more than simply another anatomy of a January-June mismatch. In Malamud's world, acts have consequences, mindless pleasures lead to reflective pain. Things start badly. Dubin takes Fanny on a quick trip to Yenice, hoping to feed on her vitality and youth, and gets the callow treatment he deserves. Stung, he returns home and holes up for a long, bitter winter of dis content: "He fought winter as if it were the true enemy: if he tore into it the freeze would vanish, his ills be gone, his life, his work, fall into place...
...modern crack-up: shaking, sobbing, barnstorming, often hitting false notes, losing control, making us fear that both the actor and the character will spill over simultaneously, capturing the peculiar self-consciousness of a real-life breakdown, where neither the "audience" nor the "actor" knows where the pain ends and the performance begins...
...limping through a theatrical desert. The flaccid blocking and extraordinarily ugly sets place the burden of interest on the two leads. Lois Nettleton gives a conventional performance as Thompson, but within the artificial confines of her role she suggests a human being surprisingly often, her voice choked with pain and confusion, then rising with conviction, bearing the weight of her husband's illness as the character and the actress plow on with the strength and courage of an old trooper...