Word: radford
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Director Michael Radford is clearly less interested in restating this conclusion than he is in re-creating the crime's steaming social context. One noble lady (Sarah Miles) is introduced wearing a very large snake coiled chummily about her neck. Later she will commit a sexual act that may be unprecedented in general-release movies. Another titled woman (Jacqueline Pearce) will rise naked from her bath to lead her assembled guests -- of both sexes -- in a genial discussion of who will accompany her to bed. A rancher (the late Trevor Howard, in his last role) has cut a peephole...
Division A winner Boston College (which upset first-ranked George Mason) defeated Division B winner N.C. State, 2-1, in the semis; Radford (Division C) edged Texas (Division D), 3-1, in the other game...
...Radford took the tourney crown with a 2-1 triumph in Monday's final...
Occasionally, though, this emotional barrage can be tiresome. Radford gives us endless scenes of Winston standing on a lusciously green hillside, symbolizing his longing for an ideal world. This repetition seems out of character with the action pace of the film: more at home with the bogus psychological exploitation of Pink Floyd's The Wall than Orwell. Especially pretentious is the final shot of this sequence, where we learn that this mythical "Green Acres" lies in Rm, 101, the room of everyone's worst fear. Mixing symbols like this might work for a Bergman, but it has failed almost everybody...
Equally flaccid is Radford's one stab at interpreting Orwell. After Winston's love has been ripped out of him and he has renounced Julia and himself, he sits alone and scrawls "2 plus 2 equals" in the dust of a café tabletop. The purpose of this open-ended conclusion is a mystyery only God and Bergman, but certainly not Radford, can solve. Not only does it break the emotional tone of the film and make the viewer think, but it leaves the viewer with half-developed food for thought. A far more appropriate ending would have been Orwell...