Word: scene
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...only flaw preventing Darabont's triumphant second effort from being perfect is the manner in which the story begins and ends. Told as a flashback by an older Edgecomb sixty years after the fact, the story opens with scenes that take place in the present. This set-up at the beginning of the film is fine, but the ending just doesn't work. Immediately after the final scene from 1935, the story shifts back to the present for a wrap-up that comes across as contrived (the same problem plagued Saving Private Ryan). Instead of ending the film...
...When they arrived on the scene, nothing mattered but rescuing the people we thought were in that warehouse," Raffa said. "My brothers, our brothers, entered the building without hesitation despite the extreme conditions and despite the overwhelming odds against them...
Maybe today's rudeness is an off-shoot of the culture of protest and action that is a characteristic of the Harvard Square scene. What worked so well for the Vietnam War or civil rights is now applied to everyone's own peccadilloes and fixations. The female pedestrian obviously felt she had the moral high ground to handle me in any way she saw fit since I was a hazard to humanity and therefore deserved no part among society...
...scenes shift as Helen's life proceeds; the intensity of chaotic readings of two poems at once in between scenes marking time and the growing intensity of Helen's eventual departure into insanity. The maternity scene is almost too experimental and strange; while the doctors are supposed to reflect robots, again, emotion creeps into the scene and destroys the rhythm between the dialogue and actors machine-like movements. Similarly, Helen's descent into the underworld, replete with an affair, does not reflect a change of emotional intensity but continues the linear progression of a dissatisfied woman. No new miseries...
...second act is more convincingly mechanical, especially the final scenes of the play. Helen eventually kills her husband, as the audience anticipates, and the court scene that ensues is fabulously orchestrated. Gunn demonstrates considerable talent in controlling his body. As robot-husband, he is eerily mechanical and almost reminiscent of an Edward Scissorhands figure. Parris and Agresta, both lawyers, reflect the insensitivity and detachment that the law has for human emotion. The bright lighting illustrates a sense of barrenness, and the media, Montoya and Gomes, again engage in their convincing double dialogue and contribute to the scene's mechanical intention...