Word: zolas
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Although the cast includes several stars, most notably Gerard Depardieu and Miou Miou, the characterizations are almost uniformly incomplete and it is difficult to comprehend each individual's motivations. While in Zola's novel Germinal Etienne is depicted as passionate if misguided, it is impossible for the audience to fathom why, after sojourning, it seems, only a few days in the mining town of Montsou, he incites the workers to strike despite obvious indications that this action will have no positive effects. Renaud, a French folk singer, plays the part stiffly and as an observer, creating a character unsympathetic...
...movie as merely another dirty capitalist, while the daughter of the owner of Le Voreux is not in the film shown to be sufficiently repellent. Depardieu, in the role of Maheud, is the only principal who, as usual plays his part convincingly, and, for the most part, Zola's purely verbal descriptions far surpass the living, breathing renditions of the movie...
This is particularly evident in the representation of animals. Zola from the beginning establishes a symbolic correspondence between the condition of the animals who work in or near the mine and the state of the human beings reduced to the status of animals in the mine. This correlation is articulated most pronouncedly in the case of a white stallion who is lowered into Le Voreux towards the commencement of both movie and book. The film reveals how the pure white of his coat is quickly soiled by the coal of the mine, and effectively relates this corruption to the human...
...touch reminiscent of The Scarlet Letter, she then proceeds to adorn her hair with a red ribbon, suffusing with symbolic shame her formerly pristine attire. Although this connection is played up in the movie, the emotional state of the horse, at this and later points, something Zola describes with painstaking precision in his book, is lost...
...remarkable thing is that Simon, although a bum, is one hell of a guy. One hell of a guy. He is full of jokes; when a stuffy Disability administrator asks, "What state were you born in?" Simon answers, "Infancy." He reads Zola. He cooks. He fixes cars. He defends the Constitution brilliantly in a classroom showdown with Money's thesis advisor, that sneering elitist bastard Professor Pitkannan (played with relish by Gore Vidal) who finds the document vulgar and crude...