Hooray, someone else on my friendslist has seen it and wants to discuss!
I reviewed the book a couple months back, actually, and I seem to remember recommending it to you. Really, I recommend it in general - it's challenging, but arguably less so than the movie, as you can flip back and forth and re-read bits that just go right by in the film.
The valise older-Sixsmith is carrying is the same one Robert Frobisher took to Edinburgh. (In the elevator scene there's a shot where it's leaning against the back wall and you can clearly see the faded "R.F." on the front.) I didn't notice it until the second viewing, either, but it was a very nice way of adding a bit of continuity to the two stories, and felt very in character. (Robert Frobisher's story is probably my favorite, although like the others it's been streamlined significantly. Still, it had even more impact for me onscreen than it did in the book - for whatever reason, the mindset of the depressive artist feels a little scarily familiar to me.)
The history of classical music is actually fairly fascinating; like most art forms, it's gone through periods that valued ordered complexity and mathematical precision (Bach, Mozart) and periods that valued organic emotion (Beethoven) and experimental bravery (Stravinsky, Copland). One of my favorite stories is that of the famous "Rite of Spring" premiere, where the strangeness of the music and accompanying ballet supposedly caused a riot amongst the audience - although given that this was very shortly before WWI, it's far more likely that the music merely reflected and therefore brought out the tensions and angers that were already simmering beneath the surface in European society of the time. To continue on an earlier theme we were discussing, great art often brings to the surface the parts of life we'd rather hide.
I'm somewhat amused by the disparity between your reaction and your friend's - it seems to rather perfectly mirror the binary experience I was talking about. A lot of people have said that it feels disjointed, and if you're trying to approach it logically, it is - there are plenty of interpretations out there, but most of them don't quite hold true for all six stories. But I really think it works on an intuitive level; the archetypes are recurring, and each character's actions affects the others, often in entirely different time periods.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2012-11-02 07:35 pm (UTC)I reviewed the book a couple months back, actually, and I seem to remember recommending it to you. Really, I recommend it in general - it's challenging, but arguably less so than the movie, as you can flip back and forth and re-read bits that just go right by in the film.
The valise older-Sixsmith is carrying is the same one Robert Frobisher took to Edinburgh. (In the elevator scene there's a shot where it's leaning against the back wall and you can clearly see the faded "R.F." on the front.) I didn't notice it until the second viewing, either, but it was a very nice way of adding a bit of continuity to the two stories, and felt very in character. (Robert Frobisher's story is probably my favorite, although like the others it's been streamlined significantly. Still, it had even more impact for me onscreen than it did in the book - for whatever reason, the mindset of the depressive artist feels a little scarily familiar to me.)
The history of classical music is actually fairly fascinating; like most art forms, it's gone through periods that valued ordered complexity and mathematical precision (Bach, Mozart) and periods that valued organic emotion (Beethoven) and experimental bravery (Stravinsky, Copland). One of my favorite stories is that of the famous "Rite of Spring" premiere, where the strangeness of the music and accompanying ballet supposedly caused a riot amongst the audience - although given that this was very shortly before WWI, it's far more likely that the music merely reflected and therefore brought out the tensions and angers that were already simmering beneath the surface in European society of the time. To continue on an earlier theme we were discussing, great art often brings to the surface the parts of life we'd rather hide.
I'm somewhat amused by the disparity between your reaction and your friend's - it seems to rather perfectly mirror the binary experience I was talking about. A lot of people have said that it feels disjointed, and if you're trying to approach it logically, it is - there are plenty of interpretations out there, but most of them don't quite hold true for all six stories. But I really think it works on an intuitive level; the archetypes are recurring, and each character's actions affects the others, often in entirely different time periods.