I got pretty excited when I read earlier this year that Austrian Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde (dt. Der Reigen) is currently filmed by Fernando Meirelles (City of God, The Constant Gardener), starring Jude Law, Rachel Weisz and Anthony Hopkins. The screenplay was written by the Vienna resident Peter Morgan (The Last King of Scotland) and filming started this spring in London.
Movie Still via cinemovies.fr
Schnitzler’s novel consists of ten scenes of sexual encounters of 10 protagonists, in each scene a protagonist from the last one finds a new partner, going up and down the social scale, starting and ending with a prostitute. The play caused a huge scandal on its release in 1903, so that it was only almost 20 years later originally performed. I enjoyed this sociocritical, ironic story on sexual morality and class ideology (1.) a lot and now I’m looking forward to the film.
It’s already the 13th adaptation but I haven’t seen any of them yet, and wonder how Meirelles is going to turn this plot into a movie. Since Schnitzler’s version has no specific leading characters among the 10, I guess that in this point some change had to be made and that the two central persons will be played by Law and Weisz. I hope the movie will be a bit like Robert Altmann’s Short Cuts, various short stories, interfering with each other in a brilliant, humorous way. Moreover the sexual intercourse itself is left out in the book, which probably won’t be the case in the movie. But I hope it won’t change the story in a negative way as Stanley Kubriks adaptation of Schnitzlers Dream Story (dt. Traumnovelle) - which became Eyes Wide Shut - did. In my opinion it pretty much turned the idea of the “dream” in the story into something less subtle than Schnitzler’s vision.
Today I found the first movie stills which tell us that like Eyes Wide Shut, the plot is moved into present times. I felt a little disappionted, but if the author managed to equally transfer the sociocritical approach behind it into our times, it might open a lot of interesting possibilities. And unlike the book only a small part of the film plays in Vienna, other settings are Paris, London, Rio, Bratislava, Denver and Phoenix, which sounds very dynamic although I really like Vienna as you know.
Another hint that this 360 will be quite different from La Ronde: Tiff says:
Director Fernando Meirelles (City of God) reunites with his Constant Gardener star Rachel Weisz, who stars opposite Jude Law, Anthony Hopkins, and Ben Foster in this uncompromising dramatic thriller fuelled by the notion of how sexual relationships can transgress social boundaries.
I must say that using all my imagination I didn’t see a dramatic thriller in Schnitzler’s work, but let’s see, sounds thrilling ;).
Law and Bleibtreu at a Media Call in Vienna, April 2011
What can I say about the cast? Jude Law had that terrible “Sexiest Man Alive” pretty but blah image to me for a long time till I saw “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and totally changed my mind. Moreover it shows a lot of passion, skills and understanding, when movie stars go back to the theatre, like Law did for Hamlet. Therefore at least for me he has the capability – both intellectually and when it comes to talent – that makes me go to the cinema.
Among the supporting cast are also two of my favourite German speaking actors: Moritz Bleibtreu and Karl Markovics. I’m often disappointed how highly talented and perfectly skilled national actors have to play super tiny roles next to famous but often less gifted Hollywood stars, but of course, that’s a great option to become known by an international audience.
After all I must say that having seen those pictures and having read first facts about the filming, I’m now even more looking forward to it. Considering that I liked some of the creative heads’ earlier works like The last King of Scotland and The Constant Gardener, I hope that we don’t get a boring “highly dramatic” love story about 10 people randomly sleep with each other, but a captivating and contemporary thriller that leads back to the ideas of social boundaries and their permeability, which Arthur Schnitzler had in mind.
More pictures at cinemovies.fr
(1.) Must admit I stole some expressions from Ivan R Dree, it sounded just too good, not to use it. Unlike others I’m giving credit ;)
No comments:
Post a Comment