March 16, 2009
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Happy Birthday, Jerry Lewis:
Damnation Morning
continued
Annals of Prose Style
Film Review “No offense to either of them, but ‘Georgia Rule’ suggests an Ingmar Bergman script as directed by Jerry Lewis. The subject matter is grim, the relationships are gnarled, the worldview is bleak, and, at any given moment, you suspect someone’s going to be hit with a pie.” –John Anderson at Variety.com, May 8, 2007
Sounds perfect to me.
“Preserving a strict unity of time and place, this stark tale of a young woman’s decline into insanity is set in a summer home on a holiday island. It is the first part of the trilogy
that comprises Winter Light and The Silence, films which are generally seen as addressing Bergman’s increasing disillusionment with the emotional coldness of his inherited Lutheran religion. In particular here, Bergman focuses on the absence of familial love which might perhaps have pulled Karin (Andersson) back from the brink; while Karin’s mental disintegration manifests itself in the belief that God is a spider. As she slips inexorably into madness, she is observed with terrifying objectivity by her emotionally paralyzed father (Björnstrand) and seemingly helpless husband (von Sydow).”
– Nigel Floyd, Time Out, quoted at Bergmanorama
Related material:
1. The “spider” symbol of Fritz Leiber’s short story “Damnation Morning“–
2. The Illuminati Diamond of Hollywood’s “Angels & Demons” (to open May 15), and
3. The following diagram by one “John Opsopaus“–
