Funny thing, that movie have a low reputation among Coenians, as if it lacks some of the dark humor of the more heavy works and the coolness of the Lebowski comedies. I find it an almost perfect adaptation, full of memorable scenes and small characters. The black guitar player and the cyclop being a KKK member is too amazing.Originally Posted by Pompey Bum
Yes, great movie. The Homer character (pushing the little railroad car) is my favorite. The day I retired I drove home, sat down in my chair, dusted my hands off, and said, "I woik for no man!"
No doubt. I mean, if we consider the athenean drama scene happened already in another world/culture, the number of plays dealing with the aftermatch of the war, way more tragic than Homer ever was making up for characters like Cassadran and Hecuba to shine show how much they believe in the truth of that war and stories. It was not just some fancy poem, but a relation with a myth we are far from having. I dont think God was such storyteller.But I think the universality of Homer is quite ancient. His epics were much like the Bible later came to be. . People took meaning from his poetry that may or may not have been latent in the original intent. And of course it helped that he never really existed. People could make all sorts of things out of him. (But please draw no false equivalence here with God).
Well, in the end it is the just the awareness of romantic age (which is probally ours), so full of human suffering, heritage, dramas that the Enlightenment people are free from the burden.Well, God knows Dickens was full of self-importance. If Tom Jones had been a Dickens character he would have been deceiving villain like Harold Skimpole or at best a tragic youth-led-astray like Richard Carstone. I don't think Dickens believed in winning young men with a few all-too-human flaws.
I shouldnt have mentioned Don Juan, with Byron being such champion of the early XVIII writers against the "evil wordsworth/coleridge" duo, that it is too obvious the apple wouldnt fall far from the tree in this case. I didnt meant to compare the characters characterization, because Fielding is in the end a novelist, Voltaire and Swift were a Voltaire. Funny enough, despite being first a playwriter, Voltaire capacity to create characters was rather dull (or flat), he is a man of action. I read once a analyse of Candine which I foudn funny (and I can imagine Voltaire laughing at it too) saying that Martino, Pangloss and all people who Candide meets and receive some advice is actually Voltaire under disguise of one his moods, so Candine doesn't travel around the world, but around Voltaire.When I first read Tom Jones I found him too much like some "Our Hero" from an old silent movie. But in fact he's a lot more than that--if only because this "Our Hero" likes to get laid now and then, and has to extricate himself--humanely--from all the trouble that makes for him. I love Candide, but he and Gulliver are really just stage props for their authors' lampoons. Don Juan is a somewhat better comparison, but I see that character as having a little more flesh to him, perhaps because I conflate him with Byron--especially in that first glorious canto. (I never read Vathek so I can't offer an opinion). Tom Jones is certainly an early character in the English novel, but I think he's a bit better than his reputation (which seems somehow apt.
I once said Dostoievisky was a cynic here in the forum and Gladys (our resident Dostoievisky fan) didnt like it, thinking of the negative meaning of the word, not, as I was thinking, of the phylosophical meaning. You are talking about someone who wrote in his diary the intention to write a work similar to Candide and failed (I dont think Dostoievisky had that sheer inteligence and speed that Voltaire had, nor culture or love for work, so this failure is mostly understandable). Dostoievisky is a rabid critic, but the Czar was not the french king to play around with the impertinent intellectual. This certainly made the humor in dostoievisky be stuck on this throat. Also, it may seem Dostoievisky had this genuine concern for humanity, Voltaire couldnt care less.Well, if it's intensely cynical humor, then I suppose I do get Crime and Punishment. Actually, the scene from The Idiot I was thinking of is profoundly cynical. (SPOILER ALERT IF ANYONE IS FOLLOWING THIS THREAD WHO HAS NOT READ THE IDIOT). I mean the final scene in which Myshkin (the Christ figure) and Rogozhin (in my view a kind of Satanic counterpart) are in the sack together, with Nastassya Filippovna, the women for whom they have been competing, dead before them like a human sacrifice. The image is shocking--and perhaps cynically humorous? I've sometimes wondered if the visitation of the devil/devil hallucination to Ivan Karamazov didn't have a kind of gallows humor to it as well.
Anyways, despite that his work is philosophical, the whole existentialism side, I think Keats idea that the poet was the least philosophical being works here too. Dostoievisky was working in the emotions, the dramas and internal confiicts while making a critic to the russian society, not being philosophical. Just happen his insight gave him this vision that we can see all we can see in his works now, but he surelly tried to bite and smile at sametime.
Of course Iven is a critic to atheism, but funny you pic a scene that has some Voltaire vibes on it, as it is all about the needful existense of the devil (thus God). Hows that is not a joke that Nietzche would love?
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