Life's a Player and All of Us a Mere Stage

Life imitating art imitating life. This concept has been pounded over and over since time memorial and yet there still remains this streak of fascination in the audience at large. So starts my discourse on 'Stage Beauty' which i caught earlier at a preview event thingy. And to pun the title, it was staged rather beautifully.

claire danes and billy crudup at the helm. it's once a self-discovery of the male lead and once a menage a plusieurs of the characters that gives such refined taste and essence to the movie. rupert everett as king is a blast with a finicky sort of humour and a presence that is both imposing and comedically-heavy. he seems to be the fulcrum by which the see-saw of the whole plot rotates since afterall he did affect legislation to the extent that the makeup of the characters revolve around these changes. Claire Danes had this period-beauty that keeps one enchanted throughout the course of the film and is unwavering to the point of being captivating. Her formidable capture of the English accent keeps her credible and her tour de force of acting lands the audience its respect and prolonged interest. it's just that i still can't see how her character of 'Mrs. Margaret Hughes' can be so indulged in kynaston, who is so sexually confused and psychologically screwed-up that when asked who he really is in the end, he slaughters the climax by saying 'i don't know'. twice, no less. Billy Crudup has this clash of ego and insecurity in his acting that i adore. His obsession of being a woman, whom he thinks does all things beautiful (what a crime to think that), does not sit well with a lot of ultra right wing-sexual purists, but his inner turmoil of being compelled to rediscover who he is, is truly applauble and to a certain extent heart-wrenchingly deserving of our sympathy. 'What is life without beauty' rang in my head for a long time after he said it in the film and i guess that's probably one of his downfall, thinking how exhausting it can be, always looking for beauty in life where there's so much ugliness around and that one must encompass or at least recognise this sense of shantiness to realise that beauty does not come easy and relativity makes this aphorisitc pill all the more harder to swallow. and i would have thought that if he tried to recreate this mirage of beauty always or attempts to see beauty in all the things that he does, he could be doubly disappointed when (literally) the ugly head of reality starts rearing its head and refuses to retract itself. rather, over-optimism could be the bitch of life.

one more noteworthy point was i can't quite recall when was the last time i was literally holding my breath in utter anticipation in a movie. it was almost as real an experience as watching the actual Othello right in front of me, as a real theatrical play. it was the death scene and Desdemona was to be suffocated by Iago and it was almost like Iago (Crudup) had simultaneously taken away the breaths of the audience and Desdemona. the theatrics of it was so convincing that it's amazing to watch. and i had to remind myself to breathe again when the resolution finally reveals itself to be otherwise, that Claire Danes remains alive. that was one hell of a movie-moment.

drama aside, today's equity tutorial was much better. much less suffocating than the less, resulting in the much-bleak post. maybe preparedness if the only key to locking the insecurity beast deep in the dungeons of academia-uncertainty. and then again, the culmination of this semester is coming up and i had persist in this preparedness spirit and drive on, light speed ahead.

but all in all, for a film this good, it can, ironically, hardly be only mere theatrics.