Love@Redemption (PART 2 OF 3)
(lib50221c.png)
■『実際のカタログページ』
This film was made by the famous German director---Fritz Lang (1890-1976).
But it didn't impress me.
That was the reason I quit watching.
Then we went to the atrium, and sat down at one of the tables.
We talked about many things---love, marriage, jobs and life.
After you departed, I went back to the computer
and watched another DVD, which turned out one of the best movies I'd seen recently.
(lib50221b.png)
■『実際のカタログページ』
This movie is two-hour long.
I wanted to finish it, but I had to get out halfway through the movie because of the closing time.
This film is titled "The Painted Veil"---a love-hate story about a British couple.
The story starts in the 1920s.
The stage is set in China.
The DVD cover tells you as follows:
(veil001.jpg)
Once love is lost, can it---should it---ever be reclaimed?
That's the question that tortures Dr. Walter Fane (played by Edward Norton)
about his beautiful and feithless wife Kitty (played by Naomi Watts).
So he takes her away from the soirées, flirtations and ardent intrigues of colonial-era Shanghai to a cholera-ravaged village deep in China.
It is to be her punishiment.
But it may be redemption for them both.
Based on W. Somerset Maugham's novel and filmed in China, it is a moving portrait of the volcanic emotions that can erupt between a man and a woman, set againt the drama of a nation in turmoil.
Immerse yourself in this superb film's power and let it sweep you away.
【Trailer】
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1oevR8c35Qk?feature=player_detailpage" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
This is the 684th movie I watched at Vancouver Public Library.
(lib50221a.png)
■『実際のページ』
Kitty Garstin is a vivacious, carefree yet somewhat immature London socialite.
Her mother tells Kitty, "How long do you think your father will take care of you? You must've found a good suitor by now."
Her father is also worried about his spinster daughter and invites Dr. Walter Fane---a bookish bacteriologist---to meet her at a party.
Dr. Fane gets dazzled by her beauty, but Kitty seems unmoved by his presence at all.
(veil002.jpg)
Soon afterward he proposes and Kitty accepts only to get as far away from her mother as possible.
They travel to Dr. Fane's medical post in Shanghai, where he works in a government lab studying infectious diseases.
In due course, the couple find themselves ill-suited.
Kitty gets much more interested in parties and the social life of the British expatriates while Dr. Fane keeps himself busy in his own work.
Although he tries to make her happy by all means, Kitty appears detached to him emotionally.
In any case she doesn't love him in the first place.
Kitty meets Charles Townsend, a married British vice consul, and the two engage in a clandestine affair.
(veil003.jpg)
When Dr. Fane discovers his wife's infidelity, he seeks to punish her by threatening to divorce her on the grounds of adultery, if she doesn't accompany him to a small village in a remote area of China.
He has volunteered to treat victims of an unchecked cholera epidemic sweeping through the area.
Kitty begs to be allowed to divorce him quietly and he agrees, provided Townsend will leave his wife Dorothy and marry her.
When she proposes this possibility to her lover, Charles, despite earlier claiming his love for Kitty, declines to accept.
Now, Kitty has no choice.
It is impossible for her to tell her mother that she'll become a divorced woman in a foreign land.
So, she travel to the mountainous inland region with her husband.
The couple embark upon an arduous, two-week-long overland journey, which would be considerably faster and much easier if they traveled by river, but Dr. Fane seems determined to make Kitty as unhappy and uncomfortable as possible.
Upon their arrival in Mei-tan-fu, she becomes distressed to discover they will be living in near squalor, far removed from everyone except their cheerful neighbor Waddington, a British deputy commissioner living with a young Chinese woman in relative opulence.
Dr. Fane and Kitty barely speak to each other.
Except for a cook and a Chinese soldier assigned to guard her, Kitty remains alone for long hours.
After visiting an orphanage run by a group of French nuns, however, Kitty volunteers her services, and she starts working in the music room.
To her surprise, the Mother Superior tells that her husband loves children, especially babies.
(veil005.jpg)
Now, she begins to see him in a new light as she learns what a selfless and caring person he can be.
When Dr. Fane sees Kitty with the children, he in turn realizes she is not the shallow, selfish person he thought her to be.
As Dr. Fane's anger and Kitty's unhappiness subside, their marriage begins to blossom in the midst of the epidemic crisis.
Kitty soon learns she's pregnant.
Another problem hits her hard because she doesn't know for sure who the father is.
To her relief, however, Dr. Fane assures Kitty that it doesn't matter since he is now in love with her again.
A cholera epidemic takes many victims.
As Dr. Fane and the locals are getting it under control, ailing refugees from elsewhere pour into the area, forcing him to set up a camp outside town.
He contracts the disease and Kitty nurses him, but he dies, and she becomes devastated.
Bereft and pregnant, she leaves China.
Five years later, Kitty appears well-dressed and happy in London shopping with her young son Walter.
They meet Townsend by chance on the street, and he suggests that Kitty meet with him.
Asking young Walter his age, he realizes from the reply that he could be the boy's father.
(veil004.jpg)
Kitty rejects his overtures and walks away.
When her son asks who Townsend is, she replies "No one important".
I'm pretty sure, Mayumi, you feel like watching it, now.
Here is a full movie for you.
【Full Movie】
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/trhuok4ZkOs?feature=player_detailpage" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Enjoy it, and don't get discouraged even if your emails for job interview are not answered.
Like I wrote,
There is no pleasure without pain.
There is no rose without a thorn.
No pains, no gains.
Every cloud has a silver lining.
(sunwind2.gif)
(dreaming2.png)
Good night and have a happy-go-lucky dream.
(denman01.gif)
Mon, Feb 16, 2015 at 11:09 PM
(diane02.gif)
Kato, how come you wrote about the movie so much?
(kato3.gif)
Well... you see, Diane, Kitty was living in London during the 1920s. In those days, when a single woman brought up in the upper class wanted to go abroad, nobody would take it seriously.
You're right, I suppose.
If Mayumi had lived in those days, she would've never able to come to Vancouver.
Are you saying, Mayumi had many suitors in Japan before she came to Vancouver?
You're telling me, Diane. If Mayumi had lived in London during the 1920s, she must've chosen to marry one of those suitors just as Kitty did.
I see... So you're saying, women in our days have a lot of freedom and many choices than the women in the 1920s, aren't you?
Yes, I am. Unlike Kitty, Mayumi doesn't have to marry a man whom she doesn't love. Although she is still struggling in finding a job, Mayumi is definitely happy here in Vancouver because she is not locked in a loveless marriage.
(to be followed)