Rate It
|
||||||||||||||||
Rating Averages
My Friends |
Not rated. () |
|
|
|---|---|---|---|
All Flixster |
(1742) |
527 |
3875 |
Female |
(925) |
280 |
2057 |
Male |
(817) |
247 |
1818 |
More Like This
If you liked this, then you'll also probably like...
Got another recommendation for someone who liked this movie? Add it to the list!
Got an opinion? Use the buttons to vote on all the suggestions people have added.
If lots of people vote, the best suggestions will rise to the top.
| Nothing (100%) |
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Young Adam (100%) |
|
|
Plot:
Meet Other Fans
ONLINE NOW
Recent Reviews
-
MCT:August 12, 2008This film has a great deal of potential and intrigue, yet it never seems to fully come together. Some say reading the novel benefits the film-watching experience. Either way, my main complaint is, it's too short! Still, it's very impressive how talented Sally Potter proves to be. I love the Nyman-ish influenced score.
-
MCT:July 26, 2008Not at all impressed really with this existential exploration through time. Though this was more coherent than The Fountain, it plays like vignettes which is fine, although this allows an all too disjointed view of the character. It reallly just gives a peek into how this one person shows us that he's the same person as both man and women (which Swinton plays as both here, with her elfen features that is statuesque and immoble). It tries to come full circle but eventually just kinda loses my interest, at least it was only 90 minutes.
-
MCT:June 27, 2008
Notes on the Adaptation of the Book Orlando by Sally Potter
My task with the adaptation of Virginia Woolf?s book for the screen was to find a way of remaining true to the spirit of the book and to Virginia Woolf?s intentions, whilst being ruthless with changing the book in any way necessary to make it work cinematically.
It would have been a disservice to Virginia Woolf to remain slavish to the letter of the book, for just as she was always a writer who engaged with writing and the form of the novel, similarly the film needed to engage with the energy of cinema. And although the book was already a distillation of 400 years of English history (albeit an imagined view of that history, told with a liberal amount of poetic license), the film needed to distill even further.
The most immediate changes were structural. The storyline was simplified?any events which did not significantly further Orlando?s story were dropped.
The narrative also needed to be driven. Whereas the novel could withstand abstraction and arbitrariness (such as Orlando?s change of sex) cinema is more pragmatic. There had to be reasons?however flimsy?to propel us along a journey based itself on a kind of suspension of disbelief.
Thus Queen Elizabeth bestows Orlando?s long life upon him ("Do not fade, do not wither, do not grow old . . .") whereas in the book it remains unexplained. And Orlando?s change of sex in the film is the result of his having reached a crisis point?a crisis of masculine identity. On the battlefield he looks death and destruction in the face and faces the challenge of kill or be killed. It is Orlando?s unwillingness to conform to what is expected of him as a man that leads?within the logic of the film?to his change of sex. Later, of course, as a woman, Orlando finds that she cannot conform to what is expected of her as a female either, and makes a series of choices which leave her, unlike in the book, without marriage or property?and with a daughter, not a son.
These latter changes seemed to me entirely consistent with Virginia Woolf?s views in her other works on the condition of women?s lives (especially A Room of One?s Own) and crisply logical within the framework set up in the earlier part of the story.
Orlando is at its heart a story of loss?the loss of time as it passes?a meditation on the impermanence of love, power, and politics. I simply carried that logic through to include Orlando?s loss of property and status in the 20th century. Whilst the loss of property in the story is a symptom of the second class status of women, there is also an aspect which is worthy of celebration: the loss of privilege and status based on an outdated English class system.
Orlando was of course originally written as a spoof biography of Vita Sackville-West. Where the book holds most tightly to apparent biographical facts it occasionally loses its power as a story (such as Orlando?s "keeping" the house at the end of the book?which was a way for Virginia Woolf to restore the lost Knole to Vita Sackville-West).
I tried to restore Orlando on film to a view more consistently detached and bitingly ironic in its view of the English class system and the colonial attitudes arising from it.
At the same time I needed to ensure that Orlando was a loveable character. The clue was to highlight Orlando?s essential innocence. He happens to have been born into a class, a place and time, and is shaped by it?but as the essential human being remains; the patterns of behaviour and attitude are transformed.
Other obvious changes from the book include dialogue (and poems) which have been invented from sometimes slender clues on the page?and Orlando?s words and looks to the camera which were intended as an equivalent both of Virginia Woolf?s direct addresses to her readers and to try to convert Virginia Woolf?s literary wit into cinematic humor at which people could laugh out loud.
Finally, the ending of the film needed to be brought into the present in order to remain true to Virginia Woolf?s use of real-time at the end of the novel (where the story finishes just as she puts down her pen to finish the book). Coming up to the present day meant acknowledging some key events of the 20th century--the two world wars, the electronic revolution?the contraction of space through time reinvented by speed. But the film ends somewhere between heaven and earth in a place of ecstatic communion with the present moment. -
MCT:March 16, 2008
tilda swinton, is great to watch in this, not a great film over all, but tildas performance certainly brings it up a notch, she commands every scene, and is both cold and cute at same time, and years later, sofia coppala tried a similer type of film, with marie antwanette, trying to show a inportant figure, a young women, living her day
-
MCT:March 9, 2008Investing so much time in the book, the film never really lives up to it. But this is a fantastic beautiful and witty film in it's own right.
-
MCT:February 19, 2008Tilda's performance... the final song by Jimmy Somerville... and Quentin Crisp as Queen Elizabeth... Sally Potter has a total masterpiece in her hands, an underrated masterpiece.
-
MCT:February 12, 2008
A very interesting view on life from an even more fascinating character. Have to see it again, since the first time I was too distracted by it's wonderful costumes and locations.
-
MCT:February 12, 2008Slowmoving and bizare are my general impressions. Unfortunately I'm not familiar with Virginia Wolf so it took me a while to understand anything at all. But when I did I found something quite facinating. Never boring, but never really lifting either. Great acting and some clever lines though.
-
MCT:November 2, 2007
beautiful, interesting movie. difficult to describe--just see it! Swinton is wonderful and breathtaking, imo. points off for the ending which is so cheesey that it's lol funny, but overall it's 98% fabulous.
-
MCT:October 13, 2007
Flixster - Share Movies -
MCT:July 9, 2007Definitely a different movie. I have to say this was one of the more strange movies that I have seen in a while. I think Tilda Swinton did quite a good job with this role. All of the other characters just seemed thrown in the mix in an odd sort of way. It makes me want to read the book just to see what the story really was about. I don't think that Sally Potter really gave enough information as to what was going on. I don't think I would really recommend this movie.
-
MCT:June 27, 2007
I had to watch this movie twice to really "get it". Now I do....and I hope you do too. It's visually stunning and complicated...
-
MCT:June 13, 2007
ok, it's weird. i'm warning you. but it's worth it (i reckon). just be prepared to feel confused. and stunned by the brilliance of tilda swinton.
-
MCT:May 22, 2007
Gorgeous retelling of Virginia Woolf's classic, excepting a few of the later scenes which jump a bit too fast. Tilda Swinton is wonderful in the role, and I just adore defying gender crapshit.
-
MCT:March 26, 2007
Probably one of the weirdest movies I have ever seen. Very confuzing. Also there's a "deeper meaning" to the movie.
-
MCT:March 15, 2007
This film is like sitting on the toilet for 2 hours, cause at the climax you realise it all amounts to a pile of shit. Nonsense!
-
MCT:February 15, 2007
What can I say? Guy lives for hundreds of years and turns into a girl. Very interesting. The book is better, but the movie's still excellent.
-
MCT:February 5, 2007
Okay it really confused me. I didn't get how or why the character would suddenly change genders. I was able to suspend disbelief on the immortality but that crossed the line.
-
MCT:February 3, 2007
An aesthetic delight with a clever (though occasionally didactic) conceit. Tilda Swinton delivers well considered similar yet distinct performances as both male and female Orlando. The script is thoughtful with a strong, seemingly literary pedigree, yet possesses a look and style appropriate for cinema.
-
MCT:January 27, 2007
Interesting movie...beautifully directed....
This movie can get on your nerves at some times but in all is a pretty average movie. Tilda Swinton potrays the female roles much better than the male ones, as she looks too feminine for a male.
I best things about the movie arre the stunning costumes by Sandy Powell; the absolutely gorgeous Art Direction and set decoration and utterly beautiful and sense stimulating visuals. -
MCT:January 13, 2007
Studied for year 12...negative association. Just couldn't like a movie I was forced to see two times in a row.
-
MCT:January 10, 2007
bloody good.
btw: what the effing fuck does nondiscursive mean? and if you know, kindly die in a horrible way. -
MCT:December 5, 2006
I watched this film in class yesterday and I love the themes of the film but I hated the film. I couldn't stand the way she looked into the camera every five min and muttered some silly lines. It was painfull.
-
MCT:November 27, 2006
My two kids and I took the train to New York because we didn't think such an "art house" film would play in Monmouth County, and we really wanted to see Orlando. It was worth the trip.
-
MCT:November 23, 2006
Orlando directed by Sally Potter is a very interesting film and I always enjoy watching it over and over! Orlando is based on the novel by Virginia Woolf. The narrative is simple to follow and the thoughts and reflection on gender and society through the ages is intriguing. Raises points on feminism both past and present. The acting is good although quite shaky in parts but it seems to suit the film. I like the music to this film too, something about it is strange and relaxing at the same time. The costumes were wonderful throughout, especially Tilda Swinton's character, Orlando! A very good art-house film! Definately recommended!
My Friends Said...
Orlando Recent Reviews
Register or sign-in to see your friends' reviews !
Comments
-
myheartbleedsmeposted 820 days ago
