Elegy: a poem for a dead person. But occasionally the living dead will do.
Another film where the woman can be anything…as long as she is very, very beautiful. Is this bullshit? Or are we really hard wired to pursue this trope [tripe] over and over and over again?
Oh, and they all have to be 1] cultured and 2] intellectuals. And, up to a point, that always works for me.
But: When you do fall in love with someone [much younger] who is cultured, intellectual and ravishingly attractive, jealousy will sooner or later rear its ugly head.
Is this in fact about Philip Roth facing the ineluctable truth of growing older and older in a culture that grows younger and younger? It’s the narrative he has. Period. There is no getting around it. Rilke’s panther again.
Of course there is one plot device that ages the young more immediately: cancer.
But the cage is even smaller for most women. It’s not for nothing that [in film] in 9 out of every 10 of these May/November romances the woman is May.
ELEGY
Directed by Isabel Coixet [from the Philip Roth novel The Dying Animal]
[b]David [interviewed on the Charlie Rose show]: We’re not all descended from the Puritans.
Charlie Rose: No?
David: There was another colony 30 miles from Plymouth, it’s not on the maps today. Marymount it was called.
Charlie Rose: Yeah, alright, you mention in your book…
David: The colony where anything goes, went.
Charlie Rose: There was booze…
David: There was booze. There was fornication. There was music. There was… they even ah, ah, ah, you name it, you name it. They even danced around the maypole once a month, wearing masks, worshiping god knows what, Whites and Indians together, all going for broke…
Charlie Rose: Who was responsible for all of this?
David: A character by the name of Thomas Morton.
Charlie Rose: Aah, the “Hugh Hefner” of the Puritans.
David: You could say that. I’m going to read you a quote of what the Puritans thought of Morton’s followers. Debauched Bakunin aliens and atheists, falling into great licentiousness, and leading degenerate lives. When I heard that, I packed my bags, I left Oxford, and I came straight to America, America the licentiousness.
Charlie Rose: So what happened to all of those people?
David: Well, the Puritans shot them down. They sent in Miles Standish leading the militia. He chopped down the maypole, cut down those colored ribbons, banners, everything; party was over.
Charlie Rose: And we became a nation of straight-laced Puritans.
David: Well…
Charlie Rose: Isn’t that your point though? The Puritans won, they stamped out all things sexual… how would you say it?
David: Sexual happiness.
Charlie Rose: Exactly. Until the 1960s.
David: Until the 1960s when it all exploded again all over the place.
Charlie Rose: Right, everyone was dancing around the maypole, then, make love not war.
David: If you remember, only a decade earlier, if you wanted to have sex, if you wanted to make love in the 1950s, you had to beg for it, you had to cop a feel.
Charlie Rose: Or… get married.
David: As I did in the 1960s.
Charlie Rose: Any regrets?
David: Plenty. Um, but that’s our secret. Don’t tell anybody.
[laughter]
David: That’s just between you and me.
…
David [narrating]: I think it was Betty Davis who said old age is not for sissies. But it was Tolstoy who said the biggest surprise in a man’s life is old age. Old age sneaks up on you, and the next thing you know you’re asking yourself, I’m asking myself, why can’t an old man act his real age? How is it possible for me to still be involved in the carnal aspects of the human comedy? Because, in my head, nothing has changed.
…
David [to class]: This course is called “Practical Criticism”. So…Let’s go! Right to the big question, shall we? Does “War and Peace” become a different book because we read it? Yes, of course. But why? Because we bring something to the book? We bring ourselves. What’s more, if you read the book again in 10 years, it will change again, because you’ve changed.
…
David [narrating]: I’ve always been vulnerable to female beauty, Ms. Castillo was different, her posture was perfect. And she dressed like a young associate of a prestigious law firm. There was a sophistication, that set her apart. She knows she’s beautiful. But she’s not yet sure what to do with her beauty.
…
David [narrating]: Since they posted the sexual harassment hotline number down the hall from my office, I never make private contact with any of my students until they’ve received their grades. Afterwards I always throw a cocktail party for the class.
…
David [narrating]: Why all this talk about Kafka, Goya and her Cuban family? Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that her family’s Cuban and she enjoys my class. But I go on yakking away mainly because I want to fuck her.
…
David [to George]: She is a throwback to a completely different time. She has to be wooed.
…
David [narrating]: Consuela. My whole life was dedicated to independence and at some cost I had achieved my goal. Nevertheless, it was in that moment, that my terrible jealousy was born. That is when I realised that I would never, ever, really possess her. I feel anxious unless I speak to her on the phone every day, and then I feel anxious after we’ve spoken. What are you wearing? Where are you? I knew it’s only a matter of time before a young man found her and took her away. I knew. Because I was once that young man who would have done it.
…
David [narrating]: On the nights she isn’t with me I am deformed, thinking of where she might be. And all this because this girl will tell me a thousand times how much she adores me and means it. This girl will never once tell me she yearns for my cock.
…
David: Of course the whole situation was ridiculous.
…
George: Beautiful women are invisible.
David: Invisible? What the hell does that mean? Invisible? They jump out at you. A beautiful woman, she stands out. She stands apart. You can’t miss her.
George: But we never actually see the person. We see the beautiful shell. We’re blocked by the beauty barrier. Yeah, we’re so dazzled by the outside that we never make it inside.[/b]
Men still say things like this. After all, sometimes what else is there to say?
[b]David [to his son]: …what are you doing? You’re going to escape from one prison and race headlong into another maximum security facility.
Kenny: Where did you get the idea that marriage is a prison?
David: From serving time.
…
Carolyn: I’m getting old David. The way men look at me changes every day. There are women…a lot of women who are on these dating websites. You’re guaranteed a certain number of dates per year. And you pay for the silence…and…the same conversation, every time. I’ll end up like them.
…
Consuela [in phone message]: Hi, David, it’s Consuela. How are you? Feels strange to call you, but I want to talk to you, I want to tell you something. I want to tell you myself before you hear it from someone else.
…
David: I collapsed to the floor, listening to her message, again and again, fearing the worst. She was in love, she was getting married. Perhaps she even wanted my blessing.[/b]
Nope, not that.
[b]Consuela: You know what’s funny? I feel older than you now.
…
Consuela: It’s like not being able… to get into a… a comfortable position, because no matter which way you turn, you’re stuck. I’m stuck inside myself.
…
David: You know Hipolita, the beautiful Amazonian queen? She actually cut off her right breast so she could shoot her arrows faster and she was no slouch.[/b]