This story in its original incarnation had some appeal. Coming of age, proving one's self, contact with nature which in the original story was clearly conflated with confronting wild adolescent hormones. This was also the case of the "girl's" version "National Velvet" filmed immediately after the first, 1943, film of "My Friend Flicka."
Both of those new-sex-as-wild-horse stories were sappy and ordinary on the surface, but solid enough to last, to (almost) become a classics. Now see what has happened here: this fairly simple natural form has been beset upon by wildcats who have shredded it, turning it into the opposite of what it wants to be.
In the original form, the parents are simply dim but good. Everyone in the story is baffled by puberty, and only differ on how to handle it. In this disemboweled version, the girl is simply wild. She was wild before, during and presumably after we see her. Her dumbfounded parents only know how to fight, not to counsel. In the original, at the end is a harmony, a merging of child and beast where the beast is tamed and controllable and the child now empowered.
In this mortally wounded carcass, the girl wants to remain wild. We know she will be promiscuous, live unhappily (probably creating some new unhappy kids) and die. We know she will be sick or wounded but defiant in every event in her life. We know her parents will comply eventually to every request and wonder why they should be so cursed.
What a strange thing to celebrate harmful obstinacy. I suppose it is one legacy of how we sell presidents in the US.
And the cinematography. I found it ordinary in every respect.
Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.
Both of those new-sex-as-wild-horse stories were sappy and ordinary on the surface, but solid enough to last, to (almost) become a classics. Now see what has happened here: this fairly simple natural form has been beset upon by wildcats who have shredded it, turning it into the opposite of what it wants to be.
In the original form, the parents are simply dim but good. Everyone in the story is baffled by puberty, and only differ on how to handle it. In this disemboweled version, the girl is simply wild. She was wild before, during and presumably after we see her. Her dumbfounded parents only know how to fight, not to counsel. In the original, at the end is a harmony, a merging of child and beast where the beast is tamed and controllable and the child now empowered.
In this mortally wounded carcass, the girl wants to remain wild. We know she will be promiscuous, live unhappily (probably creating some new unhappy kids) and die. We know she will be sick or wounded but defiant in every event in her life. We know her parents will comply eventually to every request and wonder why they should be so cursed.
What a strange thing to celebrate harmful obstinacy. I suppose it is one legacy of how we sell presidents in the US.
And the cinematography. I found it ordinary in every respect.
Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.