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Reviews
Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971)
Cigarettes mainly
The setting is London of 1970 and shows privileged people against a background of economic crisis and West End squalor. The main feature is intended (I believe) to be a love triangle whose base is a straight woman (Glenda Jackson) working in a recruitment firm and a gay doctor (Peter Finch) and whose apex is a bisexual artist (Murray Head). The Jackson and Finch characters are solid, sympathetic, interesting and credible, but the artist is so utterly heartless and, above all, frivolous that it's difficult to imagine anyone being in love with him for more than a night. This weakens the film considerably. Moreover the gay aspect is no longer (2022) interesting. Instead I was left with a sense of astonishment at how much smoking goes on in this movie; people were lighting up at every opportunity and puffing enthusiastically. Actually the smoking was more enthusiastic than any sex that went on.
The Human Stain (2003)
Absurd
One of the fundamental themes of this movie is America's obsession with ethnic identity. It is a little unfortunate that it very effectively undercuts itself by proving, as if proof were required, that the concept is absurd. I won't explain more, since that would give away too much. The other fundamental theme is a love affair between Anthony Hopkins, a professor of classics, and Nicole Kidman, a cleaning woman, conducted in the teeth of the community's disapproval and, far more seriously, despite the presence of Ed Harris as Kidman's deranged and dangerous ex-husband. This is completely credible as a May- December romance but honestly, Nicole Kidman as a cleaning woman in rural America? Sorry to point this out, but in reality such people are as big as houses and do not look like Hollywood stars. Similarly insane Vietnam veterans, such as Harris's character, do not have perfect Hollywood teeth. They are on show in close-up after close-up and are so bright as to be distracting.