Dangerous Liaisons review

At long last, I capitulated to lareinemisere's insistence that this is a book that must be read, and shifted Dangerous Liaisons by Choderlos de Laclos (what a great name!) to the top of my pile.  This was as much a reaction to having read five books in a row that I didn't like as much as anything else - I really needed to read something *good* and was fairly well assured of finding that in Laclos.

And indeed, it was extremely good - involving, masterfully put together, and deliciously shocking in just how evil some of its characters are.  Iago has nothing on the Marquise de Merteuil!  It's a shame that I already knew the plot (having seen two film adaptations of it - dreadful, I know, to have succumbed to the audiovisual versions before enjoying the written word) but, even knowing what was coming, the culmination of utter doom at the end seemed overwhelming.  It's also a shame that my French is nowhere near up to reading it in the original, as this would always be preferable, and I know from other works I have read both in the original and in translation that there is always something lost.

Still, a good four days spent, my faith in good literature has been restored, and I have assauged lareinemisere's doubts of my sanity that were produced by my apparent lack of enthusiasm for reading the book in the first place!

Amistad review

This week's rental DVD was Amistad - an intriguing and excellently executed courtroom drama, though a little harrowing in places.  Every time I thought the list of fantastic actors in it had come to an end, someone else would turn up with a minor role and surprise me:

Morgan Freeman
Nigel Hawthorne
Anthony Hopkins
Djimon Hounsou
Matthew McConaughey
Pete Postlethwaite
Stellan Skarsgard
Anna Paquin
Chiwetel Ejiofor

What a great cast!  Djimon Hounsou, in particular, gave an incredibly compelling performance, made even more impressive by the fact that he only spoke four words of English in the entire film.  His portrayal of the leader of the slaves was deeply moving and amazingly nuanced, combining primal emotion with intellectual eloquence.

The conversion of one of the other slaves to Christianity was a little unecessary, I thought, but I have to admit it was beautifully done, as he pieced together the story of Christ from the engravings in a bible he acquired part way through.

Despite the fact that most of the film was taken up by Matthew McConaughey's character arguing the same case to the same conclusion three times in a row, the pacing was good and the story remained tense and involving throughout.  I could have done without the final pieces of text that came up right at the end to say what happened when Cinque arrived home, though - bit of a downer after the triumphant climax.