Jottings about Can you Ever Forgive me ? (2018) (work in progress)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2018 (25 October to 1 November)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
4 February
Jottings about Can you Ever Forgive me ? (2018) (work in progress)
Non-spoilery observations :
* Based, as Molly’s Game (2017) was, on Lee Israel’s own account of what happened*, one inevitably asks : Is being Based upon a true story a good enough reason to make a film ? **.
* The character of Lee Israel is not dissimilar to that of Oscar Isaac’s in Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) - does one want to be inside her that much (even if the film better slants our understanding of her than that of The Coen Brothers) ?
The rest :
* She chucks away the typewriters and the other material (as if one, i.e. the Feds, could not infer their existence from the various artefacts that she produced, but they do not seem interested anyway) – yet, at the end of the film, Israel still has the note-paper that she had printed for Dorothy Parker (and the look-alike)
* Jack goes into one of the bookshops with the real letter from ?? in the collection at Yale (on his suggestion that she leave one of her copies there, and sells the genuine item), but he accepts only $300 for it – more inexplicably, as if the Feds could have been waiting for him there, he is next shown (after cutting away to Israel, waiting) being interviewed by them on the premises
End-notes :
* With, seemingly none of the consequences that were attendant upon Molly Bloom’s publication of her book…
** Since Big Eyes (2014) showed that a good reason is not a sufficient reason, and the screenplay has to / ought to make the story worth the telling.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
