Rama’s SCREEN

Wow! For some reason it feels like you’d have to have a Phd in English literature to be able to review movies like this, to be able to describe and articulate using great vocabularies the themes told by the story. But.. since I don’t have such degree let me just say that ELEGY has the word Oscar written all over the acting aspect, but the film as a whole is not quite Oscar worthy, in my humble opinion. It does have the elements for an arthouse type film but for the lack of better words, it doesn’t quite have the wow factor. Yes it’s heartfelt, yes it’s touching and yes at times it could be funny, but I doubt that a part of it would leave with you after you watch the movie.

David Kepesh (Sir Ben Kingsley) glories in the pursuit of adventurous female students but never lets any woman get too close. When gorgeous Consuela Castillo (Penelope Cruz) enters his classroom, however, his protective veneer dissolves. Her raven-haired beauty both captivates and unsettles him.
Even if Kepesh declares her body a perfect work of art, Consuela is more than an object of desire. She has a strong sense of herself and an emotional intensity that challenges his preconceptions. Kepesh’s need for Consuela becomes an obsession, but ultimately his jealous fantasies of betrayal drive her away.

Ben Kingsley is back and as extraordinary as the day he played Gandhi. The dude can act and in recent years he’s been wasting it on crapolas like The Last Legion, Thunderbirds, A Sound of Thunder, and Bloodrayne.
It’s good to see the master in the art of acting has returned and in ELEGY, he’s proven once again that he can take his age and turn it into an advantage. I got nothing but praises for his nearly perfect performance as the aging professor who couldn’t stand the concept of committment and marriage, who’s used to just going from one girl to another but the finally meets the girl who he cares deeply so much about but the thought of being with her for other than just sexual reasons scares him. At the same time, he becomes easily insecure and jealous. They say that as you grow older and older, you start acting more and more like a child again. Ben Kingsley pulls it off without breaking a sweat.

I was never a fan of Penelope Cruz. I’ve always thought that her success in America was mainly because of her connection with her friend, Salma Hayek. But after seeing this movie, I know now that she truly can act like an Oscar nominee that she is (Volver)
She has this certain aura about her that just demands our attention . Her fiery sexuality fits her character who’s intelligent, attentive, and beautiful.

The story is based on the novella The Dying Animal by Pulitzer Prize winning author Philippa Roth. This could only mean that the book is way better than the movie.
What I don’t like with this movie is.. for some reason… I get the impression that it tries too be all emotional or sentimental.. The story pushes the actors to give their all and they did, brilliantly I might add, but it fails to make us connect and relate to what’s going on, one scene goes by after another and it feels overdrawn and it’s dragging halfway through the end

I don’t mind artsy films with lots of silent moments and the camera would take time focusing on the most insignificant object in the room, I don’t mind music accompaniment by Bach, Beethoven and Satie, I don’t mind poetic narration either but even old people who’ve hit life crisis and the era where thoughts of death haunting them each day would probably find this movie to be very deathly in itself.

The whole thing with Ben Kingsley’s son, it seems like it’s showing us that just like karma, what we did would come around in full circle again. The advice he gives to his son is the same bittersweet reality pill he has to take as well and all the while, we the audiences feel like we’ve been taught this lesson before, only this time, it’s presented in a more depressing manner.

* Place the cursor on the image below to check my grade for this film