Monday, Feb 2, 2009

Monday’s Movie: Love In The Time Of Cholera

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

I invite everybody to participate in the weekly MEME and write about any movies, television or big screen, that you’ve seen over the past week and write about it.  Please feel free to use the above logo photo in your post and/or link back to the site.  I will post every Sunday Night or Monday Morning on the movie I’ve seen from the past week.  I’m hoping that there are other movie buffs out there who will enjoy the MEME as much as I’m hoping to!  The only small request that I have is that you rate the movie out of 5 bags of popcorn (so, 1 bag out of 5, 2 bags out of 5, and so on). 

———————————————————————————————————————————————-

Movie:  Love In The Time of Cholera

Starring:  Javier Bardem, Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Benjamin Bratt, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Hector Elizondo, Liev Schreiber, Fernanda Motenegro with Laura Harring and John Leguizamo

Genre:  Drama

Runtime: 2 Hours 18 Minutes

MPAA Rating:  R

Directed By: Mike Newell

Love is a Disease in ‘Cholera’ (Click on Link Under Photo For Clip)

February is the month of cupid’s arrow… the month of Valentines Day.  A very tragic love epic, Love In The Time of Cholera, is amazing piece of literature that I reviewed last year.  The book was so amazingly written that I came to love the story and maintain a soft spot in my heart for Florentino.  Overall, the movie did NOT disappoint me in relation to the book.  Obviously, the book was so detailed and amazing that it would become a 4 hour film should it properly convey all aspects of the book.  However, I wondered while watching the movie would viewers who had not read the book would understand Fermina’s mind?  The movie struggles a bit with this conveyance. 

 

Florentino

The cinematography is wonderful as are the costumes and the music.  However, what I didn’t totally agree with was the casting.  I did not envision Florentino or Urbino as cast in this movie.  In my reader’s eye, Florentino was a much more handsome man and not such a weak, hunched-over person and Urbino was bigger in stature and size than Bratt.   I also felt that Moreno is so young that she never really did look old enough in the end of the movie.  She still just looked too young… maybe the makeup crew could have done a better job?  Regretfully, the casting of Fermina’s Father didn’t match my imagery, either.  So, the casting just threw me off a bit, but overall the cast did an above average job with the acting, itself. 

Fermina

I wanted to rent this movie ever since I finished the book.  For those of you who have not read it, the aforementioned criticisms may not bother you as much as it seemed to affect my viewing of it.  For those who read the book and have seen the movie… I’m very curious about your opinion on it.

For lovers, this is a story of a love that never dies and waits for its fruition throughout a lifetime.  I found it amazing that my favorite line in the book is what was the most important line in the movie:

“It had to be a mad dream, one that would give her the courage she would need to discard the prejudices of a class that had not always been hers but had become hers more than anyone’s.  It had to teach her to think of love as a state of grace: not the means to anything but the alpha and omega, an end in itself.” 

Dr. Urbino

Like every good book that has a movie, the book was far and beyond better than the movie.  However, for a the hopeless romantic who enjoys time pieces and unrequited love… I would recommend it.  If you have HBO, it’s running throughout the month, so you can catch it on cable in your jammies and with your favorite beverage.  Out of 5 bags of popcorn, genre comedy/drama… I give this:

Please add your reviews into Mr. Linky!

2 Comments