| [Too much to do, and no time for the _important_ things...]
"The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by
the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the
Marquis de Sade" is an excellent and disturbing film. The premise
has the Marquis (for unspecified reasons - boredom, perhaps) directing
the asylum inmates as they put on their play, for the entertainment of
the asylum director and his family, and some of their friends. Since the
subject matter of the play includes much that is considered politically
sensitive, the director keeps trying to cut or suppress things, while
the Marquis and his actors keep replying, "But this all happened years
and years ago - a good ten years; we're all so much more sensible now!"
The play presents some introductory material about the Revolution,
introduces Charlotte Corday as she begins to stalk Marat, includes some
inserts depicting the bloodbaths at the guillotine, and culminates in
the assassination (a famous painting of which intrigued me from early
childhood - and people wonder why I'm warped), followed by... but that
would be telling.
There's a good deal of to-be-expected business about revolution and
censorship and what does freedom mean and so forth, all played out
against the very disturbing setting; some of the "actors" are dangerous
lunatics who occasionally forget themselves and attack their fellows -
or the audience. The actor who played the Marquis de Sade did an
excellent job; he'd put forth some keen-witted argument to persuade the
asylum director to overlook some risky line or other, and then would go
into a speech describing the lengthy death by torture of a contemporary
of his, in excruciating - and lip-licking - detail. [A whimsical note:
the patient chosen to play Marat is a paranoid, and has quite a time
when Corday [Glenda Jackson in her first role, I believe] approaches
him with the knife. The actual "assassination" includes a lovely little
bit based on this.]
The movie as a whole feels very depressing - it seems to be saying that
we can't and won't learn from our mistakes no matter how hard we try,
and that those who speak out, be they great thinkers or lunatics, will
trigger the release of destruction upon us all. While there's a fair
amount of humor in the story, it's of a pretty grim style, and by the
end, I was reminded of Poe's lines: "The play was the tragedy, 'Man,'
its hero, the conqueror worm." Intriguing, yes, but not pleasant.
Still, I'm glad I finally got to see it. Must have been devastating on
stage, where the audience members become a part of the production!
I also got to comparing this with "Titicut Follies," which also
featured the residents of an asylum for the insane as they performed
skits, stood on soapboxes, lost control and regained it... And where
the onlooker might have some doubt as to whether some of the keepers
shouldn't be locked up instead.
[Coming soon: a review of 'Delicatessen'. Bring the whole family!]
-b
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| I saw this version of the Marat/Sade a few year's ago. It's fairly close to the
Royal Shakespeare Company stage version, and not very cinematic, but as note -2
says, it's a record of a stunning piece of theatre.
It is a tad funny to see Glenda Jackson as Corday -- she's now a Labour MP,
completely sold out to the "liberal" establishment. It's even funnier to see Ian
Richardson as Marat. He hasn't gone into politics, but he's now gained megastar
status on TV by playing Francis Urquart, the murderous Conservative Prime
Minister, by Richard III out of the Scottish play, in the series adapted from
Michael Dobbs' novels.
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