This is a movie about a very unhappy family. No hint of unhappiness can be detected at the beginning though. Mellifluous music set in, two people walking out of a mason, strolling on the umbra of the tenebrous sky and shadowy trees. The woman was laughing, uninhibitedly, like the way she does everything. She can afford to be uninhibited though; she is the princess of this castle; she is the daughter of the principle of the university. It doesn't take a further revelation to recognize he is a professor. The look he dresses, the words he used, the way he offended by the words she uses shows he is a man with a certain degree of standard and expectation. A story of one carefree and spoiled wife with her restrained yet lenient husband ? Far from that. They are walking to their house expecting a party.A party starts 2 in the morning with a quorum of four, and when it ends at the dawn, games will be played, liquor will be drank, betrayal will be acted, and a secret wound will be revealed. And whether the wound will be healed by the sunshine, is for the viewers to feel.
The hysterical and brutal histrionics, especially that of Sandy Dennis and Richard Burton, left me starstruck. When George Segal and Elizabeth Taylor certainly showed stellar dramatic chops, their characters were more consistent than Honey and Richard. Honey's childish demeanors and jejune remark conflicted with the grown-up rebellion she had been holding out on us. And Richard's doubtful sentiment to her wife combined the restriction he placed on himself, crashed his disappointment and despair, expressed through his bustling speech and erratic manner.
That is why I hate the movie. The cast is so good that it makes the movie unspeakable charged. I felt really intense. There were so many questions to be asked, yet every time you felt you got to the bottom of it, more plots and more questions surfaced; and every time with more intense emotion. I genuinely appreciate movies that exploit unordinary sentiment out of the ordinary life, but I doubt I will watch it again.
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