Text/Jiang Xiaomao
2013-09-26
"Little Cutie" is indeed a very cute movie - it intercepts jazz master Cole Porter and his wife Linda Porter Some clips of living together skillfully make Cole's music and the film's plot interact and intertextualize. The word "plot" is used because the film embellishes, simplifies, and adapts reality to a certain extent, and these treatments may have gone beyond the scope of "biography". We may be looking at a love classic from the creators, or even our own, rather than the reality that Cole and Linda faced.
◆The background is extracted and the reality is hidden
. The biggest difference between "Little Cutie" and other biopics is that it almost completely extracts the background of the characters' existence and life, and the close-up shows a more or less over-romantic love. . For example, Cole and Linda's lives spanned World War I and World War II, and their wanderings and the influence of Cole's music were more or less related to the war. But this big background was completely hidden by "Little Cutie", without even insinuation. This kind of treatment actually reflects the ingenuity of the main creator - the relationship between Cole and Linda has nothing to do with the war, so why do you have to use "big" things to impact "small" love? After all, the title of the film is called "Little" Cute. Because of this, when the film depicts the lives of Cole and Linda, it mostly uses medium and close-up shots to "cut out" the two from the crowd, and rarely drown them in the background.
But Cutie's most daring adaptation of Cole's life is that it erases all of Cole's personal experiences before meeting Linda and after Cole's loss, including Cole's parents. There are deep and shallow entanglements between Cole and family members - his grandfather was fiercely opposed to his grandson learning music or pursuing a music-related career; only mother Katie stepped forward and supported her son to complete his career. Worcester Academy, and this behavior also caused Cole's mother and grandfather to have no contact and communication for up to two years. After Cole's unfortunate fall, mother Katie and wife Linda rushed to the hospital as soon as possible, strongly opposing the doctor's amputation for Cole. Cole is actually deeply grateful to his mother, who once said: "I have had two of the greatest women in my life - my mother, who believed I had this (musical) talent, and my wife, who had always been Motivates me, even though everyone else thinks I can't be liked by the masses." Many fans and critics who love Cole Potter agree that Linda, who is 15 years older than Cole, played the role in the former's life. the dual roles of wife and mother. However, in "Little Cutie", this mother element also disappears in the background along with the biological mother Katie.
The disappearance of family background may be related to Cole's seldom mentioning his life experience and family in front of others. William McBrien wrote in Cole Porter's biography: Years later, when Cole's classmates at Worcester Academy recalled, they thought Cole was an orphan, cared for by wealthy relatives. So if Cole himself is reluctant to talk about his family in public, what qualifications does a film have to comment on this past? After all, "Little Cutie" doesn't count as a faithful biopic, but more like a love musical—it begins with Linda Lee Thomas, a beautiful woman, and ends with Linda Lee Thomas Potter, a devoted wife.
◆Romantic adaptation, love voices
Although "Little Cutie" does not deliberately conceal Cole's homosexuality, it does weaken this part of Cole's private life. William McBrien mentioned in his biography that Cole's lifelong love was his same-sex partner Eddy Tauch, and Eddy was always on Cole's mind when he composed the famous "In the Still of the Night". At the same time, the relationship between Cole and Linda was also in a cooling period during this period. But in the film, the song became not only a love song for Linda, but an elegy for Linda. At the end of the film, when the two artistically transcended life and death and sang this song in the dimly lit apartment, I don't know how many tears were made. But after all, the adaptation of art cannot change the harsh reality after all. In the film, as Linda is dying, Cole sobbs, "All my songs are for you." This is too good a wishful thinking. In reality, Cole, who had to hide his homosexual tendencies from the public, had to vent his passion in music. That said, while Linda becomes Cole's inspirational muse from time to time, she has to share a love letter with Cole's other lovers.
What's more, in this love, Linda mostly felt not the thoughtfulness from her lover, but great loneliness. In the film, we can occasionally feel Linda's loneliness and resentment, and this time the camera will grimly throw her into the crowd and the background. But on the whole, "Little Cutie" has been creating an illusion of love for the audience -- the center of the film is not so much Cole and the music, but Linda and a love that is romanticized to the point of being slightly out of shape. In the film, the "Linda Potter rose" that Cole presented to Linda is seen as the crystallization of their love - the flower of love nourished by the efforts of two people who are almost incompatible. But in reality, the rose symbolizes the fear of forgetting rather than the commitment to remembering. William McBrien wrote: She (Linda) feared that she would soon be forgotten. "It would be nice if there was a flower or something named after me." And so the "Linda Potter Rose" was born.
No matter what the reality is, and no matter how the artistic choices are presented, the love between Cole and Linda is still a story. It is not easy to maintain such a complicated marriage. Although Linda had the idea of divorce on the way, she stayed by Cole's side in the end; although Cole has other orientations, in most cases, it is not the same. Don't forget your responsibilities. All in all, they share each other's lives and feel happy and joyful. Isn't that what love is.
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