{"id":3035,"date":"2005-05-25T17:11:13","date_gmt":"2005-05-25T21:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3035"},"modified":"2010-07-12T20:04:55","modified_gmt":"2010-07-13T00:04:55","slug":"i-need-to-take-a-second","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3035","title":{"rendered":"R.I.P., Ismail Merchant"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ismail Merchant has died<\/a>. Isn’t it strange. I don’t even know the man, and I feel a huge sense of personal loss right now.<\/p>\n

The Ivory-Merchant movies of Forster’s novels are, of course, famous (and rightly so, in my opinion) – but for me, the most devastating and brilliant movie of theirs (Ivory directing, Merchant producing) was Mr. and Mrs. Bridge<\/a><\/i>, starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. The film was so subtly <\/i>painful that it almost registered with me on a level like a dog-whistle. Invisible to the conscious mind, but cutting through like a knife. You want to see great acting? Acting that is so good it makes me throw up my hands in despair and admiration? Watch Joanne Woodward in that movie. But it’s weird. The movie is so painful (and I can’t even say why) – its observations are so specific, so acute … that it left an imprint behind in my mind, like a bruise on my heart or brain. It’s that good. But that awful. There’s one body-language moment in a crowded auditorium, between Joanne Woodward and her son that is so exquisitely awful – the moments of missed connections, of thwarted gestures – it’s so simple, so damn simple. Devastating. It can’t be described. It’s not a violent scene, or a gory scene – but still – the effect on me was so huge that I felt like covering my eyes. Like, you don’t want to look in on someone else’s pain. You want to give them privacy in their terrible moment of psychological revelation. This all occurs in the movie without one word of dialogue.<\/p>\n

I remember the first time I saw this painting by Goya<\/a>. I was in a Humanities class in high school, and the second I saw it I had this surge of fear: I wished I could UN-see it. I wanted to erase it from my head. But I couldn’t. That night I lay awake in bed, wide-eyed, staring up at the ceiling, thinking and thinking and thinking about the horror of that scene, the sheer awfulness of man’s inhumanity to man. I don’t know – it left a deep mark – something I can’t ever UN-do.<\/p>\n

There’s some association here, for me … The second I started writing right now about Mr. and Mrs. Bridge<\/i>, I started thinking about that painting. Even though one doesn’t really have anything to do with the other. But: The scene in the auditorium was such that I wished IMMEDIATELY that I could block it out. Nothing flashy, nothing self-indulgent: It’s a quiet moment of psychological agony, noticed ONLY by the camera – even though it’s a space crowded with people. A woman’s psychic scream of loneliness … going completely unnoticed.<\/p>\n

Weird to say that my favorite film of that famous team would be one I found so devastating that I honestly don’t think I can ever watch it again, and pretty much blocked it out as I was seeing it.<\/p>\n

A great career. A great artist. He will be so missed. And God: Howards End<\/i>!! Such a wonderful movie (and it takes quite a bit for me to say that – it’s one of my favorite books ever written).<\/p>\n

God. I’m sad.<\/p>\n

Rest in peace, sir.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ismail Merchant has died. Isn’t it strange. I don’t even know the man, and I feel a huge sense of personal loss right now. The Ivory-Merchant movies of Forster’s novels are, of course, famous (and rightly so, in my opinion) … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23],"tags":[401,122],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3035"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3035"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18733,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3035\/revisions\/18733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}