In a Savage Land

[numbat]

But the part of the above picture that my eyes are drawn to repeatedly is his absolutely perfect shoulder and bicep. Gawd!!!

I KNOW!!!!!! I think it's the fantastic lighting - he just looks so.........

It reminds me of (the good parts of) Vinyan - thinking first bed scene, naked back, muscles, lamplight.

i use them a lot that way here, since we have this new audience from the TPOTE website

Don't be worrying about them tip - either they are or will be Roofian converts and will be happy to join us, or they'll just think we're crazy and never come back!!! (and he who shall not be named - & no i don't mean Voldemort - already knew about us anyway!!!)

Oh & rueful, if you can pull your eyes away from the shoulder, don't forget the cute white undies!!! As i said, i WILL post something thoughtful & intelligent about this movie one day soon.........!!!

[rueful]

don't forget the cute white undies

Which, like the perfectly manicured hands, were probably so typical of an island-dwellling pearl trader.

Still awaiting that deep, intellectual analysis Numbat!

[numbat]

Hahaha, me too rueful (if......i.....could.....just.....stop.....looking......at.....Mick's........)

[pixie]

I FINALLY watched this today!
This is a great movie! I don't remember ever hearing about when it came out, and it's not very widely available, I guess, but why did I wait so long to watch it?!

I love how Mick is supposed to be this rough trader, yet he has this sensitive side so beautifully brought to the surface thanks to Rufus' acting ability!

Now I see what you girls are carrying on about in this thread.....LOL!

[francesca]

I waited a long time for this, first not being able to get it in UK, then available only Reg I, then having to mess about with dvd player to make it multi reg,,so I was a bit ...this had better be good.
I was not disappointed .
This is a good old fashioned love story in an exotic setting.
the time setting was 40's just before the outbreak of war in the Pacific
yet the social mores of the time seem so intolerable to women of our generaton. The chauvinist of a husband ,who knowing the educational standard of his wife ,still only wanted her with him for her language skills, and typing His offence at her intelligence She being subdued by him until so called " savages" showed her that women could be the superior in their ways and thoughts. And the rougher ,less educated adventurer who, loving her,still sat outside in the rain lest he should compromise her till she invited him in .
There have been comments about bad lighting ,I'm no expert on that ,so saw no fault. have no comment either on John Howard's Scots accent which sounded no different to me than those I hear regularly around me here in the UK.
I found this to be beautifully filmed ,sensitively directed and acted
One Point
NOBODY TOLD ME IT WAS A WEEPIE.
I cried more at this for Mick ,than for lord Marke or for Giles.

Chocolate factor , only a few chocolate drops and certainly no wine!!
What I needed was a couple of boxes of tissues, a sofa to curl up on and a cushion to hug!!
Not quite up to Petruchio but Mick is a close second

[kygal]

This is one of my favorite Rufus movies. A very beautiful film all the way around. Was not sure I was going to like Mick at first but ended up falling for him. A very caring and sensitive man. I will confess that I watched the last scene before I started the movie...not sure why...I just had to...so I did not cry. Was a very moving story. On a lighter side...I did enjoy seeing him in shorts and bare feet (I like feet) and the dancing part....swoon....

I also enjoyed the interviews with the cast. The director kept talking about Rufus being so charismatic when they were discussing him taking the role...I can see that! I also laughed at one point Rufus answers a question about the role and kind of makes a face like what did I just say (probably just sun in his eyes but seemed funny at the time).

[numbat]

Sorry Frannie, didn't we mention the crying???

The crying that begins with:
"I once met a man, not my husband, another man"
and ends with:
"You look back on a life. What do you hold, what do you take with you into death. My father built bridges, my mother a home, I once wrote a book about a time and a place. But the thing I'll remember on the day I die, is the smell of a pearl shell freshly opened. Yes, that's what i'll take with me, into the dark"

Did we forget to mention that?

I keep trying to write about this film, but i still can't after all this time.

It's just too beautiful for words.

[bluehorse]

I find it really very interesting to read your opinions about the film. I can only agree with almost everything which was written here about this film.
Just one thing makes me wonder. It is about the ending. It did not satisfy me at all, to be honest. For me it seemed to be more a good-bye than a hello. A very sad goodbye... he standing in the rain with just one leg... and all she does is touching his cheek.
That's why I am really surprised about the different interpretations of this ending. Maybe I am to pessimistic? Probably you are right and they will stay together. But for my feeling, the scene says something else.
Next time I watch it, I will try to think more positive and maybe will need less kleenex?

[numbat]

Oh bluehorse - you are a friend of mine already. The first movie she want to talk about is IASL

Firstly, be warned, the more times you watch this, the more kleenex you will need. The more you love Mick, the more he will break your heart.

I think the ending can be interpreted a number of ways and although it's not satisfying in a "but i want them to live happily ever after " kind of way, i think that it adds to the strength of film.

There is much about Mick that is ambiguous - his background is never really clear, his accent is indeterminate, his motives are not always obvious. So for me, the ending actually fits the movie. He is complex and multi-layered and i think the way we see him is the way that Evelyn sees him.

The film is absolutely from her point of view from the opening lines to the closing lines, and we are given no more information about him than she is. He always remains a bit of a mystery and i think that is partly what appeals to her about him.

She is an intelligent woman who seeks much more from life than her husband is/was willing to give her. Mick on the other hand accepts her for who she is and never questions her actions or motives - he just accepts them, and loves her anyway.

So i think the end is a mystery for us because at that point in time, when they are standing on that railway platform, she doesn't know what the end will be for them.

In the same way that she doesn't know where he's been, what happened to him, how he lost his leg, why he is in uniform when he had been against getting involved in the war, we don't know either.

She looks at him standing in the rain, even more damaged, even more unknown than he was before and holds his face in her hand in a way that is so very simple but says so very, very much. At that moment, as in life, what the future holds for them is unknown. He doesn't know, she doesn't know and so we don't know.

Maybe he will stay, maybe he has come looking for her, maybe he still loves her, maybe he purposely sought her out to give her the pearl, or maybe he is leaving. That is and will always be the, enigma that is Mick.

[bluehorse]

Thx again, numbat! (the second reply from you this day, and again very instructive)

Well, your observations on this film are... perfectly brought to the point! And I think you are right. More kleenex next time.
It's maybe that I simply HATE open ends. On the other hand, when there are sad ends, I always change them into something else in my fantasy
(In Tristan and Isolde, e.g., for me, since Isolde stays alive, she will one day return to Marke and make him happy, finally)
LOL

[rueful]

{SPOILERS}



I have a little different perspective on the ending, colored of course by my own wishes.

I prefer a happy ending to a tragic one, and Lord know being Rufus fans we get more than our share of unhappy endings. As I wrote elsewhere once, Rufus seems to have 3D Syndrome: At the end of a movie, his character is most likely to be dumped, defeated, or disemboweled.

So on the rare occasions when there is even a possibility for a happily ever after, I'm taking it. The way I look at it, Mick is lost....alway has been. He ran away from [whatever] in the past, and no one came running after him. (Maybe because he moved all the way to PNG, but that wouldn't be the point to him.) He put up a wall against future pain, in the form of "I belong to nothing or no one." Then he met Evelyn, and he gradually began to believe in the possibilities of belonging to someone and/or something bigger than just himself. This is evidenced both by his care of her in the cage and by by his ultimate choice to stay on as coastwatcher.

At the end of the film, who knows what trials he has been through during the war, as you say Numbat. But we do know that he makes the effort to connect with her again. If it was just about giving her the pearl, he could have mailed it or given it to someone else to deliver. Instead, he drops it in front of her and takes off as fast as his little crutches will carry him. Running away again. But this time, the woman he loves follows and catches up with him, proving her love. So even though we can't know the future, I think the implication is that they will be together.

Besides my own sappy wishes, I also base this on the fact that I read somewhere {AGAIN, SPOILER}:

this was not the original ending. The original ending had her sobbing on the tombsone of the trader that was pointed out to her when she returned to the island. Test audiences found this extremely unsatisfying (DUH). So this is the solution they came up with. Ambiguous, yes, but clearly an attempt to satisfy the audience. And why would the audience be satisfied with anything less than a happy ending? Therefore, via my extremely circular logic, I conclude that a happy ending is what they intended.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. ;D

[numbat]

Oh, don't get me wrong rueful, i agree completely with what you say.

In my mind, they absolutely live on together.

I just think that although the filmakers didn't go with the crying on the tomb ending, they didn't want an obvious "walking off into the sunset hand in hand" ending either, because that would be totally against the integrity of the film.

That's why i think, because of the film being from her POV and because nothing about Mick is cut and dried, that they gave us an ending which is also ambiguous and reflects the reality of life - that absolutely nothing is certain (and without a doubt, the period that they were living through was a time of extreme uncertainty).

But, there can be no doubt as far as i'm concerned, how they ultimately end up, because of course, when she opens the pearl shell in the earlier beach scene, she finds a ring of gold which means

that

their love

will live

forever............................

[rueful]

I guess it's just semantics for me then. Unless the film had ended with them sitting in rocking chairs at a nursing home in 1990, we wouldn't know the future. It is like that with almost any film's ending. It is ambiguous, in that they could leave the station and be hit by a bus, but I think the filmmakers intended this as a happy ending, knowing that the audience's idea of a happy ending is "together." After all, they do return to the beach scene, so important as you noted. The new ending is done beautifully, subtly, as you say, to maintain the film's integrity, but to me, the intent is there.

And that's the way things are here in Ruefulistan.

[numbat]

But if it was that obvious, other viewers of the film (like bluehorse who bought this issue up in the first place), wouldn't be saying that she felt the ending was pessimistic - "more a goodbye than a hello" as she says.

And although they do indeed revisit the beach scene at the end it is accompanied by these words (in part):

"I once wrote a book about a time and a place. But the thing I'll remember on the day I die, is the smell of a pearl shell freshly opened."

So the use of the beach scene here is really for her to talk about her memories - not to give an indication of the future.

The way that we as dedicated Rufian optimists see things is not necessarily what the film-maker intended or how other people view it!

[rueful]

See, I just told Judy in the Elimination Game that no one ever wants to go along with my "reasoning."

I'm not saying that other viewers might not question the ending, and be able to point to thngs that support those questions (one of the reasons why it is an excellent film, so much to think about), but I think the filmmakers were making a choice. After all, they could have eliminated both the tombstone sobbing and the railway scene and ended with Evelyn's voiceover about the book and gone right into the beach scene. That would also have allowed them not to have a ending (definite death) but would not have generated so much hope.

I'm enjoying this discussion very much, numbat, but I have to resume my duties as unpaid chauffer. You and Bluehorse have watched this much more recently than me, so I really do want to know if there is anything besides the lack of kiss that makes you think the director was trying to leave it open.