John Malkovich. He's one of those actors you can hate one day and love the next. In Luc Besson's "Joan of Arc", Malkovich was terrific as the spoiled, under-handed Dauphin, but in "Ripley's Game" I found him just annoying.
At first, I thought that his mannerisms would do the same to me in this film, just annoy the hell out of me. How could a person this unattractive be a serial womanizer? But then you realize how perfect he is for the role. Driven by desire, limited in his accomplishments, he can't keep a wife, his regular prostitute rejects him when he starts to get too close, and his student submits to his advances only passively. (Although why she does that doesn't get explained in either the book or the movie. For good marks, perhaps? No, I think that would conflict with her other statements regarding the professor's course and her attendance at it.)
J.M.Coetzee doesn't appeal to me much either. The acclaimed "Elizabeth Costello" was plot-less, character-less and its monologues were of only limited interest. "Disgrace" was a much better book, I think, well-plotted, well thought out, and with well-drawn characters. In fact, I thought it was better than the film. It's a while since I read the book, but I seem to recall the professor's affair consuming perhaps the first third of the book, his arrival at the Cape and immersion into his daughter's life perhaps another third, then comes the attack and its consequences. The movie seems to skip as quickly as possible to the attack, then follows a somewhat boring set of post-attack psychological musings, with very little activity of any interest. Lucy spends a lot of time lying down and staring off into space, while David does some wandering about, some work at the clinic, passes the odd cryptic remark to Petrus, and makes some very sexless love to Bev.
The book, and the film, make some cogent and brave comments upon the state of South Africa, and the film, to be fair, tries to convey those points. But where the book could get away with being bland and boring in parts, the movie needed to excise those bits and keep its momentum. I think that it failed in that regard.
At first, I thought that his mannerisms would do the same to me in this film, just annoy the hell out of me. How could a person this unattractive be a serial womanizer? But then you realize how perfect he is for the role. Driven by desire, limited in his accomplishments, he can't keep a wife, his regular prostitute rejects him when he starts to get too close, and his student submits to his advances only passively. (Although why she does that doesn't get explained in either the book or the movie. For good marks, perhaps? No, I think that would conflict with her other statements regarding the professor's course and her attendance at it.)
J.M.Coetzee doesn't appeal to me much either. The acclaimed "Elizabeth Costello" was plot-less, character-less and its monologues were of only limited interest. "Disgrace" was a much better book, I think, well-plotted, well thought out, and with well-drawn characters. In fact, I thought it was better than the film. It's a while since I read the book, but I seem to recall the professor's affair consuming perhaps the first third of the book, his arrival at the Cape and immersion into his daughter's life perhaps another third, then comes the attack and its consequences. The movie seems to skip as quickly as possible to the attack, then follows a somewhat boring set of post-attack psychological musings, with very little activity of any interest. Lucy spends a lot of time lying down and staring off into space, while David does some wandering about, some work at the clinic, passes the odd cryptic remark to Petrus, and makes some very sexless love to Bev.
The book, and the film, make some cogent and brave comments upon the state of South Africa, and the film, to be fair, tries to convey those points. But where the book could get away with being bland and boring in parts, the movie needed to excise those bits and keep its momentum. I think that it failed in that regard.