A mother is desperate to save the reputation of her dead son. So to do this, she wants to have a lobotomy performed on her niece who knows too much about her dead cousin. She offers lots of money to a local mental hospital if they will perform the operation, putting an idealistic young doctor in a very difficult position. Mama is Katharine Hepburn; Niece is Elizabeth Taylor; Doctor is Montgomery Clift. Writers are Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal. Mama has kept her dead son Sebastian's garden exactly the same since his death (complete with Venus Fly Traps and other exotic plants you've never seen in your life.) She tells the doctor that on one of their many vacations, her son claimed to have seen the face of God. Not really the face of God, have you, but the symbolism of death, his own death, and a scary sub-reality that can only come from the mind of one of the greatest playwrights of any time, Tennesee Williams.
The play "Garden District" was probably something that was very difficult to adopt to film, that's why Gore Vidal (recently deceased as of this writing) came in to assist him. This is a story that is certainly not for all audiences, and those expecting Elizabeth Taylor to be like she was as Maggie in Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" won't find that here. Hepburn, too, has crossed the line from her witty comedies with Spencer Tracy into the bizarre, a tale of carnal lust that uses the tale of sea turtles burying their eggs in the sand and the flesh-eating birds who wait for them to hatch, as well as tales of using beautiful women to procure, and the eventual cannibalism that destroys its dead protagonist.
"Huh?" you ask. In this viewing (out of about half a dozen), I had to research other people's thoughts on the film as well, and came up with the thought that people will see things differently, as they do in many of Tennessee Williams' writings. Having seen most of his work, I can only conclude that he was writing through a tortured soul, even as a genius though as they say, every genius has some touch of madness.
The performances are outstanding, although some may see them as a lot over the top. But seeing Taylor and Hepburn together is a film lover's dream, and they play well off of each other, with Montgomery Clift (still recovering from that dreadful car accident) forced to be more of an earpiece to their dramatics. This asks the question, "Who really is sane?", and gives some frightening visuals of an old fashioned Bellevue like mental institution. The sight of a delighted crazy woman rocking violently as everybody laughs at the sight of Taylor threatening to jump off a stairwell may give some people nightmares, yet you feel strangely sad for the crying man whose cards fell when Taylor made her way onto the stairwell of the men's recreation area. Mercedes McCambridge is believably befuddled, although I had a hard time accepting her as Taylor's mother.
The play "Garden District" was probably something that was very difficult to adopt to film, that's why Gore Vidal (recently deceased as of this writing) came in to assist him. This is a story that is certainly not for all audiences, and those expecting Elizabeth Taylor to be like she was as Maggie in Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" won't find that here. Hepburn, too, has crossed the line from her witty comedies with Spencer Tracy into the bizarre, a tale of carnal lust that uses the tale of sea turtles burying their eggs in the sand and the flesh-eating birds who wait for them to hatch, as well as tales of using beautiful women to procure, and the eventual cannibalism that destroys its dead protagonist.
"Huh?" you ask. In this viewing (out of about half a dozen), I had to research other people's thoughts on the film as well, and came up with the thought that people will see things differently, as they do in many of Tennessee Williams' writings. Having seen most of his work, I can only conclude that he was writing through a tortured soul, even as a genius though as they say, every genius has some touch of madness.
The performances are outstanding, although some may see them as a lot over the top. But seeing Taylor and Hepburn together is a film lover's dream, and they play well off of each other, with Montgomery Clift (still recovering from that dreadful car accident) forced to be more of an earpiece to their dramatics. This asks the question, "Who really is sane?", and gives some frightening visuals of an old fashioned Bellevue like mental institution. The sight of a delighted crazy woman rocking violently as everybody laughs at the sight of Taylor threatening to jump off a stairwell may give some people nightmares, yet you feel strangely sad for the crying man whose cards fell when Taylor made her way onto the stairwell of the men's recreation area. Mercedes McCambridge is believably befuddled, although I had a hard time accepting her as Taylor's mother.