Lolita (1997)
Seen on 6 November 1998 for $8.75 with Andrea and Lothlorien at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas
Setting all the considerable controversy aside, this new version of *Lolita*, based on Vladimir Nabakov's novel, is one of the most beautifully filmed movies of the year. Backwards tracking shots while simultaneously zooming in on a car in sea of grassy fields. Lingering twilights as the lamps of kitschy motor lodges turn on. The darkness of a character beside his car against the whiteness of a western desert. All of it accompanied by the haunting score by Ennio Morricone. Director Adrian Lyne spreads one of the most sumptuous visual meals of 1998.
Then there's the controversy: The little matter of a middle-aged man's sexual affair with a 14-year-old girl, the daughter of a woman he marries just to be around the young woman. There are people who see both sides very clearly; Humbert Humbert (Jeremy Irons) is seen as either manipulating Lolita (Dominique Swain), working the situations to his advantage; or Lolita has willfully seduced and broken the heart of a much-older man who still suffers the loss of the girl he loved in his own adolescence. Personally, I am in the former camp, but Stephen Schiff's adaptation makes it clear: Both Lolita and Humbert realize the powers they have over one another.
Set in the late 1940s, Humbert Humbert meets Lolita and her mother Charlotte (Melanie Griffith), marrying her to be near the daughter who intoxicates him. Charlotte discovers her husband's journal and is felled in the street by a car accident. He retrieves Lolita and, only after having successfully bedding her, does he reveal that her mother is dead. What ensues is a private struggle set against the vastness of America, as the unorthodox couple, posing as father-daughter, cross the country.
What stands out here, besides the filming, are the performances. Irons, with his long face, is perfect as the obsessed leacher. Griffiths' natural affinity for tartiness imparts the needed annoyances that define Charlotte. The standout is Swain's gum-chewing Lolita, alternating from "nymphet" to hurt child to viper to dullard. It's fascinating to watch Swain act like the exasperating 14-year-old she is one moment, and raw sexpot the next. The most startling scene is one in which she seems to be innocently sitting on Humbert's lap, reading the Sunday comics, rocking back and forth--until you realize exactly she's not on a rocking chair. Swain's performance is the key to the ambiguity that clouds objectivity with Humbert's rationalizations.
Frank Langella, who's body sure has changed since playing the sexiest Dracula ever, plays Clare Quilty.
Original music by Ennio Morricone; cinematography by Howard Atherton; costume design by Judianna Makovsky. Film Editing by David Brenner and Julie Monroe.
More movie reviews by Seth Bookey, with graphics, can be found at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2679/kino.html
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