CONCEIVING ADA
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Fox Lorber Director: Lynn Hershman Leeson Writer: Lynn Hershman Leeson, Eileen Jones Cast: Tilda Swinton, Francesca Faridany, Timothy Leary, Karen Black
There's something awfully scary about this movie. "Conceiving Ada" is not eerie like, say, "I Know What You Did Last Summer," and in fact for maturity and intellectual depth it's not even on the same planet as that high-school adventure. Nor does writer-director Lynn Hershman Leeson spook us in the manner of James Whaley, who conceived not Ada but the Bride of Frankenstein. What's frightening is that "Frankenstein" author Mary Shelley's apprehension about the subordination of human beings by the very mutants we created is coming ever closer to reality. Take movies, for example. Special effects dominate the youth market more than ever now, as computer- and video-game savvy kids flock to theaters for the car crashes and exploding buildings rather than for the human performances. What's more a character like Todd, the title figure played by Kurt Russell in Warner Bros.' "Soldier," acts so much like an accomplished robot that Russell himself could have been downsized in favor of an automaton. Some visionaries have actually suggested that many films of the future will be as devoid of living actors as "Prince of Egypt," with computer-generated substitutes that look like anything but cartoon figures.
To some extent that future is here, with "Conceiving Ada" serving as a breakthrough in cinema technology. The human roles are taken by real people, though the part of a dog is assumed by both a real mutt (who is so ugly that it's cute) and a computer-generated image of the pooch. Ah, but the sets! Lots of brand-new technological effects are used, generally created with Photoshop software and added in post- production. The actors themselves performed against nothing more than a bluescreen, photographed with a Digital Betacam (with the images later transferred to 35mm), and for the most part the techies then took over. The computer-savvy crew utilized 380 photos of Victorian rooms of San Francisco Bay-area bed and breakfast lodgings plus some still shots of the actual room once occupied by the daughter of Lord Byron, Ada, known as Lady Lovelace. They superimposed the photos through miscellaneous digital technologies, colorized them, and mixed it all up in post production. Lynn Hershman Leeson, who had done scores of videos before involving herself in this groundbreaking effort, is just the person to do the movie, given her techie background and her desire to restore Ada Byron King to her rightful place in history.
Enough about the impressive technology, which you can read about in the American Cinematographer magazine of 18 September 1998. The film must stand or fall not on the cleverness of the set but on the quality of the drama. Drama is, alas, its weak link.
The story deals with Ada Byron King (played by the remarkable star of "Orlando," Tilda Swinton), who lived in England during Victorian times (mid-19th century). Paralleling Ada's life in many ways is a fictional character of our own time here in America, Emmy Coer (Francesca Faridany). Emmy is a computer programming genius pregnant by her union with Nicholas Clayton (J.D. Wolfe) and like Ada is obsessed with work while having a difficult time dealing with the thought of having children. While researching artificial life on her computer, she manipulates her unit to travel through time and to her utter amazement hones in on actual scenes from Ada's life which are uploaded by Ada's own memory. As acted with grace, eloquence, and intensity by Tilda Swinton, Ada takes the modern-day programmer through her experiments with the formation of a new language, one which could allow the a precursor of the computer invented by Charles Babbage (John O'Keefe) to do far more than make computations. Her intended language would permit this Analytical Machine to write poetry and compose music, among other delights. The passionate Ada is seen enjoying several love affairs with some of the brilliant men of her time such as mathematician John Crosse. But she feels that because women are accorded no respect other than as childbearers and homemakers, her discoveries became credited to the men with whom she worked. In one scene, the mortally ill and bleeding Ada is dismissed by her physician as being merely hysterical, is given opium (to which she became addicted), and told to "have a child" to get over her pain.
With only 85 minutes to tell the story, director Leeson spends too much time on the character of Emmy, who dominates the opening scenes, time that could have been spent more profitably exploring exactly what Ada contributed to the world of the computer. We are left with the feeling that the real work was generally performed by the men who received the credit, particularly Babbage, who actually built the device. We wonder, then, why the Defense Department named a whole computer language after Ada and nothing after Charles. Though Ada frequently exhorts her new friend from the twentieth century to "save" her, we learn principally that the salvation is to come by restoring Ada's name to its rightful place in history and not to deliver her from her painful illness, indifference to her children, or her feeling that she has not fulfilled her destiny.
"Conceiving Ada," for all its technological proficiency, remains a work too precious for any but the most sophisticated film buff, displaying Ada's appetite for lovemaking and obsession with her work but almost devoid of passion itself. A vibrant imagination is at work in its creation, but the film is all intellect--inert from the neck down.
Not Rated. Running Time: 85 minutes. (C) 1999 Harvey Karten
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews