ORLANDO
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1993 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: This is a critically acclaimed adaptation of the novel by Virginia Woolf, but while it is visually beautiful, the story is empty. This is a story about someone who has lived for ten times my age through fascinating periods of history--lived for some period as a man and some as a woman--yet who seems to have learned nothing beyond the superficial and has none but the blandest insights to share. Rating: 0 (-4 to +4).
It has been said that youth is wasted on the wrong people. In ORLANDO we see eternal youth wasted on absolutely the wrong person. We are led to believe that Orlando is immortal due to a promise he made to Queen Elizabeth that he would remain forever young, and his later conversion to a female is due to some unknown mystical process (perhaps similar to the process Gregor Samsa encountered). Actually, this film supports the interpretation that Orlando is so slightly invested in living at all that s/he never uses up the life he was born with. Orlando is barely alive at all, much less male or female, so shifting from one to the other seems hardly surprising. Tilda Swinton manages this feat of seeming barely alive with a face that is drained of color and nearly impassive. Her reactions are entirely performed by widening or narrowing her eyes while leaving the rest of her face deadpan--the same acting technique that Bud Cort used in much of HAROLD AND MAUDE. In face, it can be an effective technique that leaves the audience to read their own interpretation into the expression.
The story is, of course, that the handsome Orlando is a favorite of a near-death Elizabeth I. The aging queen is played by Quentin Crisp in what is apparently a casting pun. In short episodes Orlando has an ill-fated love affair with a visiting Russian noblewoman and an ambassadorship to someplace in Central Asia. He then falls into a coma and wakes up a woman. "Same person; no difference at all, just a different sex," she tells the audience after having almost no reaction to her gender flip-flop. It does, however, raise her consciousness on women's issues. I will not ruin the story and tell how it ends except to say it is not really a story, nor does it have an end. It does, however, take Orlando to a time in the 1990s--or certainly in the last quarter of this century--must require some license in adapting Virginia Woolf's 1928 novel.
ORLANDO is a novel adaptation for the 1990s. The visual imagery far outstrips the plot. The film has superb camerawork and terrific costume designs. Tilda Swinton is often upstaged by her own clothing, which is as over-stated as her performance is under-stated. The film is really not a lot more than a series of historical tableaux. It is like walking through a museum of British dress of the last four centuries.
This film has been very popular with critics, and perhaps I was looking for another film, but the absurdity of the story bothered me. Not the fantasy premise of the deathless person moving through the ages or even the changing of sex, but for the idea that Orlando could have lived so long and apparently remained so vapid and lacking in insight. This is apparently a person who takes a long, long, long time to learn anything. Twice she is in love relationships. They are very parallel relationships, or even the same relationship, that she goes through once as a man and once as a woman. Yet there is no sign that she recognizes the situation and she says nothing insightful about it at all.
ORLANDO is a short ninety-three minutes. Some scenes seem to go on too long and when it is over one feels that not much has happened. When it was over I had the distinct feeling that neither I nor Orlando had learned much from the extraordinary experience. I rate this one a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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