Tom and Viv

It only played here in Honolulu for a week. I sure am glad I managed to see it.

Miranda Richardson's performance is incredible and I think that this film is the final proof that she is a remarkable actress, in the same league with Meryl Streep or anyone you care to name. (Clearly Jennifer Jason Leigh is also very good, as demonstrated in Mrs. Parker.) Willem Defoe's portrayal of T.S. Eliot blew me away. I wondered if they used some sort of electronic enhancement to get the voice so perfect.

As to cautionary tales.... I guess I've seen the downside of this sort of manic insanity in a lot of women. But I can also appreciate the upside. And it's not entirely clear to me whether the trade-off might not be worth it. When Alice was here after she first got out of the hospital, she said that the lithium she was taking tended to just flatten everything out. And it's hard for me to find a lot of value in that, even though it seems clear that for a lot of manic-depressives it's the only viable choice.

Incidentally, apparently you got the impression that Alice was a typical manic-depressive. This was not really my impression, although she does fit the general personality type susceptible to bipolar disorder and her actual craziness was a quite typical manic episode. But when she was living with me, I found her, for instance, quite careful and responsible about her medication, which is not at all typical of the other manic-depressives I've known. She did go off the lithium much sooner than her doctors recommended, but she tapered off in a very cautious way and asked me to help monitor her mental and emotional state. Since that time, there's no nothing at all to suggest any further problems.

The movie suggests, incidentally, that Eliot's wife Vivian was not a manic-depressive, but simply the victim of a hormonal balance. Of course the movie is based on a play written by her brother (or nephew?) and so I don't totally trust it.

The really chilling thing in the movie, the thing that everybody comments on, is that once Vivian was committed, for ten years Eliot never went to visit her in the asylum. The movie also suggests that for at least a large part of that time, she was quite sane. That is certainly disturbing, and yet.... It is so easy to be judgemental about people in situations that one does not have to confront oneself. I would like to think that I would have remained loyal and made a point of visiting at least several times a year. And yet, when one has to see someone whom one has such good memories of having now become a very frightening person, ... I don't know.
I guess I do feel that if one is going to have the value of the upside of a person's company, then one ought to be committed to stick with them through the downside too.