Opening Day: 10 January 2008

OUR REVIEW OF "LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA" SOUDNTRACK

Synopsis:

Based on the acclaimed book by the Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, adapted for the screen by Academy Award winner Ronald Harwood (The Pianist). This is the epic love story of a man who waits fifty years for the love of his life amid the lush, romantic backdrop of early 20th century South America. Music by Shakira.

Movie Review:

Director Mike Newell continues his hit-and-miss streak with “Love in the Time of Cholera”, a disdainful story of love (as opposed to unfairly labeling it a love story) that befuddles grandiosity with spectacle, intimations with clunk and contemplation with melodrama. But much of the blame surely lies at the feet of Ronald Harwood, who won an Oscar for his adaptation of “The Pianist”. The same precision of skill never appears here in his interpretation of the best-selling novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It travails the same missteps as “Silk”, another successful novel that blundered its adaptation amidst the stunning visual faculties of its place and time. Both dealt with the densely layered realities of longing and the quandary of faithfulness but its films failed miserably in evincing the intangibilities of such complexities.

No amount of intensely lovelorn gazes, lush cinematography and melancholic score and can mask the frostiness at the core of the film, precisely detached from the epic sweep and intimacy of Marquez’s prose. Perhaps this notion of love might be something so far flung from my own understanding of it but there’s very little romance to be found in Newell’s abortion, other than the sort of love a narcissist might feel about his idea of “love” when it’s all boiled down to a sudsy sentimentality, undermining its truest essence of devotion by ennobling the actions of a libertine caught up in an instance of callous and unprepossessing obsession rather than one driven by a furious passion.

Florentino Ariza (Javier Bardem) must be the smartest fool in love. Spurned as a young man in 1879 by the ravishing Fermina Daza (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) for a successful doctor (Benjamin Bratt), the young man spends the rest of his days harbouring his maiden crush while embarking on a crusade to bed as many women as he possibly can during the next 50 years till he can finally claim her. Marquez understood the disconnect between the flesh and soul, using very little dialogue and a gentle, knowing narration to imaginatively convey the state of mind in Florentino’s decision to immerse himself in carnal wanderlust while retaining the burning desire of love scorned that elucidates both the cerebral behind his motivations as well as pathos behind his obsession. Harwood’s translation of Marquez’s florid style poses relatively understandable complications, except for the crucial mishandling that ends up completely excising its grace and gutting it of its profundity.

Despite its massive failings, at the very least the film isn’t thoroughly stodgy. Approaching the sort of artistic camp that very few films actually manage to reach (most if not all unwittingly), “Love in the Time of Cholera” points to the kitschy idea of placid romances in pulp novellas instead of a testament for undying love that marked the philosophy of its material.

Movie Rating:

(Fails to be engaging, devoid of passion and soul)

Review by Justin Deimen