"Libertine" with Johnny Depp. (caution: spoiler)

[kiraboo]

Saw his rotted corpse at the end. Body and spirit united in a form of retribution by Destiny, God, whatever. My life! Just waiting for the mold to start growing on my face...

[LynzM]

1. Hey kiraboo? Not all of us have seen this yet.

:(

[kiraboo]

2. Oh, sorry. I'll try to change the subject line.

[kiraboo]

3. Better now?

That's the sort of thing that just doesn't occur to me.

[LynzM]

4. No worries....

Thank you! :)

[kiraboo]

5. No problem my dear! n/t

[frankly_fedup2]

13. I'm just totally confused by your remark. It was stated that the post was

a "spoiler." Had you never seen that before?????

[kiraboo]

16. I've seen it, but I've always thought it was crazy

and so didn't think of it when I posted. Perhaps I am not such a lover of films that I would be upset to to read something about one I haven't seen. However I realize that some people do care. It was a sin of omission, and not intentional.

[kiraboo]

17. Oh! I'm an idiot.

I see what you're saying. I updated the subject line after she made the complaint :)

[frankly_fedup2]

31. I don't get that upset about spoilers not being posted in the title of a

post either and then reading the spoiler inside. Not that into movies either. I refuse to pay $10 to see a movie in a theater and cannot even smoke. Screw that. I'll wait for DVD and can buy it for less than two tickets to the theater with a drink and popcorn. :popcorn:

Other people get really, really, really, VERY upset if you give a spoiler, they are soooooooooooooooooo pissed. Gotta be careful of others' feelings.

[frankly_fedup2]

32. I don't get that upset about spoilers not being posted in the title of a

post either and then reading the spoiler inside. Not that into movies either. I refuse to pay $10 to see a movie in a theater and cannot even smoke. Screw that. I'll wait for DVD and can buy it for less than two tickets to the theater with a drink and popcorn. :popcorn:

Other people get really, really, really, VERY upset if you give a spoiler, they are soooooooooooooooooo pissed. Gotta be careful of others' feelings.

[radwriter0555]

6. I LOVED this movie... Depp is completely magic, isn't he? The

story is wonderfully told, screw the critics that whined about the direction, it WORKS.

His friends were wonderful even though we knew little about them, they were full characters. Great costuming, great story, great sets; lush, authentic...

I love how the story is told. I said before, it's the first time I've ever seen Malcovich not BEING Malcovich and it is such a treat to see him finally acting instead of BEING Malcovich. He was the king, not Malcovich. It's the first time I've seen him give himself over to a director who shifted his element.

Brilliant.

[Suich]

7. I almost rented it today but put it back when I saw that

John Malkovich was in it...I just don't "get" him!

Thanks for the tip...I'll rent it next time!

[zonkers]

8. Malkovich can suck the life out of any movie.

He always makes me aware that I am watching a movie and that he is playing a character.

[frankly_fedup2]

37. I'm no fan of his; however, he seems to fit perfectly in any of the

period movies he has played in.

[radwriter0555]

10. Malcovich's performance is one of the best of his career... he's NOT being

himself finally....

[frankly_fedup2]

35. It's a true story and that is what amazes me. During the different times

of our history, the extremes of accepted sexuality that would be considered perverse today, and even public sexuality during the Puritan years. What amazed me was that they had dildos in the 15-16th centuries and before.

[WCGreen]

9. I saw this in the theater.....

People went in expecting Pirates of the Carribean or perhaps even Willy Wonka....

They were a little shocked, I might add...

Me, I loved it.....

[kiraboo]

11. Depp was just unbelievable.

The filming and direction was fantastic... the details of the various performances were unusually authentic, I thought. I'm sure any criticism of the movie was based on a desire to make it more - polished, perhaps, in the modern movie sense. Instead it had a hazy, poetic feeling which suited the theme exactly.

[frankly_fedup2]

36. It came across as something that Shakespear had written. Even

though Shakespear was supposedly alive when this man (Johnny Depp's character), was alive as well, this character wrote plays that would be considered pornography even today.

[frankly_fedup2]

12. He had smallpox didn't he? Yet, his wife, who he treated with such

disrespect, especially sexually, did not care what he looked like. She came across as sincerely loving him; how

I do wonder if that part of the story was true or not or if it were just added for effect. I like the way the movie started as well as ended. He was still beautiful on the outside, but so perverse on the inside, ugly, cruel way he treated others, including men he had sex with. He even helped kill his last male lover (the actor that represented him in one of his friend's plays).

A perverted narcissistic sociopath who no one could resist, not even his mother.

So why would you see yourself in the same light . . . are you a closeted Republican? (lol).

[kiraboo]

15. No indeed! Never a repuke. Never.

And don't ask.

Another thing that struck me was how, at the end, he was beautiful again in the way only Mr. Depp can be beautiful, and he kept repeating, "Do you like me now? Do you like me now?" And you know what? I did! Frail woman that I am, lol.

[Spider Jerusalem]

19. Not smallpox; the Great Pox (syphilis)...

which is what Rochester supposedly died of...

[kiraboo]

23. Can you imagine how incredibly gruesome that must

have been? To die slowly, with only primitive palliatives to ease your suffering? No wonder there existed such characters. The horrors of daily life and the imminence of death must have taken their toll!

[Spider Jerusalem]

24. Well, it was probably better than having doctors get hold of you...

Charles II, the king in the film, died a singularly unpleasant death; (the following from 'Afterwards, You're a Genius: Faith, Medicine, and the Metaphysics of Healing', by Chip Brown)-

As the king went into convulsions— his mouth foaming, his eyes rolling back—fourteen doctors rushed to his aid. They were all disciples of the medical approach that came to be known with thanks-but-no-thanks irony as "heroic medicine." One, a Dr. Scarburgh, kept a record of their unmerciful assistance. (The often- cited account I'm indebted to was first published in 1929 in a book called Devils, Drugs and Doctors by the physician and Yale physiology professor W. Haggard.)

First a pint of blood was taken from His Majesty's right arm. Then his shoulder was cut open and another eight ounces of blood were "cupped" out. He was given an emetic to make him vomit, two purgatives, an enema, another purgative, and two hours later, still another purgative. His head was shaved; his scalp was blistered. He was dosed with powdered hellebore root to make him sneeze and powdered cowslip flowers to fortify his brain. To soothe his system after the cathartics, he was given barley water flavored with licorice, and almonds; cups of absinthe and white wine also were provided. His feet were plastered with a mix of Burgundy pitch and pigeon dung. Again he was bled, and purged with a variety of medicaments prepared from flowers, spices, various barks, even dissolved pearls. "Later came gentian root, nutmeg, quinine, and cloves." The king rallied the next morning, and bells were rung across London, but he again went into convulsions. Forty drops of extract of human skull were administered. Then, a "rallying dose of Raleigh's antidote" was forced down his throat. It contained "an enormous number of herbs and animal extracts." The king was given bezoar stone—probably not the bezoar stone which legend held to be the crystallized tears of a deer that had been bitten by a snake, but gallstones harvested from a goat's stomach. "Alas," Dr. Scarburgh noted. "After ill-fated night his serene majesty's strength seemed exhausted to such a degree that the whole assembly of physicians lost all hope and became despondent; still, so as not to appear to fail in doing their duty in any detail, they brought into play the most active cordial." And, Haggard concludes, "As a sort of grand summary to this pharmaceutical debauch, a mixture of Raleigh's antidote, pearl julep, and ammonia was forced down the throat of the dying king."

[kiraboo]

25. Agreed. The history of medicine is one of my interests.

Many a patient was killed by the "remedies" of the time, or their suffering cruelly prolonged. Louis XIV lost a wing of his family as a consequence of... mumps. The poor patients were bled and otherwise terrorized to death. One young child who survived did so only because his nanny locked him in a room with her and refused to allow the physicians to come near.

[Spider Jerusalem]

26. Kind of amusing to think...

that poor commoners were probably better off in this regard; royalty and nobility were much more likely to be subjected to the best available medical 'science', such as the ministrations of Dr Scarburgh (a distant great-uncle of mine; I first came across the account of Charles' death-by-doctoring whilst doing genealogical research) and his peers...seems that being left alone to die or get better on one's own offered greater chances of survival.

[Darth_Kitten]

34. Doctors then.....

tended to hasten the end of too many poor souls.

[Darth_Kitten]

33. Right, that was King Louis XV........

both his parents died from the mumps, first his mother, then his father 8 days later.
Louis was their only surviving son, the other two having died. :(

[bridgit]

14. that's no spoiler, that's not even free-form poetry imo...

:shrug:

[kiraboo]

18. If you're looking for free-form poetry,

you've come to the wrong woman!

[bridgit]

20. "to die in the house of mirrors...

"...and find on one there to close your eyes" - wildhorses :thumbsup:

[kiraboo]

21. Very nice!

I write the way I speak, with no attempt at anything other than saying what I mean. And yes, in real life I sometimes get confused looks. I think it's the Canadian in me. :D

[bridgit]

22. naw, works for me...

:hi:

[Rabrrrrrr]

27. I saw it two months ago in Japan with an audience of old Japanese women.

Yep - a Wednesday afternoon show, all older Japanese ladies, and me.

Great film!!

[kiraboo]

28. Do you have any sense of whether or not they liked it?

Curious.

[Rabrrrrrr]

29. One never really knows with the Japanese...

Going to movies in Japan is an eerie experience, because of the quiet - even during funny stuff, one rarely hears outbursts of laughter. Except, of course, me and the other Americans.

The theater was packed - maybe 200 people - and they all stayed to the end.

But I really have no idea if they liked it or not. It was subtitled in Japanese, and the translations were often less bawdy and less offensive than the English (the translation of "cunt", for instance, was less offensive), so in a way, they also saw a somewhat different version of the movie.

But I imagine, in the properly Japanese way, they enjoyed seeing the artistic creation of someone else and watching the actors ply their craft and, I'm sure, appreciate it very much.

But, I, was really curious how the women felt about it, and I wish I knew.

[kiraboo]

30. Interesting. Thank you for responding. n/t