Volume 51, Number 17 · November 4, 2004
Taking Reality by Surprise
By Michael Wood
The Dreamers
a film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci
The Dreamers
by Gilbert Adair
London: Faber and Faber, 193 pp., £6.99 (paper)
Afterglow: A Last Conversation with Pauline Kael
by Frances Davis
Da Capo, 128 pp., $13.95 (paper)
Godard: Portrait of the Artist at Seventy
by Colin MacCabe
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 432 pp., $25.00
The titles alone of these works set up an air of avoidance and elegy. We can guess that whatever Bertolucci's dreamers are doing they are not attending to present and practical matters. And although Gilbert Adair's dreamers were called The Holy Innocents when his novel was first published in 1988, that title scarcely brings us closer to the everyday world. Afterglow, about Pauline Kael, is frankly nostalgic. Godard: Portrait of the Artist at Seventy, with its echo of a famous novel, reminds us that the artist was once a young man, and hints that the young man may be the artist who most matters to us.
Review, 4636 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |