Review
The Poet's Wife
Journal of Film and Video (ARCHIVE), Vol.48(1/2), pp.106-108
01 Apr 1996
Abstract
Sharyn Blumenthal's half-hour dramatic film, The Poet's Wife, is about a filmmaker, Karen, who, while developing a documentary film about a poet, Thomas, becomes more interested in the story of the poet's wife, Wynn. Since the poet and his wife are no longer living, Karen and her partner, Jeremy (a writer and her former lover), must obtain the rights to the material from Wynn's daughter-in-law, June. At the end of the film, after seeing herself and Josh in the dream, Karen observes in voice-over, "As I stood there watching, I understood the power I had to picture my life like that, as one strong resonant chord, like a decision, know what I mean?" I understood the film's final point to be that to emerge as a winner, one must first conduct an honest assessment of one's life, and then, based on that assessment, have the courage to act. A sequence from the middle of the film illustrates how these elements become connected: there's a shot of June walking with Jeremy in the garden of the house, then a shot of Karen and Jeremy in a motel room, then a scene of June, Jeremy, and Karen eating in the dining room in which a disillusioned Karen leaves the table, then a shot of Karen in the room with the bathtub, and then a voice-over account of the story of Wynn's suicide attempt told over a scene of Wynn in the bathtub. In the beginning scene, Wynn and Kevin are walking in a meadow. Since we later understand this scene to be a reconstruction in Karen's mind, it would seem important to introduce Karen first.
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Details
- Title
- The Poet's Wife
- Creators
- Yvonne Leach
- Publication Details
- Journal of Film and Video (ARCHIVE), Vol.48(1/2), pp.106-108
- Publisher
- University Film and Video Association; Englewood
- Resource Type
- Review
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Cinema and Television
- Identifiers
- 991019170484104721
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