Post by RustiSwordz on Oct 1, 2006 1:28:03 GMT
mctoddridesagain said:
I totally disagree with most of the views here. I thought it was very good, superbly filmed, atmospheric, and with strong performances, especially that of Michael Sheen as Wells. If you want discussions of his work, there are now loads of documentaries available (and yes, some with nice CGI Martians), but it was great to see a film looking at him as a person, not just the writer.Rusti complains that it was typical media tosh concentrating on sex; sensationalist rubbish - but Wells's life was sensational! His views about free love, to say nothing of his others opinions, scandalised society. This is very easy to forget in these free and easy times, when the media is wall-to-wall sex - but HG's life was wall-to-wall sex. Given how central sex was to his life, to have avoided it would have presented a passionless, neutered picture of the man.
I especially liked the interplay it showed with other writers such as James and Shaw. It's all too easy now to just see Wells as the pioneering sf writer, forgetting that he was above all a social and political writer who was held in the same high regard as such greats as GBS.
It was also interesting to see the way his thought changed over the years, for example, from his relatively youthful belief in the elite samurai and his heartless advocacy of the elimination of the unfit, to his later disavowal of that view; there's a wonderful scene where Maxim Gorky compares Wells's earlier views of the unfit going under to the policies of the Fascists, and Wells replies, "I was young then, an ignorant gardener throwing down seeds for tyrants."
And there's other stuff there for the casual viewer to ponder. Wells's initial support for the Great War, and hard work for the propaganda ministry, which metmorphoses into horror after he visits the Front and sees what the War really means; the disgust of the ministry official as he listens, in mute anger at first, to Wells's proposals for a World State and the abolition of empires and monarchies, which provokes him to spit at Wells, "God damn it, man, this isn't f*cking Mars!" is a joy to watch.
And Wells's proposals for a World Encyclopaedia (which I think he also referred to as a World Brain), a concentration of all mankind's knowldege through technological means, is explicitly compared to the internet.
All in all, a refreshing film.
were we watching the same show?