If you were a director wanting to do a film about the MeToo topics in the always emotionally charged, highly competitive, chronically precarious world of classical music, would it be about a powerful woman?
It’s a pleasure to watch a film that has such long scenes of people talking about music. And they’re compelling; I would have loved them to go on longer. The master class scene was perfect. I wanted to cheer at the end. A nice touch that the student who calls Bach a misogynist, later calls Lydia a bitch.
Lydia’s go-to insult seems to be “robot,” so it makes sense that all the aural distractions are mechanical. I’m unsure if the metronome was real or a dream (same question for the derelict basement scene). Who would have set it ticking? The friend I saw the movie with said the beehive logo on the metronome’s cover was also on the Sackville-West book (but I don’t remember that). Could the metronome be a sign of Lydia’s guilt regarding Krista?
What did you make of the ending? It’s a professional humiliation, for sure, but she’s still respecting the composer, no matter the music’s purpose. It seemed like the Bernstein video acted to keep her grounded in that regard.
(And a quick edit: the director is Todd Field, not Todd Haynes.)
Yes, the ending kind of hints at a.... possibility of a comeback. Not yet, and not soon. But she'll be doing what she's been sent on earth to do, and she'll be doing it till her last breath. There's integrity in that.
This movie makes me think of a film I haven't seen in ages, "A Passage to India."
In both films, we're not quite sure what happened behind closed doors, or in that cave. Our imagination fills in the rest of the details.
Near the end, you discover that Lydia's background is clearly very modest, which makes her attachment to Leonard Bernstein poignant: he was providing a public service, in educating the youth...and might have been deeply moved that Lydia, who probably wasn't your typical Julliard candidate, achieved so much in his field.
How much pushier would Linda/Lydia (makes sense she'd exoticize her name; Linda's so drab and prosaic) have to be, than your middle or upper-middle class type, who already has connections? It's telling that Social Justice Warriors don't seem very protective of the working class. While we don't know how complicit she was in that young musician's suicide, we do know that a humble young woman would need to be awfully determined, ahem, pushy, to achieve what she did. Could that have been her crime?
In real life!
It’s a pleasure to watch a film that has such long scenes of people talking about music. And they’re compelling; I would have loved them to go on longer. The master class scene was perfect. I wanted to cheer at the end. A nice touch that the student who calls Bach a misogynist, later calls Lydia a bitch.
Lydia’s go-to insult seems to be “robot,” so it makes sense that all the aural distractions are mechanical. I’m unsure if the metronome was real or a dream (same question for the derelict basement scene). Who would have set it ticking? The friend I saw the movie with said the beehive logo on the metronome’s cover was also on the Sackville-West book (but I don’t remember that). Could the metronome be a sign of Lydia’s guilt regarding Krista?
What did you make of the ending? It’s a professional humiliation, for sure, but she’s still respecting the composer, no matter the music’s purpose. It seemed like the Bernstein video acted to keep her grounded in that regard.
(And a quick edit: the director is Todd Field, not Todd Haynes.)
Jfc, Field!! Been talking to a friend about Carol and so this happens
You make many brilliant points.
Yes, the ending kind of hints at a.... possibility of a comeback. Not yet, and not soon. But she'll be doing what she's been sent on earth to do, and she'll be doing it till her last breath. There's integrity in that.
This movie makes me think of a film I haven't seen in ages, "A Passage to India."
In both films, we're not quite sure what happened behind closed doors, or in that cave. Our imagination fills in the rest of the details.
Near the end, you discover that Lydia's background is clearly very modest, which makes her attachment to Leonard Bernstein poignant: he was providing a public service, in educating the youth...and might have been deeply moved that Lydia, who probably wasn't your typical Julliard candidate, achieved so much in his field.
How much pushier would Linda/Lydia (makes sense she'd exoticize her name; Linda's so drab and prosaic) have to be, than your middle or upper-middle class type, who already has connections? It's telling that Social Justice Warriors don't seem very protective of the working class. While we don't know how complicit she was in that young musician's suicide, we do know that a humble young woman would need to be awfully determined, ahem, pushy, to achieve what she did. Could that have been her crime?