Mansfield Park

I imagine Mansfield Park was written when the 19th century's abolitionist movement was rapidly advancing, and the cruel and ruthless practice of slavery was soon to fade into oblivion.

But it hadn't yet as this narrative took shape so some of its characters seem rather outdated, as they lavishly live off the profits of enslavement in luxurious temper and ornate fashion.

Even if the story and its situations seem somewhat ghastly from current perspectives, it's strange to see characters genuinely presented outrageously profiting from the slave trade, I imagine it was daring and even groundbreaking at the revolutionary time, as it ethically shocked the established practice, and brought fresh perspectives to politically bear.

Thus, with the abolitionist movement passionately sermonizing in the background, Jane Austen theorizes Victorian realism, and creates a hypothetical yet possible set of circumstances, wherein which Society struggles with change.

The father, one Thomas Bertram (Harold Pinter), isn't squeamish about his distant holdings, and indeed brutishly profits from their labours, with no qualms or concerns regarding worker well-being.

His oldest son of the same name (James Purefoy) even captures his wickedness in a series of vivid disturbing drawings, which lead to his grand disillusionment, and general disregard for family life.

His younger brother Edmund (Johnny Lee Miller) has never visited their land or enterprises oversees, and has matured in the finest ethical tradition, even if he can't settle upon an occupation.

He grows up with one Fanny Price (France O'Connor) and the two fall in love through books and imagination, but they're both rather unacquainted with their own interests, and eventually find themselves about to marry others.

Even though they live with everything at their fingertips, and want for nothing material throughout their days, Tom and Edmund still detest their father's practices and express their criticisms with virtuous outrage.

It's unsettling to see people living so ostentatiously considering, but within the novel's historical context, perhaps it helped encourage the end of slavery.

Thomas has switched his interests to tobacco in the end and seems to have abandoned profiting from extremist tension, the counsel of a younger generation definitively having influenced his ridged composure.

I was surprised to see a Jane Austen narrative so sophisticatedly concerned with social justice, I had always presumed most of her books concerned marriage, and had no idea they examined broader issues.

Marriage is also of the utmost concern within the farsighted Mansfield Park, but it's regarded as another form of human entrapment, as Edmund and Fanny seek to fall in love.

The story's quite robust however and even though borderline romantic, still undercuts its amorous zeal with cold calculated depictions of poverty.

Still should people like Edmund and Fanny find each other love may flourish boundless and eternal.

I'm not sure how many liberties the filmmakers took with the plot.

But I'd very much like to read Mansfield Park. 

Orlando

What one gains to live forever without aging amongst the royals, while perennially persisting in novel light of heart heuristics. 

Through non-determinate trail and error Orlando (Tilda Swinton) learns of love and politics, like a youngster dabbling in frisk and fancy with everlasting inhibition. 

Not that everyone's at play the social lab invokes decorum, but as time passes new tasks emerge mischievously befitting a young immortal.

Orlando the film generates true innocence ironically immersed in frayed executive, eager to dally forlorn forever while at times taking part commissioned commanding.

The typical tropes you find in narratives concerned with living forever can't be found, as Orlando frolics through the centuries with jocose beam and slight expenditure.

Thus, concerns with true romance and personal loss don't fit within, not that there aren't moments of genuine displeasure along with strong desires fawned unrequited.

Perhaps it's supposed to be much more serious I'm afraid I just can't view it that way, Swinton's simply just too adorable and seems at home at rest at play.

I've had this problem with les adorables who as a metaphysical rule loathe as I admire, thus I've had to abandon the practise altogether in terms of circumspect affection.

It was the same way with pets when I was a kid, I would try to hug them and they'd bite me.

Relationships must be easy since so many people have them.

It'd be nice to have more money.

But other people have the worst taste in everything! 😜

It's cool to see Orlando isn't fraught with studious indelicacy, and her immortality isn't feared or hated as she travels throughout the centuries. 

Why she doesn't travel to the northern forests of Canada and Québec to make a home remains a mystery, she could have watched the wildlife for 100 years and still have spent another 1,000 shopping.

But she loves her gloomy homeland with all its rain and absent bears, are there any major forests left in Britain?, I heard they recently brought back beavers.

A cool companion piece for Highlander, Orlando proceeds with judicious humour, like an earnest library patron who spends their life enjoying stories.

S/he's living them however which does seem like quite the nuisance.

Role playing, expectations.

Disproportionately fashionable.

Cube

Vincenzo Natali's Cube presents a group of strangers who wake up within a byzantine death trap with no choice but to work together to gain their freedom. Their prison is a giant cube in which some rooms are safe and others contain malicious contraptions designed to quickly end their lives. Enigmatic clues are provided the deciphering of which will enable them to pass through unscathed. As the trapped individuals begin to solve the puzzle, it quickly becomes apparent that a particular form of human nature is their own worst enemy.

The characters are divided into two camps, one nihilistic, the other content with the order of things. Paranoid anxious dialogue delivers extreme points from both ideological stances as their confines suffocate their more polite characteristics. One character decides that they must take control and takes it upon themself to lead. Believing in a strict, necessary, veracious, immutable relationship between things and the ways in which a particular school of thought has defined them, they consider themself to be a representative of austerity and therefore the purist candidate for leadership. Trying to apply the guidelines of a master-narrative to their random circumstances rather than negotiating and aligning themself with the organized structural ambiguity leads to violence and madness, and the laissez-faire nihilists must cope with this determined beast. But passively accepting their situation and progressing patiently and calmly does not guarantee them success, for the designs of the cube cater to both reason and madness alike where only the innocent can survive. According to the ridiculous ending anyways. The logic built into this ending works with Cube's structure however, Natali positioning himself within the very same technosocial-predicament he examines, like Rousseau in a pernicious futuristic state of nature, and delivering the predictable stereotypical solution (the fact that the villain somehow returns) that so often is designated "correct" by its designer's dementia.