Sorry, this movie sucks

Powerful

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

I have always liked a few British independent films, and I have to say this is a really good one, adapted from the semi-autobiographical novel by George Orwell. Basically Gordon Comstock (a terrifically posh and funny Richard E. Grant) is a copywriter at an advertising agency, mostly supporting the product Covex, and when he is offered a higher rank and pay, he decides to quit because of good response to his poetry writing. So he starts working in a book store, while he is trying to write the perfect poem and get some recognition and pay. His girlfriend Rosemary (an enjoyable Helena Bonham Carter) does still love him and want him to succeed, even with all his many faults. When he does get a big profit from a book, he just waists it on celebrating. This over-ambition and self-admiring will be his downfall as he becomes forced into poverty. He ends up having to get a cheaper room, and another lower pay library. There is a happy ending though when he finally decides to go back to the advertising company, and his poetry still comes to use, he gets married to Rosemary, and he has a baby coming! Also starring Julian Wadham as Ravelston, Shakespeare in Love's Jim Carter as Erskine, Harriet Walter as Gordon's sister Julia Comstock and The Royle Family's Liz Smith as Mrs. Meakin. The highlights are the moments with Grant and the Aspidistra plant, and the end song "Tiger in the Night" by Colin Blunstone is very pleasant. Very good!

This movie is a literary adaption of one of George Orwell's earlier works. The movie itself is somehow typical in its British style - Victorian in mood, like one of those outdated Ivory movies. But look more closely. You can find many interesting details, considering themes, metaphors and aspects of Orwells overall work. For one, there is that theme of the proletarian working class as redemption and only place of free thought. Escaping the control society - as it is portrayed in this movie- is only possible if you escape the middle class bourgeoisie (which the Aspidistra stands for metaphorically) and dwell into the simple life of sex, food and pure survival. Yes George Orwell himself dreamt all of his life about living as a free man and so he was constantly criticizing societies restrictions - in this case it is the "Money God", as the main character in "Aspidistra" calls it. Well its a little bit ridiculed of course by these snobbish British film makers and not taken too serious in this movie, but for Orwell it was a true pain. Another theme is the sex in the forest issue. You can find that also in 1984 - another metaphor for a search for freedom and unification with nature.

Richard Grant steals the show. Provides for more than its share of plot twists and wacky humor. I loved every moment. Helena Bonham Carter in lovely. To watch someone descend from relative prominence as an ad copy writer, through the legal system and from thence to life on the other side of the track. Ultimately all is well in the end.

This film, based on George Orwell's novel, manages to be entertaining and funny. It centres around a frustrated poet, Gordon Comstock (played by the excellent Richard E Grant (although Grant is a little old to play the role - in the novel Comstock was in his early 30s)) who tires of working for what we would now call "The Man" at New Albion advertising company and quits his successful career in order to persue his first love of poetry, particularly an opus called "London Pleasures". To this end he moves into rented accommodation, owned by a typical 1930s example of the "respectable" middle-class, who, of course, keeps an Aspidistra in Comstock's room. To Comstock, this plant represents all that he is rebelling against. Comstock struggles through most of the film attempting to get his poems published. He is helped and hindered by his Girlfriend, played by Helena Bonham Carter. She also acts as his conscience, badgering him for his foolishness and his pretentiousness. Comstock manages to get one of his poems published in the USA and is sent a cheque as payment. He manages, however, to blow most of this in one night and ends said night in the cells, arrested for drunkeness. Thrown out of his "respectable" accommodation for his crime, he moves into very cheap lodgings in a rough part of London and continues his epic poem "London Pleasures" Whilst living in this squalor, he discovers his girlfriend is pregnant. This is where the movie falls down. Admittedly, this is a problem with the book. The book has the same ending, but Orwell covered it more realistically. Comstock is forced to confront his responsibility and returns to his old job and gives up on his poetry. In the book, Gordon was loathe to surrender his poetry, but did so for the sake of his woman and child. In the film, Gordon is suddenly converted from idealistic poet to smug middle-class conformist. In the book, Gordon's embracing of the aspidistra was unpleasant but believable and even slightly knowingly ironic. In the film, it is, as above, smug and unlovable. This flawed ending drags down what could have been an excellent film. A shame, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't watch it for the great stuff that precedes it.