"The Master Builder", by Ibsen now a movie!
When I chose this play, one of the last of Ibsen, and the most autobiographical, it seemed obscure to me. I had never seen it performed and had not even read it, but became fascinated. The timing was right, as the play was presented in the sponsored Ibsen festival by the Norweigan government, and was done in HK, in Japan, and in Beijing, during my residency at Fudan University, where I presented a talk, chosen by the MLA, for its international Ibsen Conference at Fudan University in China. 100/300 presentations were published in the subsequent book anthologizing the lectures and articles by Fudan University in cooperation with the Ibsen Center in Oslo.
It also reminds me that the Norweigan Consul General, the president of the Ibsen Society, and the faculty at the university in Oslo issued an invitation for me to spend a fulbright on their campus, and the application was completely ignored in Washington DC. It was the wrong timing, as it was an election, I guess, whatever; it was embarassing, and a loss for me. The only award given that year was in an environmental project. Now, the time has passed. All has shifted. The Consul is retired as is the director of the Ibsen Center, which has now been moved out of its lovely house to the Oslo University campus. All the contacts took place in Shanghai, China.
In any event, the review of the film is in the New Yorker, August 4, 2014. The Current Cinema p. 75. "The film is based on Ibsen's "The Master Builder", which, since its premiere, in 1893, has left audiences flailing in confusion and alarm, and producers riven: should they strain for naturalism or surrender to a rich symbolic dream? " The critic feels the film directed by Jonathan Demme does not work. "One clue lies with James Joyce, a fervid Ibsenite, who noted in an essay written at the age of eighteen, that the later plays, like this one, had "a tendency to get ouf of closed rooms"-- quite a relief, after the cagelike chambers of "A Doll's House" and "Ghosts"..."A Master Builder" is a bold endeavor, thriftily made, and there is muscle and volume in the performances; but had Demme hung back, and kept things cooler and quieter, the mastery of what Ibsen bjilt, and the agon of his extraordinary hero, would have cast a more looming shadow."
I will have to see it for myself! I spent much time with this play, nearly a year, and looked at it from many angles, and grew to appreciate its accomplishment, not only in analogizing the playwright to the architect, but employing the architecture and architectonics to structure the complexities of Ibsen's vision.
It also reminds me that the Norweigan Consul General, the president of the Ibsen Society, and the faculty at the university in Oslo issued an invitation for me to spend a fulbright on their campus, and the application was completely ignored in Washington DC. It was the wrong timing, as it was an election, I guess, whatever; it was embarassing, and a loss for me. The only award given that year was in an environmental project. Now, the time has passed. All has shifted. The Consul is retired as is the director of the Ibsen Center, which has now been moved out of its lovely house to the Oslo University campus. All the contacts took place in Shanghai, China.
In any event, the review of the film is in the New Yorker, August 4, 2014. The Current Cinema p. 75. "The film is based on Ibsen's "The Master Builder", which, since its premiere, in 1893, has left audiences flailing in confusion and alarm, and producers riven: should they strain for naturalism or surrender to a rich symbolic dream? " The critic feels the film directed by Jonathan Demme does not work. "One clue lies with James Joyce, a fervid Ibsenite, who noted in an essay written at the age of eighteen, that the later plays, like this one, had "a tendency to get ouf of closed rooms"-- quite a relief, after the cagelike chambers of "A Doll's House" and "Ghosts"..."A Master Builder" is a bold endeavor, thriftily made, and there is muscle and volume in the performances; but had Demme hung back, and kept things cooler and quieter, the mastery of what Ibsen bjilt, and the agon of his extraordinary hero, would have cast a more looming shadow."
I will have to see it for myself! I spent much time with this play, nearly a year, and looked at it from many angles, and grew to appreciate its accomplishment, not only in analogizing the playwright to the architect, but employing the architecture and architectonics to structure the complexities of Ibsen's vision.
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