Death And The Maiden Poem by gershon hepner

Death And The Maiden

Rating: 5.0


Tortured by the music, we
recall the early death not of the maiden,
for it is Schubert whom we see
before our eyes. While he was Liederladen,
he was compelled to shed the load
of unrequited loves and sorrows
that by our thirties time is owed,
but promise unfulfilled by the tomorrows
whose absence tortures us when hearing
the quartet of the maiden’s death. We feel
as empty as a precious earring
that’s lost its pearl, and its Vermeer appeal.

Inspired by the movie “Death and the Maiden, ” directed by Roman Polanski in 1994:
The film…is a three-character story set in an unspecified South American country (standing in for Mr. Dorfman's native Chile) after the fall of a dictator. Sigourney Weaver plays Paulina Escobar, a woman who was kidnapped and tortured during the dictatorship. Stuart Wilson plays her husband, Gerardo, a lawyer who has just been named to head a human-rights commission, a panel that will investigate murder but not cases of unlikely survival like Paulina's. Ben Kingsley is Roberto Miranda, a doctor who gives Gerardo a lift home when his car breaks down, and whom Paulina insists is her torturer. Though she was blindfolded throughout her captivity, she knows his voice, she knows his favorite turns of phrase and she is determined to make him confess. The look and atmosphere of the film are crucial, and stunningly effective. The setting is Paulina and Gerardo's idyllic beach house. But a violent rainstorm makes the lights and phone work erratically, and there is an eerie, persistent lighthouse beam in the distance. Mr. Polanski has created the backdropp for a horror movie, which turns out to be precisely right for the horrors the film will explore…As the doctor creepily fawns over Gerardo's role on the human-rights commission, Paulina hears his voice from the other room, sneaks off and sends his car off a cliff. When she returns, she ties him in a chair. In a scene that resonates with the idea of sex as a weapon of torture, she pulls off her underpants, uses them to gag him, then tapes his mouth and tears the tape with her teeth while straddling his lap. She speaks to him with all the vulgarity he once used on her. At that point, she wants to rape him, as he did her. Eventually she demands a confession. Ms. Weaver is sternly terrific here. Wisely, the film doesn't flash back to scenes of the torture, focusing instead on the power of memory and language to recreate pain. Ms. Weaver calmly and angrily describes how she was given electrical shocks and raped repeatedly by a man who played Schubert's 'Death and the Maiden' Quartet in the background. Now, holding a gun on the doctor, she puts 'Death and the Maiden' on a tape player and says, 'Let's listen to it for old times' sake.' She says this with a steely determination that is much more powerful than dripping irony would have been.

12/22/08

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