#billy zane

[rafagrunje]

The Phantom - (Billy Zane)

🎬 O Fantasma "The Phantom" 1996

[soapsmoviesfootballfan]

[soapsmoviesfootballfan]

[thoughtfulfilm]

Orlando (1992) dir. Sally Potter

Three virtuosos (virtuosas? virtuosi?) - Virgina Woolf, Sally Potter, and Tilda Swinton - collectively unite in their craftswomanship across time to create a collaborative piece of art that is incandescent with meaning and significance. A re-watch for me (third re-watch I think!). Each time I watch it, the more I am convinced that the cultural value of Orlando as a film is criminally underrated by cinema buffs. I'm not going to call it a "masterpiece" because Orlando, and Potter and Woolf challenge the patriarchal and imperialist myth of the Master and Muse, but I shall describe it as a brilliant feminist classic. If you haven't seen it (or read the original for that matter), it's a must.

The way the story mirrors the coming of age and growth of a woman, of women, of Virginia Woolf herself, of England, of English literature and the woman as written in English literature - with each era's literary tropes (especially around gender) embodied in the way Orlando's life is told in each of the respective eras they live through. The transition of England from kingdom, to empire, to liberal democracy, to wartime crisis, to postwar. The progession of themes from Elizabethan courtly love, to the Romantics and Romantic poetry, the Enlightenment, Gothic Romance and the Brontes, to the Modernism of Woolf herself. The way the chapters also mimic gendered coming of age experiences - as a man: solipsism and arrogant pretensions of youth to confrontation with limitations, with expectations of love and violence, experiences of brotherhood, the concept of masculinity as embodied in love, artistic creation, violence, and political power. As a woman: the shock of suddenly being socialised as female once you hit puberty and realisation of your loss of agency and rights once your body changes, the struggles around agency in relationship to men, the challenges around love, decisions around having children/not having children, around self-actualisation, around our relationship with freedom, with nature. It's all here.

And don't even get me started on all the symbolism and representation of queerness, the trans experience, and gender fluidity. The fact that this was made in 1992 boggles the mind. It's a perfect adaptation. The costumes by Sandy Powell... the MUSIC...TILDA... Quentin Crisp as Queen Elizabeth... *chef's kiss*.

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[soapsmoviesfootballfan]

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Billy Zane as The Phantom (1996)

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