Word: starks
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...factory. But when the strain of exhaustion and isolation becomes too powerful. Clara explodes into directionless rage and paroxysms of tears, set off by such poignant frustrations as her family's failure to set her alarm clock, making her late for work. No trace of individuality graces this stark portrait of women's oppression, so that while the helplessness and despair of Clara's position emerge with didactic clarity, her pliable, anonymous features do not hold any of the pathos which might convey the urgency of her plight...
...indeed of the whole fantasy of escape into aristocratic elegance which comprises the central theme of the film, is that this is precisely the sort of ambivalent and delusory self-consciousness we might expect a woman in her situation to have: the easiest exit from the drudgery and stark misery of factory and tenement is assimilation into the elite through physical beauty and seductive charm, as the heroines of mass culture from Cinderella to Marilyn Monroe have discovered. Had De Sica treated the contradictions in Clara's self-awareness with the sardonic tone whose subtle pinpricks enabled Flaubert to deflate...
...Eilert's book to the flames, Ibsen has her say, "I am burning your baby." Jackson gives the line the emotional urgency of someone tossing away old telephone bills into the wastebasket. When she takes her own life with her father's pistol, it should be a stark and moving epiphany. Jackson makes it seem like a one-minute ad campaign for stricter gun control...
Evans's photographs are often described as "desolate," "stark" "social documentaries." Many perceive his photographs as political statements or attempts at social change. But "That's inadvertent...I am not a social protest artist...If you photograph what's before your eyes and you're in an impoverished environment, you're not--and shouldn't be. I think--trying to change the world or comment on this saying. 'Open up your hearts and bleed for these people.' I never dream of saying anything like that. That's too presumptuous and naive to think you can change society by a photograph...
Rose's story is just as stark. Left motherless at twelve, she found herself successively at the mercy of a drunken father, the Southwold servants' hall, and a lecherous young master. Orphan Sarah's beginnings were livelier - and even more unpleasant. As a girl she is saved from impending rape in Whitechapel, but the man who saved her turned out to be a perverted missionary. By contrast, the weekly blend of world crisis and teapot tragedy at Eaton Place - where all the books end - seems calm indeed...