Word: stingo
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...will never be able to imagine how that feels, to understand it," she says. "The important thing is to convey the feeling to the audience." One member of the opening night audience was certainly convinced by her portrayal. "She was devastating," says Styron. "The scene after she tells Stingo about her choice - the way she evoked pain through her body, writhing in agony on the bed and then getting down on the floor and crawling into a corner as if she could hide from her grief. It was just amazing." It's just one of the opera's many wrenching...
...sign of deficient manhood. Reddin's cutting strokes are more often subtle, as in brief, oddly sympathetic glimpses of Castro and Richard Nixon. The central character is an eager, puppyish former Yalie tapped to train the invaders in communications. Peter MacNicol--best known as the neophyte writer Stingo in the film Sophie's Choice--is brilliant in the part, shifting from gawky innocence to sadder but wiser recollection and infusing it all with the self- intoxicating energy of the New Frontier. He is ably assisted by Polly Draper as a needling older sister and especially by Tony Plana...
Styron's book, unfortunately, is not quite a masterpiece, and from its structure come the main cracks in a movie that otherwise lawlessly accomplishes its goal. As written, the story of Stingo. Sophie and Sophie's New York lover. Nathan, is immersed in almost 600 pages of self-conscious, intellectualized ramblings on Stingo's past his guilt and his sexual frustration. This literary technique takes some of the emphasis off the actual events he confronts...
Besides the long flashbacks, there is nothing particularly experimental about the filming itself. The friendship between Stingo and the couple, for instance, develops through a fairly traditional quick succession of lyrical scenes--the three dancing, picnicking on the Hudson, whirling through Coney Island, walking to the top of a floodlit bridge. The sex scenes are carefully elliptical--more so than the book and the Auschwitz sequence, while suggesting horrors, discreetly avoids trying to show the unspeakable. The score is as lush as scenery and plot. The near-perfection with which everything fits together, technically and artistically, may be what...
...this does wonders for the tale's drama and digestibility. But it also tends to turn marginal implausibilities most glaringly, the life led by the pivotal character. Nathan, played by Kevin Kline--into enigmas that strain the viewer's credibility. And the one scene that returns focus entirely to Stingo--a ludicrous unsuccessful sexual conquest--seems oddly out of place...