New Movies: “Elegy”

On Bill Maher’s weekly program he has a segment entitled “New Rules”. It is one of my favorite segments and always makes me think. Since I am a movie buff, I will often include a segment titled “new movies” which will be a combination of movie review, plot line and my personal interpretation.
Last weekend I saw “Elegy” which stars Ben Kingsley. The story was adapted to screen from a novella by Phillip Roth, titled, “Dying Animal.” The subject matter is about a man coming to terms with his age and his life. While Ben Kingsley is a very good actor, I have a little trouble with him as the romantic lead. Actually he plays a character over sixty and I think he is truly that age at least, but his austere physical appearance coupled with the fact that his character is insensitive and totally lacking any self-knowledge is almost too abrasive. There are numerous scenes of him in bed and I don’t find a skinny, gray, overly hairy man very appealing. I like my men with some girth and eyes that twinkle …those bare bones hurt.
His character is a professor, a critic, and a renowned arbiter of good taste. He sees himself as others see him…formidable, respected, and impervious. Having, early on in his life and career, left a marriage and a son that he found too confining, he now seduces a new student, after final exams, every year. This how we are introduced to Consuela, played by Penelope Cruz, she is his newest student and soon to be his conquest. She is older, twenty seven or thirty, she is more reticent, he has to work harder, and this is always more fascinating. In the process of the seduction he falls in love with her but cannot believe that she really cares for him. He even follows her out on a date with a younger man and watches from the sidelines. Yet he invests as little as possible in actually loving her. I think he is incapable of any real love which is revealed as the movie continues.
After seeing each other for several intimate months, which include his hobby of photographing her, she begs him to come and meet her parents at the graduation party they are having for her. He promises he will be at the party, but cannot allow himself to be possibly judged by her parents because of the age difference and his own insecurities…his ego, so he calls with some manufactured and thin excuse about car trouble, during the party and disappoints her. She tells him she never wants to see him again.
His friend, played by Dennis Hopper is like the Greek chorus, spouting the truth and he exudes more warmth and has a twinkle in his eye that we never see in Ben Kingsley. His memorable quote is “we never see pretty women because they are invisible”…meaning to my interpretation, that men never go beyond a pretty woman’s looks because that is enough to satisfy them. There is also his grown son who often reminds our main character David, that he was never there for him while he was growing up and is still unavailable for any father and son bonding.
Toward the end of the movie, Cruz’s character calls him at midnight after two years of silence, comes over and confesses that she has been diagnosed with breast cancer and wants him to take some nude pictures of her before she possibly loses her breast. He does. She also confesses that she loves him and asks if he could love her with only one breast. He does not answer….that is the place I wanted to kill him and wished it was he who had the cancer instead.

It ends, of course with Kingsley trying hard to become a real human being, but for me it is too late. This movie is a good definition of the word elegy, which is defined as a work of art that is a sad, lament.
A better, more subtle movie with a similar theme is the one written and acted in by Steve Martin called “The Shopgirl”.