Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)

One of the best movies ever made

One of the best movies ever made. Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor are outstanding. It has some very humorous lines even though the overall movie is rather depressing. I've watched it over and over. September 4, 2008

Virginia Woolf Review

I enjoyed this movie. I like how the directors of the movie move the fear of Virginia to the humbling of Virginia. I like how Burton comes up with his plan to overcome Woolf in the movie. I even wrote a thesis on the movie. My professor loves the article and praises me in her letter that she wrote back to me. The movie shows a side of Taylor that beginning Theatre students are exposed to. All in all, I enjoyed being exposed to an old movie that still has relevance to today. Eric Davis August 31, 2008

Of its time and place

So many great reviews here that I think my expectations were too high. The performances were amazing, but the action and dialog seemed too theatrical at times (not surprising as this was originally a stage play. I agree with another viewer that it felt overlong. And the denoument (no spoiler here) seemed quite contrived. Still, a classic for its time and place, and undoubtedly a breakthrough in film. July 23, 2008

Improved WOOLF

Very good remastering of the Albee classic, with great, insightful commentary by Mike Nichols, as well as the iffy one by cinematographer Haskell Welxer that was on the first pressing in the late 90s. A lot of specific information about how the play ended up pretty much whole in a still code-ridden era. Good new documentaries about the film and a minor one about Taylor's career round out the package.

The film itself is a definite classic, maybe a bit too serious in tone, whereas a good production of the play is riotously funny. This seems pretty heavy going and somber most of the way through because they felt they had to be so in order to pass muster with the censors.

All four of the stars are perfect. Burton probably has his finest moments ever on screen, and there's nothing like this anywhere else in Taylor's career.

The plot is a puzzlement, but that's as it should be. This is not THE VIPS, BOOM or THE SANDPIPER. In fact, it's not a Taylor/Burton film at all. It's an honest attempt to turn one of the top pieces of dramatic literature in the last half of the 20th Century into a marketable big studio film. It isn't destroyed, as is so often the case. Although, to listen to Nichols on the commentary. it came dangerously close. July 14, 2008

Watching the film again...

I'm not sure how many people would agree with me, but after watching this movie again I was struck by something that I'd never noticed before. (Spoiler alert.)

First, I've seen this movie about a dozen times over the years, and like most people, what always stuck with me was the level of psychological damage that these two characters inflict upon each other. Edward Albee seems particularly sharp in showing how self-contempt and contempt for one's partner become symbiotic in "dysfunctional" relationships. George needs Martha's contempt as well as her love, just as she needs his contempt as well as his love. For them, the two emotions are two sides of the same coin--to such an extent that each emotion even seems to be a manifestation of the other. I've never seen a film that captures this psychological chemistry as powerfully as Nichols's adaptation, and the Burton-Taylor performances are truly remarkable. One can only guess how much the actors recognized these emotions in their own lives.

Moreover, when one eventually realizes the sort of "game" that's being played, the bizarre nature of the premise seems to be a pretty striking commentary on how our intimate relationships are based on understandings that are only exposed as "fictions" (or rather, only become "fictions") when consensus no longer exists. However weird the whole setup is with George and Martha's "son," Albee seems to have meant it as only a more extreme, exaggerated illustration of this dynamic. When our relationships begin to erode, the premises or assumptions that they've been based on begin to erode as well. If George and Martha's son can be taken literally as a sort of psychic "buffer" or "crutch" they've created to sustain their tenuous marriage, the son can also be taken as a sort of metaphor for such unspoken premises in any relationship. Their pathology, I think, has a certain level of psychological truth that applies in a less extreme way to "normal" relationships as well.

But what really hit me this time was something else. What I never fully appreciated about this film is that for all its psychological violence, for all the outbursts and cruel mind games that we see on display, the film ends with George and Martha still together--quietly, hesitantly considering whether they can now start their relationship on some new basis without the sustaining fiction of their "son." True, there are no guarantees here, but I think that any view of this film as overly bleak is very misguided. If anything, George and Martha's relationship actually has a much greater chance of surviving than the sort of marriage in which each person has given up on each other for good. I won't go into details, but suffice it to say that I've seen what a truly numbing, deadening effect that failed marriages can have on people. Compared to what I've seen, George and Martha's story resonates with vitality in all its sound and fury, and the final scene brought tears to my eyes not because of what they'd lost--but for what they still have the chance to preserve in some new form. When I saw Nichols's close-up on their held hands in the final shot, I realized that what I was seeing was still very much a love story...free of easy cynicism on the one hand or easy sentimentalism on the other hand, and instead ending with a very fragile, hard-earned sense of hope.
June 19, 2008

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