Movie Review: Splendor in the Grass

This is a movie of thwarted love, which leads to a two-year stay in a mental institution for Dee Dee (Natalie Wood) and a life settling for for Bud (Warren Beatty).  The are from rural Kansas.  Bud's father (Pat Hingle) is the money behind the town.  When these two were high school lovebirds, there was too much going against the relationship.   Bud always wanted more in terms of sex, but Dee Dee always resisted based on her teachings at home from her mother (Audrey Christie).  Her father was supportive (Fred Stewart) but also in the back ground as they struggle  to get ahead.  They do finally make a killing in the stock market.  On the other hand, Bud's father is dead set against the relationship.  Bud is going to Yale no matter what happens.  He already destroyed the hopes of his daughter Ginny (Barbara Loden) who turns out bad as a result.  Bud's father manages to separate the lovers, and as a result Dee Dee becomes more and more distraught.  Finally at her graduation dance, she is with another boy at the kissing spot, gets away form him and is determined to kill herself going over some water falls there.  Her father sells stock to support her in a mental institution in Kansas.  She is there for two years.  She does come out of her melancholy, and befriends another man there who is studying to be a doctor.  He had had a break down cutting into a cadaver.  Before Dee Dee leaves the hospital he has proposed to her by letter, after he does recover and begins his medical practice.  Bud's father becomes one of those who jumps in New York, after arranging for his son to meet a girl who looks like Dee Dee.  After being released from the hospital, Dee Dee discovers she cannot go with Bud, he is married; she is going to marry the doctor.
Wood does an excellent job acting.  The quiver in her lip when confronted by a school teacher is perfect.  You can see the emotion in her face, and her lead up to the breakdown is well done.  She was nominated for an Academy Award.
There is some brief nudity, as Dee Dee's mother confronts her while she is in the tub.  Dee Dee has an episode as a result, screaming and ending up on the bed.  The movie has a good point in that, sometimes what happens to us does not carry into adulthood.  That is the point behind the poem the use,
 Splendour in the Grass

 What though the radiance
 which was once so bright
 Be now for ever taken from my sight,
 Though nothing can bring back the hour
 Of splendour in the grass,
 of glory in the flower,
 We will grieve not, rather find
 Strength in what remains behind;
 In the primal sympathy
 Which having been must ever be;
 In the soothing thoughts that spring
 Out of human suffering;
 In the faith that looks through death,
 In years that bring the philosophic mind.

-- William Wordsworth

Movie Review: ***^Rules Don't Apply (2016)

This is an incredible look at the later life of Howard Hughes.  Warren Beatty portrays Hughes, and gives himself a big task in portraying someone with phobia to germs, and self isolation, worrying about being subjected to psychiatric evaluation and a conservator appointed to steal his company.  Alden Ehrenreich portrays the driver, Frank Forbes who rises up in the Hughes empire to his closest confidant.  And then their is the actress, Marla Mabrey, for whom he falls portrayed by Lily Collins.  There are other famous actors who portray people around Hughes, Alec Baldwin, Matthew Broderick and Martin Sheen.  They cow tail to Hughes' whim, such as banana nut ice cream, and if they cross him they get fired.  They only person who calls out Hughes is Mabrey's mother portrayed by Annette Benning.  She leaves and her daughter stays.  Marla Mabrey is a woman who is determined to not have sex until after marriage, and does not drink.  However she becomes upset one night she is meeting Hughes, and drinks too much and becomes drunk.  In this mood, she flatter Hughes, who takes a ring from a drawer (among several) and puts in on her finger saying with this ring, I thee wed.  They then have sex.  She becomes pregnant.  The next day, following sex, Hughes officially marries someone else. t have a wife who will not let him be committed to an insane asylum.   Hughes does not take responsibility for the child, and Mabrey discovers Hughes' real nature and goes home.  She advises Forbes to do the same, but Forbes stays on.   It isn't until five years later. when Mabrey brings her son to see Hughes, that Forbes finally makes the jump to gain his freedom from Hughes.
This movie has an interesting theme.  To what lengths will we go for success, to leach off of someone who is rich and famous.  It is an interesting dilemma.  Hughes has very strict rules, and often objectifies the women around him, as well as humiliates the men.  But for the most part they stay.  It takes a lot to quit, even when the situation is bad, as the thought of money can overcome many wrongs.
Lily Collins must be complimented for her work in this film.  She is really a fantastic presence on screen.  There is a period after she leaves that the movie drags and I think it is the lack of the energy between she and Ehrenreich.  When she finally comes back, the movie regains its energy for the end.
This movie is a long-term project from Beatty.  He also wrote the screenplay and directed and produced.