Sunday, April 10, 2005

James Wolcott

“…. [W]hen the action in Mrs. Soffel shifts north…, the movie takes on a tonic, wintry sting--your eyelids begin to flicker in the cold. But what's more distinctive and thrilling about Mrs. Soffel is its feminist sinew. Unlike the young heroines of Armstrong's earlier films, Mrs. Soffel doesn't seem fit for rebellion. Gowned in black, clasping a Bible, Keaton's Kate Soffel is slow to melt into flushed life; she's a pale candle of bourgeois piety. Once the waxy coating slides from Keaton's features, however, she gives the sort of purifying, damn-all performance whe gave in Shoot the Moon. For Mrs. Soffel is ultimately a movie about a woman who chooses damnation, who hurls her soul into the abyss and faces her ate with renegade composure. It has been said that the first great moment in American literature was when Huck Finn, refusing to betray the slave Jim, said, "All right, then, I'll go to hell." Huck's soul in its violent flight, in its own passionate loyalties, refused to kneel before God and society, and so it is with Mrs. Soffel. Or as Emerson put it, "The soul becomes… [shoving] Jesus and Judas equally aside." In Mrs. Soffel, Jesus and Judas scatter like geese before her heretical love.

“Mrs. Soffel is also the movie in which Mel Gibson, a sex-symbol star, defines himself as an actor…. His scenes with Keaton near the end seem shorn of all art and protection; they have a plunging-into-icy-waters shock and invigoration.

“As passionately responsive as Gibson and Keaton are to each other in Mrs. Soffel, the movie truly belongs to Gillian Armstrong….”

James Wolcott
Texas Monthly, February 1985

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