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• usman khawaja said...

  Posted on Sep 06 2009 23:30 BEAUTIFUL BUTTERFLIES IN A BESTLY WORLD
  John Fowles ground breaking book about a dysfunctional social recluse who collects butterflies was improvised when adapted by William Wyler and Stanley Mann into a simplistic narrative where the collector relates the story while the book narrates the diaries of both the victim and perpetrator.
  After winning a fortune at lottery Clegg played by Terence Stamp acquires a huge country estate and in a planned motivated scheme kidnaps Miranda ,an aristocratic art student that he worships and is obsessed with since he was a nerdish ,bullied child in reading .
  miranda like his butterflies is only a collection to be preserved ,pampered ,indulged and imprisoned in a cellar as he neither wants sex or love from her .
  The movie is a comment on the socially created class divisions which segregate humanity and thus ruthlessly mock the divine laws of human equality as clegg righteously claims that if for not his radical kidnap miranda wuld never have even glanced at him as he was but an insect in her world of pretentious art and wealthy hierarchy .
  the discussion proceeds as the two grow to develop a fondness after their articulate discussions and arguments which define theophosiphical and intellectual paradigms and yet miranda has only one desire to achieve her freedom .
  Clegg does not perceive her as imprisoned but as a treasured cherished guest and tries to please her with every indulgence .
  wyler has defined the desperation and helplessness of Miranda in Samantha Eggar's posthumous performance where she goes from terrified victim to a bewildered bereaved victim who realises she is a lost cause like the preserved butterfly collection of clegg ,who is defined as a sinister victim of social circumstances who has accidentally been given the power to acquiesce his desires by wealth alone .
  The ideology and vision if wealth is an evil that begets power for the psychotic kidnapper is obvious but so is the patronising contempt which miranda and her class practice towards the unfortunate nerds who are regarded as working class .
  the movie has enough emotion and intellect to immortalise wyler ,Eggar and Stamp forever and the vision of arrogance ,acquisition and desire are juxtaposed with beauty art and divinity in all the positive and negative aspects of the final equation .
  the best adaptatation of a fowles book ever which is a chilling reminder of how frail human existence is as it is compared here to the beauty of the exotic imported butterflies which clegg imports ,hatches and then impales at their prime to preserve .
  this is where art meets psychological complexity and obscure terrain where the answers are left to the subject viewing the art as indeed all art is subjective .
  Miranda tries to escape ,she even offers sex which repels clegg even more and evolves the script into an undefined meaphysicall sphere where the two characters are locked in an objure stalemate of pure frustration like humanity itself in it's existential dilemma .
  But there is no doubt about the exquisite and haunting emotions this evokes in your mind about existence as you empathise with both the stalker and the victim who are both justified in their own stance as they are acting out of their human godly instincts to persevere and survive .
  Yet the role of the society that has created them in their flawed existence is the provocative debate and it is as relevant today as it was in stone age because it questions the creation of civilisation itself and accrues the injustice suffered by human spirit to the flaws of our own creation .
  When it does that it virtually merges the most important question of where and how justice is served in the human civilisation and how is it perceived and whether it is just as subjective as art and religion itself .

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