Monday 22 September 2008

The Other Boleyn Girl: Recognising George Boleyn


I watched The Other Boleyn Girl twice – once at the cinema with a friend and another time with my mum on DVD.

Both times my movie partners couldn’t understand the most crucial and dark twist in the movie. Don’t read on if you don’t want a spoiler, and don’t say I didn’t warn you …

The scene I’m talking about is the scene where Anne had a miscarriage and asked her brother George to sleep with her in the hope that she’ll conceive and that the king will not know that his wife had miscarried.

Now both ladies whom I watched the movie with didn’t understand that part. My friend asked me why I was making the tsk tsk sound. When I explained to her, she said “Sei lor … how come like that one …?”

When that scene came on while I watched with my mum, I saw a blank expression on her face and I knew she didn’t understand what was going on either.

I asked my mum what she didn’t understand and she said she couldn’t recognise the guy whom Anne was asking to sleep with. I wondered how that could have happened when poor George was quite a prominent character in the movie, with a considerable number of scenes. In other words, you couldn’t have overlooked him.

Only then did I realize that they cannot tell one Mat Salleh apart from the other. You see, the movie had quite a number of male Mat Sallehs apart from George. And to the Asian eyes, all Mat Sallehs look alike. Could it be because all the men in the movie looked alike in their costumes? :-) Thank God one Boleyn sister was black haired and the other blond!

To me, the dialogue was brilliant. I loved the choice and flow of words as well as the development of the story, not to mention the rich and elegant costumes of that era.

But sadly my movie partners missed out on the development of the story because they couldn't tell one Mat Salleh apart from the other.

4 comments:

sree said...

Recommended?

Julie Lim said...

Recommended if you like costume movies with lots of dialogue ;-)

Salt N Turmeric said...

And my husband wont be able to differentiate asians. To him, we all look the same be it Malay, Chinese, Japanese, Korean etc.

I dont really have problems differentiate caucasians or latinos but i do with blacks. Whc reminds me of this msnbc documentary abt crimes and true enough that caucasian always have trouble describing the perpetrator if theyr black altho it doesn stop them from describing anyways whc are 90% times wrong. Faham tak apa yg i try nak cakap?

Julie Lim said...

Farina,

Despite your ramblings, I actually do understand what you're trying to say :-)

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