One Onerous Onion

Just one thing this week, the film Reaching for the Moon, the story of the tragic love affair between Elizabeth Bishop (Miranda Otto) and Lota de Macedo Soares (Gloria Pires) and two or three things to think about from that. 

Rather than go in for a review of the film or to attempt to use my insufficient but enthusiastic knowledge of Bishop’s life to pick at the holes that dramatisation leaves in the story, I want to concentrate on one aspect of the film, its conclusion and its comments on poetry. So, you have been warned, if you haven’t seen the film, or don’t know the story, don’t read on.

So, at the beginning, Bishop goes to meet (a frankly seedy) Lowell (Treat Williams) at the boating pond in Central Park, and reads him an embryonic version of ‘The Art of Losing.’ He says some not very kind things and then plants his hand on her knee, at which she giggles. Bloody hell. But it’s the composition of this singular poem that acts as a pair of bookends to the tragic action of the film. 

After Lota’s death (I did warn you!) Bishop again returns to the boating pond to meet Lowell and we are treated to a reading of the whole poem over shots of swishing trees and, yes, a fucking sinking toy boat. Come on! Mr Director, what were you thinking? And then this intelligent and above average film decends into a final 10 minutes of pure indulgent pap. 

How did this happen? Did Mr Baretto run out of ideas? Did they let the intern do the ending? Or can’t the medium handle the material? It’s at least possible that the end may have been intended as praise for poetry’s resiliance as an art form, for its capaciousness. Instead we’re left with the drab morbidity of an ending that seems to suggest that the poem is to blame. It was the poetry what done it. The poem that wanted to be finished, to be perfect at all costs, that possessed Bishop and killed Lota. 

Is that why I dislike it so much? Because there might be an element of truth to that? Donaghy’s remarks about his father’s funeral are in the same vein, the morbidty of the mind that creates, that wants to ‘get a poem out of this.’ Then the paraphrased Paterson: if you’re not a poet, consider yourself lucky.