Abishai100
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- Sep 22, 2013
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Bartleby (Crispin Glover) review. Thanks for reading,
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I remember reading the Herman Melville story of creepy office-work metaphysics in high-school (AP English) and thinking it was a tale for me, an American person/student/writer/anthropologist thinking of how office civilization was not disproportionate to the imaginative notion that bureaucracy was somehow like a ghost or nose feel. Well, this 2001 adaptation featuring a well-cast Crispin Glover as the protagonist antihero office-man of records-filing and eccentric silent privacy hits the note of what makes the Earth office a thing of personality cubicles! Incidentally, I always thought 'cubicles' could be spelled 'cubicals' by any literate American (ha).
The film features a cast surrounding Glover's sensitive/bright performance that hits right-notes on what made/makes this Melville bureaucracy 'jitters' tale one of non-standard or even non-relevant Orwellian space-making, highlighting why personalities in the office-space are conversation-driven and uniforms/clothing/fashion superstitious (ok!). The sets are simple and color-rich, and the dialogue, modernized for a modernized/adapted (American) offices-setting of records-filing, highlight why one would find offbeat very quiet humor in a work-environment (ha).
I remembered from my school-reading of this Melville story why the protagonist eerie antihero bureaucracy-man, Bartleby ('the Scrivener') kept insisting, after working for some initial post-hire time, he'd "prefer not to" accept the orders of his stunned employer. However, he refused to do even simple/menial tasks required by his position, and his employer remained confused and oddly frightened. Meanwhile, Bartleby kept shrinking into some Selfie-psyche hole. It's both funny and bizarre and eerily soft-toned. This 2001 movie adaptation with Glover as Bartleby the bureaucrat is nice motion-picture 'environment' coloring that psyche 'feeling' of what makes personality-touches in an office of civilization something of a language-art jitters (of doubt).
This is simply-made film, well-cast and nicely-acted, and cleverly mounted and colored and set designed and highlights what makes office-weirdness at-once disorienting and almost Jabberwocky-like. Glover's Bartleby is a nice literary-adaptation performance revealing why cinema colors storytelling for Selfie-visualization; and I'd compare it (figuratively or by analogy thought) to Gregory Peck's work in the Melville-adapted Moby Dick. I give this designed-film venture a nice 4/5 stars for its cute and taut intentionality to make bureaucracy-storytelling a highlight for a dystopian workshop.
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"Money is everything" (Ecclesiastes)
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I remember reading the Herman Melville story of creepy office-work metaphysics in high-school (AP English) and thinking it was a tale for me, an American person/student/writer/anthropologist thinking of how office civilization was not disproportionate to the imaginative notion that bureaucracy was somehow like a ghost or nose feel. Well, this 2001 adaptation featuring a well-cast Crispin Glover as the protagonist antihero office-man of records-filing and eccentric silent privacy hits the note of what makes the Earth office a thing of personality cubicles! Incidentally, I always thought 'cubicles' could be spelled 'cubicals' by any literate American (ha).
The film features a cast surrounding Glover's sensitive/bright performance that hits right-notes on what made/makes this Melville bureaucracy 'jitters' tale one of non-standard or even non-relevant Orwellian space-making, highlighting why personalities in the office-space are conversation-driven and uniforms/clothing/fashion superstitious (ok!). The sets are simple and color-rich, and the dialogue, modernized for a modernized/adapted (American) offices-setting of records-filing, highlight why one would find offbeat very quiet humor in a work-environment (ha).
I remembered from my school-reading of this Melville story why the protagonist eerie antihero bureaucracy-man, Bartleby ('the Scrivener') kept insisting, after working for some initial post-hire time, he'd "prefer not to" accept the orders of his stunned employer. However, he refused to do even simple/menial tasks required by his position, and his employer remained confused and oddly frightened. Meanwhile, Bartleby kept shrinking into some Selfie-psyche hole. It's both funny and bizarre and eerily soft-toned. This 2001 movie adaptation with Glover as Bartleby the bureaucrat is nice motion-picture 'environment' coloring that psyche 'feeling' of what makes personality-touches in an office of civilization something of a language-art jitters (of doubt).
This is simply-made film, well-cast and nicely-acted, and cleverly mounted and colored and set designed and highlights what makes office-weirdness at-once disorienting and almost Jabberwocky-like. Glover's Bartleby is a nice literary-adaptation performance revealing why cinema colors storytelling for Selfie-visualization; and I'd compare it (figuratively or by analogy thought) to Gregory Peck's work in the Melville-adapted Moby Dick. I give this designed-film venture a nice 4/5 stars for its cute and taut intentionality to make bureaucracy-storytelling a highlight for a dystopian workshop.
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"Money is everything" (Ecclesiastes)
