TGM review

Last week, we watched the movie “The glass menagerie” which was directed by Anthony Harvey in 1973. The characters were Tom acted by Sam Waterston, Amanda acted by Katharine Hepburn, Laura acted by Joanna Miles and Jim acted by Michael Moriarty. The main character was Tom, and he was also the narrator of the movie. The movie starts after Tom leaves home, and walking down the dark and gloomy street. The story is based on Tom’s flashback, and the conflict between the characters, especially Tom and Amanda.

The movie centres on a small apartment in St.Louis, where Tom wingfield lives with his hectoring mom Amanda, and his sister Laura who is physically crippled and insanely shy. The air of the house is full of miserable and desperate since his father left home. Tom is desperate of his hopeless life and seeking to leave his warehouse job in order to achieve his dream to be a writer, while Amanda has some hopes for her daughter to get married and receive some “gentleman callers.” Laura, however, is terribly shy and and lives inside of her own world with glass animals, which are beautiful and fragile like herself. The main plot is same with the play, but movie adaptation is more realistic and clear since I could actually feel their hopeless and desperate life from the conversation between Tom and Amanda. Throughout the movie, their fight spends one of the biggest part of the movie; most reason of their fighting was because of Tom’s outgoing at late night to watch movie. Tom always goes out at late night to watch movie, since Tom likes adventuring; however, Amanda thinks he is lying so she barely accepts the truth. From their fighting, it shows each character’s desire and ambitions: Tom wants to be free out of home and achieve his dream, Amanda desires Laura to find any gentleman callers so then Laura can become independent. Finally Tom introduces a gentleman called Jim to Laura, but this event leads to the tragic of the story, Tom’s leaving out of home.

The staging of the movie is pretty impressing, but also little disappointing. The director does really well at staging with different lights and inserting background songs. The lights definitely spends one of the biggest roles of showing characters’ emotions and feelings. For instance, in the beginning part of the movie when Tom walks alone on the street, the light is really dark and there is even creepy feeling of background music, showing Tom’s confusing feeling after leave home. Also the ending scene of the movie is definitely outstanding; after Tom leaves home and thinks about Laura, the scene shows Laura standing with Amanda in the living room and turn of the candles. Turning of the candles strongly represents that their life becomes even more hopeless and miserable after Tom leaves. Not only lights, but also the background music creates the environment of the movie. Especially when Amanda and Laura prepare and decorate themselves to welcome Jim, there is a bright mood of song that describes their exciting feelings of dreaming their hopeful future. However during the first and last scene where Tom standing alone on the street in the present time, there is a dark, gloomy feeling of background music which represents the tragic and sad ending of the story.

Throughout the movie, my favorite character is Laura. I like her acting style than other characters. She showed the significant difference after meeting Jim and before meeting Jim. Before she meets him, she is terribly shy that she quits from her business school, barely talks throughout the whole movie, and never conflicts with her mom like Tom does. However after she meets Jim, Laura has become completely different. She changes to be more confident, acts and talks widely, and even gives her favorite unicorn glass to Jim. Furthermore, I liked the ways that she acts her shyness; Compare to Amanda who is hectoring and strung-out, Laura describes her shyness really well through her facial expressions and defensive movements.

Overall, I think the film is very similar to the original play written by Tennessee Williamson. The plot is mostly same, and there is not very much added lines or new scenes from the play. I hope there are more details or gestures from stage and actors. The actors perform very nicely that I can focus well while watching the film, but I think that actors’ ages seem little more older than their actual ages in the original play. The stages are quite simple, but the light or music effects are well enough to show characters’ emotions and moods of the film. Moreover, It will be better if the film has better sound or screen quality. I strongly suggest this film to people who have not read the original play yet, they will be able to fully understand the plot or characteristics of the movie through watching the film version of the play earlier than reading the actual play.