BEFORE: I'm going to treat this like a Richard Burton section of the chain, though Liz Taylor will be here for most of it, she's not in ALL of the films. So it's Day 2 of Richard Burton week as he carries over from "The Comedians".
THE PLOT: A free-spirited single mother forms a connection with the wed headmaster of an Episcopal boarding school in California.
AFTER: Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were quite simply THE biggest stars of the 1960's, and the media attention that focused on their marriages (that's right, plural...) was probably the start of the feeding frenzy that's been taking place ever since, with the personal lives of celebrities supplying constant grist for the publicity mill. It seems all you had to do in those days was put them in a movie together, put an artistic rendering of them holding each other or making out on the poster, and you'd put asses in the theater seats. How many people went to see "The Comedians" thinking it was a love story, then got hit with a diatribe on the Haitian political scene?
But this one gets into more of the nuts-and-bolts of a love affair, so in a way it reminds me of "Take This Waltz". How did these two people meet each other, what connects them? What does he see in her that he doesn't see in his wife? What's the draw, the attraction, what keeps him coming back to her, even though this relationship is defined as "wrong" by society and the rules of marriage? And what effect will there be, ultimately, on his marriage and him as a moral person? It's almost a textbook case when you step back and take a look at it from a distance, and the movie does answer all of these questions. It's the kind of movie that should be shown in film school to demonstrate proper three-act structure and the anatomy of a relationship film.
In this case, he's a school headmaster and a married minister - for extra drama we've got the religion angle here - and she's the mother of a troubled young boy who's been raised so far without proper schooling or religion, though his mother has apparently been teaching him at home about Chaucer and other classic literature. She's the new (1960's) modern kind of woman, the Bohemian artist type who chose to live without a husband and be a single parent, live in a shack near the beach and sell a painting every once in a while for grocery money. Men come and go, obviously, but that's all part of the new (again, 1960's) sexual revolution. But then a judge decides that her son would be better off in boarding school, with some structure and moral fiber in his life, so he's sent to the Episcopal school, and that puts the headmaster and the artist on a sort of collision course.
He's her polar opposite, with a routine life, marriage and two sons, but on some level, he needs this shake-up - long ago he stopped doing what was "moral" because he's become more fund-raiser than schoolmaster, with high rollers donating to the school and getting some benefit in the form of what, tax write-offs? This part was a little unclear, but it seems something shady was going on... Was he enrolling the sons of the wealthy benefactors and giving them passing grades, or looking the other way when they got into trouble? I must have missed something...
The headmaster's wife is a total blank here, but that works with the formula, because if she were incredibly nice, or very affectionate, or super smart, or anything interesting really, then we really wouldn't understand the need for her husband to have an affair. That's where "Take This Waltz" sort of screwed up by casting Seth Rogen, who's very likable and funny, and then they made his character have like 1,000 different recipes for cooking delicious chicken. So why couldn't his wife be happy with him - he sounds like quite a catch! (Geez, I'd marry that, and I'm straight...JK)
The imagery with the wounded bird, the sandpiper of the title, is a bit much. Obviously the bird represents the headmaster, who's "broken" in a way, or he's unable to fly free because he's tied down by his marriage and his morals. Staying with the artist for a while "heals" him, and then he can fly free. But at what cost? Yeah, I get it, we all have the power to fly free, we're all just scared of hitting the door or window on our way out - that's a bit heavy-handed, no?
It reminds me of a song called "Like a Parrot" from the a cappella group The Bobs, which goes:
Like a parrot in a picture window
I can see where I'd like to be
But repeated blows to my feathered little head
Have taught me not to fly straight.
Words of wisdom - we're all parrots and can see the outside world with all its opportunities, but getting to where we want to be is rarely a direct route. And there may be some pain involved, even if we can overcome the obstacles in our way. And while we figure out our path, we've still got to find a way to get through each day. OK, so it's hardly the stuff of inspirational posters, but I think it still rings true.
Also starring Elizabeth Taylor (also carrying over from "The Comedians"), Eva Marie Saint (last seen in "Winter's Tale"), Charles Bronson (last seen in "This Property Is Condemned"), Robert Webber (last seen in "Harper"), James Edwards (last seen in "Patton"), Torin Thatcher (last seen in "The Robe"), Tom Drake, Douglas Henderson (last seen in "The Manchurian Candidate"), Morgan Mason, with cameos from Nico (yes, that one, last seen in "Cleopatra") and the voice of Peter O'Toole (last seen in "Club Paradise").
RATING: 4 out of 10 driftwood sculptures
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