Waterland - Memorie d'amore

This is a dark brooding movie that hooked me the first time I saw it. I've enjoyed watching it a number of times ever since.

Jeremy Irons is, as Leonard Matlin indicates in his review, superb in his role. There's a great deal of darkness and certainly some degree of socially deviant behavior in the film. But it's very much the darkness that provides the drama and meaning to the story.

It's a beautifully photographed film. I thought Lena Headey was quite good in addition to being stunning. Sinead Cusack and all of the supporting cast were quite good. It is an eccentric film, but I believe it comes through as a very fine piece of film making.

It strikes me as being very underrated by the users' ratings. This is probably due in the main to the darkness of the film and its most definite lack of Hollywood style optimism. The lower ratings might also be due to what might be interpreted as a conservative message. I am not a political conservative--God forbid! However, the message that there can be unforeseen and terrible consequences from our actions is something that all of us could well profit from. Very fine movie, but certainly not for those that dislike "the bad taste of things"--or the tragedies of life.

Jeremy Irons,in another in a long line of outstanding performances, plays a high school history teacher who becomes as disillusioned as his students with dry facts and figures and takes them on a field trip though his mind as he relates his own personal family history to them.This is a fascinating,thought provoking film.At one point,fellow teacher John Heard asks him what to tell parents who want to know why their kids should be learning history if it isn't going to help them get a good job when they graduate.The answer to this question is the main reason why parents should stick to parenting and teachers to teaching.Great music score and excellent cinematography,this film is a rewarding experience.

Here is one of the best films of the 1990s. I remember the first time I saw it, I wasn't too sure what to think. I've seen it countless times in the last six or so years, since that first viewing. I am completely in awe every time I watch it. In awe of the way Jeremy Irons conveys sadness better than any actor working today. In awe of the hypnotic score, the sense of mysterious longing it evokes. In awe of everything here...

I swear this film breaks my heart every time I see it.

And this movie excels in bringing this to life in a believable way. Jeremy and his wife Sinead excel as the older couple in this as do their younger selves portrayed by different actors. There is a wonderful love story threading through the whole movie and you are not too sure where it is heading. Jeremy plays a history teacher in the US, I understand that the book had him teaching in England where the first half of the movie takes place. Waterland refers to land that has been reclaimed from the ocean and is extremely flat with streams and water running through it. He is married to his childhood sweetheart and they have both been traumatized by an event that took place while they were in their teens. There is an aura of sadness around them 20 years later as they arrive at the doorway to middle age and the long held pain within the wife starts to manifest itself in strange ways. I see the waterland of their youth as allegorical in this, the reclaiming of their lives from their childhood tragedy. Some of the history lessons were a little awkwardly done, I found them forced and a key plot twist I could see from a mile away, but on the whole this movie captured my attention and I gave it an 8 out of 10. It would not be to everybody's taste.

This film is a complex intricate look at sexuality, history, Freud, and superstition all based in the living metaphor of England's fen land, or marshes. It is no coincidence Swift chose to set this incredible story about navigating the labyrinths of jealousy and history- personal and local, using a landscape riddled with secret channels and muddy hidden waters.

The acting is superb, and like Ian McEwan's Atonement, looks unflinchingly at the depths of personal tragedy, and history, and their long lasting effects on us as humans, all in the context of historical events.

The Fenland is an area deeply steeped in history, going back before the Romans.The film touches literally the taboo of early sexual longing ( male and female)and leaves us to look at the costs of opening Pandora's's box.

Swift is a gifted and beautiful writer and I have read this book several times. The film is a credit to the book, which is an unusual statement for films. The film complements the book much in the same way the film of Unbearable Lightness of Being complemented that book.

This is a masterful work.