After a party for professors and their wives, a
young couple stop by George (Richard Burton) and Martha’s (Elizabeth Taylor)
house to continue the party and get to know each other. Nick (George Segal) and
Honey (Sandy Dennis) are new to the area and are attempting to make good first
impressions but it’s difficult when the couple whose house you are at are
verbally tearing each other apart at every moment. The four get more drunk and
more cruel as the evening progresses until they are all utterly spent and the
night ends.
Now I know I’m wrong since I’ve seen the whole film now but
at the start I liked their bickering, I thought it was cute. Obviously there is
bickering and then there’s what George and Martha were doing which was to ruin
and humiliate each other in all the ways they could think of. It’s all a game
to them though, it’s how they communicate with each other, and it seems to be
the only way they know how. We only saw one night but they’ve clearly been
married a long time and this must be how it always is for them, and it just seems
exhausting. What made it all clear though was when Martha was talking to Nick,
telling him that George is the only man who has ever made her happy, which
surprises him since they are so brutal to each other. I’m going to just quote
her because I found it fascinating:
“George, who is out somewhere there in the dark. Who is good
to me. Whom I revile. Who can keep learning the games we play as quickly as I
can change them. Who can make me happy and I do not wish to be happy. Yes, I do
wish to be happy. George and Martha. Sad, sad, sad. Whom I will not forgive for
having coming to rest. For having seen me and having said: Yes, this will do.
Who has made the hideous, the hurting, the insulting mistake of loving me. And
must be punished for it. George and Martha. Sad, sad, sad.”
Reading that doesn’t do it justice, you have to really watch
and listen to her say it. It's like when Woody Allen is comparing his relationships to that old saying about not wanting to be in a club that would have him as a member; you don't trust the relationship because why would this other person love you? She doesn’t feel like she deserves his love, and she
resents him for making her feel that way so she is cruel to him. Just
impossibly cruel to him constantly. But then he is cruel to her, too. She
mentions their son and that is a forbidden topic for him, and so he decides to
bring her world down around her and announce that he is dead. But, as we soon
discover, the son is not dead because he never existed to begin with. They
couldn’t have children together so they created a fiction, a perfect son, and
they both lived with this fiction, but when she talked about him to these new
people she ruined it and so George had to kill him, to destroy the fiction. And
now they have to live with what’s left, just the two of them.
The acting was phenomenal. Richard Burton has perhaps just
the absolute best timing, he had me laughing so much at some points, and he had my blood running cold at others. So wonderful. And Honey, she was so drunk and
just fantastic with it. When George tries to strangle Martha and she’s in the
background shouting “Violence! Violence!”, it really just made the scene. Or when
she’s dancing and Nick is trying to stop her and she’s just repeating that she
dances like the wind, and she’s flying about the place. I love that the
majority of the film took place in the house, it definitely seemed better to
have them cooped up together like that. It felt like I was in there too, as the uncomfortable and riveted observer.
Bloody hell, what a film. I feel like I’m in shock, like it’s
just hit me in such a way that I was not ready for. Excellent.
9/10
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