Bujold as Antigone, Weaver as Creon.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 9/11/12 at 8:24am

You're welcome.
FIERCE

[tazber]

Posted: 9/11/12 at 8:34am

Oooh! Lots of love for this movie and this actress on the OT board too!
One such thread

[wonkit]

Posted: 9/11/12 at 11:00am

Her intensity, just listening, is palpable.

[Taryn]

Posted: 9/11/12 at 11:18am

Oh man. I can remember watching this movie in high school after reading the original Antigone. So many of my classmates were bored, but I was utterly enraptured. Such an amazing set of performances.

[dreaming]

Posted: 9/11/12 at 11:40am

This is the Jean Anouilh version!

That was one of the first shows I was ever in. (I dreamed of playing Antigone in this version one day. It's such an amazing version.)

Is there a full version available??? This is brilliant!!

I wish Ms. Bujold would do something on Broadway. Her performance as Anne Boleyn in Anne of a Thousand Days is one of my favorites of all time. (Her speech to Henry at the end is absolutely BRILLIANT. How she could have failed to win the Academy Award for that performance is beyond me. It was amazing.)


Updated On: 9/11/12 at 11:40 AM

[wonkit]

Posted: 9/11/12 at 12:11pm

dvd available through third party sellers on amazon.com, and as streaming video (for a fee).

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 9/11/12 at 6:30pm

Oh, my, henrik, thank you. I don't know if any video of a straight play has ever affected me so viscerally. I didn't know the Sophocles at the time, much less the Anouilh, but I was a huge Bujold fan.

Still am. Why hasn't she had Susan Sarandon's career? I hope it was because she was busy having five children or something. Where is EricMontreal to explain it to us?

(Side note: when I first taught the Anouilh in or about 1994, I arrived at class carefully prepared to argue for Creon's point of view. What a waste! What a miscalculation! I was the only one in the room who didn't think Antigone was a silly ass! Ah, Gen X!)

[bobs3]

Posted: 9/12/12 at 12:53am

Jean Anouilh wrote the adaptation during the Nazi occupation of France where it was performed in Paris. The play was a metaphor with Creon representing the Nazi/Vichy Government (the French collaborators) and Antigone representing the French resistance. It was very well received with many Nazi officials attending the play but most of them were too naive to catch the true meaning of Anouilh's adaptation. It was performed with the women in formal gowns and the men in tuxedos. In Anouilh's adaptation, Creon is certainly the villain. In Sophocles version, depending on the director, Creon can either be the villain or the hero (he is upholding the law whether or not you agree with the law).

Updated On: 9/12/12 at 12:53 AM

[Leadingplayer]

Posted: 9/12/12 at 12:55am

I thought it was going to be Sigourney Weaver!!

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 9/12/12 at 3:23am

I have a crappy copy of all of this--I believe it was originally aired on PBS. It is pretty spectacular.

As for her career, from interviews and such, I'm pretty sure it was largely her own decision--she just never really wanted the movie star life, choosing to work more in independant films and occasionally on stage. I know she splits her life between Quebec and California...

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 9/12/12 at 8:35am

Actually Sigourney as Creon is not a half bad idea.

[bobs3]

Posted: 9/12/12 at 9:16am

Bujold was originally cast as Captain Kathryn Janeway in the pilot of STAR TREK: VOYAGER. She abruptly quit several days into filming reportedly because she could not handle the hectic filming schedule of a television series. She was more used to the slow pace of filming a movie. She was replaced by Kate Mulgrew.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 9/12/12 at 5:55pm

In Anouilh's adaptation, Creon is certainly the villain. In Sophocles version, depending on the director, Creon can either be the villain or the hero (he is upholding the law whether or not you agree with the law).

(Emphasis added.) Sorry, Bob, but I couldn't disagree more. Anouilh did a superb job of arguing for both characters. So good, in fact, that he was widely criticized by his fellow citizens after the war for allegedly creating the play as Nazi propaganda!

The conflict of the play isn't about law-for-law's-sake but public "order" versus private conscience. Creon's argument boils down to "greatest good for the greatest number", which is, after all, the basis for most philosophies of good. How does that make him a villain?

Of course, when we consider the context in which the play was written, we might well suspect Anouilh's sympathy lay with Antigone, but it isn't clear in the text. His version became very popular here in the 1960s and once again, Antigone was seen as the "good guy"; but again, that said more about the spectators than the play. And as I said above, college students I introduced to the play from the mid-90s on tended to see Creon as reasonable (practical) and Antigone as dangerously selfish.

Most telling of all: Anouilh ADDS the detail not found in Sophocles: Creon reveals he doesn't even know which body was buried and which body was left to the scavengers. So Antigone can't even know which brother she is dying to bury; it may not be the one she loved. Anouilh actually argues harder for Creon than Sophocles did.

(Sorry to seem so didactic. Yes, I have made charts of all of their points and counter-points. And, yes, I personally "root" for Antigone, but I recognize the care with which Anouilh constructs the arguments for both of his antagonists.)

Updated On: 9/12/12 at 05:55 PM

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 9/12/12 at 5:57pm

Thank you, bobs3. I had forgotten about the STAR TREK incident.

And thanks to Eric for the biographical info. I have seen Bujold from time to time on cable. Not usually anything I consider "worthy" of her talent, but she is always interesting in anything she does.
Updated On: 9/12/12 at 05:57 PM