The Painted Veil
My daughter says it takes me longer to tell about a movie than it does to see it!
But I will make this brief, I promise!
A Painted Veil, starring Naomi Watts and Edward Norton, based on a story by W. Somerset Maugham, set in the 1920’s, is a perfect movie! Superb acting, setting, script, photography. There was nothing to improve on it. I really loved it. (You can see film clips here: http://wip.warnerbros.com/paintedveil/ )
I want to tell you about this movie because it really says something about relationships.
A recent blog entry (Learning What’s Important) was about a far more casual relationship than in the movie, but my relationship with the Sunday School principal was something of the same because it grew, at least partly, because neither of us walked away from it.
The character Edward Norton plays is a rather shy man, a doctor, while Naomi Watts lives a high life as a spoiled society girl. Parties are her life. He is serious, and she is frivolous.
At the beginning of the movie, Edward Norton proposes marriage to Naomi Watts. She is surprised because she had no idea he felt anything at all about her. She tells him she has to think about it, but it’s clear she has no interest in him.
When she gets back home, Naomi overhears her mother telling someone that she (Naomi Watts) will never marry. And it is only in reaction to her mother’s remark does Naomi marry this doctor who loves her deeply but for whom she has no real regard.
Edward sees Naomi for who she is. You learn later that he thought that she would grow to be more conscious and less self-centered, and he also knows she doesn’t love him and married him only to get away from her mother. He is so kind and devoted to Naomi.
They go to China where he works. Naomi finds him dull and soon has a passionate love affair with another man whom she believes she loves and whom she believes loves her. The long and the short of it is that when her husband finds out about the affair, he (Edward) begins to despise Naomi and is cruel. He pretty much forces Naomi to go with him into an isolated spot of China where there is a cholera epidemic. Of course, meanwhile, her lover doesn’t care about her enough to risk exposure.
Naomi and Edward’s marriage became a bitter stand-off, and there was no way that it could ever become even a tolerable marriage.
Yet later, Naomi begins to regard this simple man, her husband-by-chance, with admiration for all his goodness and the care he gives to the country people who love him, and Naomi does grow to be the kind of person Edward Norton hoped she would.
Really, these two people never should have married, and yet, after great trials, they came to really know each other and to truly care, and the whole dynamic of their marriage changed.
This movie made me think about arranged marriages. It made me think of the pioneer days when women went to the west to become brides and married without really knowing the man they were marrying, and, still, they made the marriage work.
Maybe there is something to marrying without illusions. Maybe there is something to hanging in there.
I would love to know what you think.
It didn’t take me long to tell about this movie, after all, did it?
Godwriting is a blog by Gloria Wendroff and is about Gloria's daily life as the Godwriter of the Heavenletters project that is having a profound effect on the lives of people around the world.
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