"How am I blest in thus discovering thee!”

Been thinking about the word Elegy after seeing the film of that name. John Donne was really the Elegy man and this thought sent me googling the connection. The first one I came across was Elegy XX To his mistress going to bed. Like a lot of Donne’s poetry, it’s about making the most of the limited time we have. In his world view, its best spent in bed with a lover (apart from the time taken with wondering what happens after you die). Sex and death weighed heavily on the man. I liked re-discovering him- here's a snippet from that poem.

“Licence my roving hands, and let them go
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O, my America, my Newfoundland,
My kingdom, safest when with one man mann'd,
My mine of precious stones, my empery;
How am I blest in thus discovering thee!”

The word elegy is more usually used to mean a song of mourning and perhaps Donne is thinking of the ephemeralness of this relationship and the frailties of the human bodies, both his and his lovers. As the title of the recent film, it is less harsh than the title of the novel it represents “The Dying Animal”. Roth’s book and this film is about David Kupesh, a man in his 60s who falls in love with a much younger woman played by Penelope Cruz.

The opening of the film shows him in his New York apartment quoting from Tolstoy: "The biggest surprise in a man's life is old age." This quote has the kind of truth about it that made me want to agree out loud in the cinema. Age has been much on my mind lately, not just my own but the people around me. I thought about my father who seems constantly bemused by the treachery of his body. On the weekend he said to me “I used to be an athlete; I could run 100 yards in X (I think he said 11 but this cannot be right) seconds.” He can’t understand where this fitness has gone, what has happened to him. It’s unbearably sad. And perhaps that means that what happens to Kupesh in the film is sad but not tragic (in comparison with my father who is 80 and tragically sad.) After all, Kupesh has the beautiful Cruz fall in love with him.

Kupesh is something of a tosser but the universality of the aging process is the compelling part of this film. It’s the third film I‘ve seen about aging men this year which perhaps tells us something about the demographics of current film producers. And audiences. But ultimately I had to agree partly with Monalah Dargis in the New York Times: “There’s not a hair out of place here or an emotion. It’s as if Ms. Coixet (the director) had tried to quiet the howls of a dying animal.” I thought the film would end about 20 minutes before it did; there is a twist in the plot that shifts our perspective somewhat. What the twist raised for me is the question – do we feel more keenly for the really beautiful? Would the impact be the same if the plot twist was applied to Kupesh’s older lover? (A woman who I identified with quite strongly). Would that have made the story more interesting? Made us forget the twee beach love scenes that populate the early part of the film?

Cruz plays the role as a cipher; unknowable in her beauty. This tease of the audience is set up quite early when Kupesh first sees her – she is carrying a copy of Roland Barthes “The Pleasures of the Text”. And Kupesh’s friend says something along the lines of the unknowability of the truly beautiful woman; it is a complete distraction. I don’t think that Mr Donne would have agreed but he was truly a renaissance man. Head and heart. Go John. He was up for it – the howl of a dying animal in a way that this film isn’t quite. Re-reading Donne's words, there's a robustness and energy that is never felt in the film; the Kupesh character is way too restrained and melancholy. at one stage, Kupesh compares the Cruz character to a painting by Goya and the relationship has that element; a woman reclining to be admired, a woman looking lovely on the beach, a man looking sad in a darkened apartment. Somehow the blood has left this film. I'm going back to Donne for a bit more sex and death... And maybe Philip Roth. And definitely John Updike.