The inversion I was thinking of was the letter-writing. Herzog writes letters telling other people how to handle things, this guy gets letters written to him and seeks advice(?), though evidently from separate sources. I read the book specifically for insight into the psyches of obsessive letter-writers when I first started my job. It didn’t really help in that regard, but this is the part that remains with me.
Stays with me too — I think because the book begins with an AMAZING scene of Herzog teaching while having his slow-mo nervous breakdown — Interrupting his lectures to sit at his desk and scrawl another letter…
I’m guessing that – as with all book v. movie stuff – see Under the Volcano, book and film – this most recent Herzog will turn out to look pretty dim compared to Bellow’s. This poor guy can only be filmed — so it’ll be difficult to convey his intellect, if he has one.
I wonder whether this might be why so many movie profs are physicists! Have you noticed? It’s like — a person in the humanities who thinks philosophically can’t really, in film, be conveyed thinking philosophically… whereas if you want, as a film-maker, to convey Smart Person visually, you can – as this film does – put the guy in front of a blackboard on which he’s scribbled mysterious and complicated formulas about the cosmos … See also A Beautiful Mind…
And Proof, also a math genius movie. I think you’re right that there are certain limitations in portraying thinking in film, especially the Herzog kind, which is so dependent on writing. But there are some movies that make stabs at conveying the content of thinking in the humanities, though they seem to be confined to high school settings, which is odd too. Dead Poets’ Society and The History Boys come to mind. But, as I think has been pointed out earlier on this blog, English professors in film are usually shorthand for pathetic philanderers and other kinds of neurotics and personal life failures.
July 30th, 2009 at 7:57PM
Sounds from the synopsis like an inversion of Herzog.
July 30th, 2009 at 8:34PM
That’s pretty amazing, Rita. I had the very same thought – Herzog. To me, it didn’t sound like an inversion — sounded pretty much just like it.
Though when you see the trailer, he’s much too nerdy and pathetic — Herzog describes himself as still a sexually attractive man.
July 30th, 2009 at 11:11PM
The inversion I was thinking of was the letter-writing. Herzog writes letters telling other people how to handle things, this guy gets letters written to him and seeks advice(?), though evidently from separate sources. I read the book specifically for insight into the psyches of obsessive letter-writers when I first started my job. It didn’t really help in that regard, but this is the part that remains with me.
July 31st, 2009 at 4:35AM
Stays with me too — I think because the book begins with an AMAZING scene of Herzog teaching while having his slow-mo nervous breakdown — Interrupting his lectures to sit at his desk and scrawl another letter…
I’m guessing that – as with all book v. movie stuff – see Under the Volcano, book and film – this most recent Herzog will turn out to look pretty dim compared to Bellow’s. This poor guy can only be filmed — so it’ll be difficult to convey his intellect, if he has one.
I wonder whether this might be why so many movie profs are physicists! Have you noticed? It’s like — a person in the humanities who thinks philosophically can’t really, in film, be conveyed thinking philosophically… whereas if you want, as a film-maker, to convey Smart Person visually, you can – as this film does – put the guy in front of a blackboard on which he’s scribbled mysterious and complicated formulas about the cosmos … See also A Beautiful Mind…
July 31st, 2009 at 12:08PM
And Proof, also a math genius movie. I think you’re right that there are certain limitations in portraying thinking in film, especially the Herzog kind, which is so dependent on writing. But there are some movies that make stabs at conveying the content of thinking in the humanities, though they seem to be confined to high school settings, which is odd too. Dead Poets’ Society and The History Boys come to mind. But, as I think has been pointed out earlier on this blog, English professors in film are usually shorthand for pathetic philanderers and other kinds of neurotics and personal life failures.