Falling in love with A Room with a View

I am not a big believer in coincidences but there are times that life seems to work in mysterious ways.   Last Wednesday, I talked about my experience watching Daniel Day-Lewis in There will be Blood.  At that time, I was reading A Room with a View by E.M. Forster.  Imagine my surprise when I learned that Daniel actually played Cecil Vyse in the movie adaptation of the book.

For me, the book is a love story, first and foremost.  It is the story of Lucy Honeychurch and how she attempts to reconcile her passions against the repressed society and its definition of what is polite and proper.

 Although I don't believe that there is complete freedom in our society compared to that of our ancestors, I am no less thankful that I do not have to deal with the same limitations.
Mr. Emerson accurately describes how archaic society can be:"Do you suppose there's any difference between Spring in nature and Spring in man?  But there we go, praising the one and condemning the other, ashamed that the same work eternally through both"

Making things more complicated for Lucy is her feelings for George, a man frowned upon by the polite society. 
"The contest lay not between love and duty. Perhaps there never is such a contest.  It lay between the real and the pretended, and Lucy's first aim was to defeat herself"

One of the things that I will always remember about the book is how some people can only be associated with "rooms" and some people can be associated with "views".  Rooms represents constraints and the need for structure while views are represented in the book as freedom and spontaneity.  There are also some people who are only made to be acquaintances and can never know anyone intimately.
"He’s only for an acquaintance. He is for society and cultivated talk...He is the sort who are all right so long as they keep to things—books, pictures—but kill when they come to people...Every moment of his life he’s forming you..."

As I said earlier, this book for me is a love story first and foremost so I don't have to expound on what happened in the end.  Besides, I really would recommend that one reads this book for oneself.  That is how much I love this book.  I just wish I can find a copy of the movie.  I want to see if I will be just as in love with the movie as I am with the book.

"I drink your milkshake"

Watching There Will Be Blood in DVD made me regret not watching it in the big screen when it first came out.  It might not have CGI effects that seem to embody almost every major Hollywood movie that is being released.  Its cast can hardly be called stellar.  But what it does have is Daniel Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview.  No, let me rephrase that, Daniel Day-Lewis IS Daniel Plainview.  His performance as an oil prospector gave me goosebumps, to put it mildly.  He was nothing short of brilliant and truly deserving of all the awards he got for his performance.  

 The performance of Paul Dano as Eli Sunday should also be commended.  I hated him at sight. One of the most memorable moments for me were the last scenes between Daniel and Eli.  The title of this post is actually taken from that confrontation.  I think I need to have myself checked because of how much I relished what happened to Eli during those last moments.

The movie is almost 3 hours long but it is so rich and so vibrant that in the end, it seems as if 3 hours is not enough.  I know that I don't have the words to fully capture the brilliance of this movie so I won't even try.  My only wish is that they make more movies like this.  Kudos to Paul Thomas Anderson, Daniel Day-Lewis and the rest of the people behind this masterpiece.