Butterfield 8 is this Elizabeth Taylor film in where she plays a free-spirited young lady who spends a lot of her evenings hooking up with random men while kind of living day to day.
Elizabeth Taylor stars in the movie where everybody Doolittle's are including herself. Because she's promiscuous and she lives day by day.
now I might be able to agree with them on the day-to-day living as one should have some form of planning for their future but her free-spirited lifestyle. I don't think that's so bad. aim was to be sure and possibly a bit dangerous but in her case she's usually hooking up with well-established men inside really fancy restaurants and bars and it seems that she gets to know them to some extent beforehand. I guess what I'm trying to say is that how relationships though uncertain don't seem to be overly hostile.
I bring all of this up because the film seems confused to me. It wants us to sympathise with her plate but kind of Judge her at the same time. As if we're supposed to feel sorry for her but ultimately disagree with her lifestyle.
And I just think that's incredibly unfair especially because Laurence Harvey's character (the guy she ends up hooking up with later on in the film) is the actual degenerate who cheating on his wife and screwing around with money and resources that he has no real right to.
We're supposed to see him as one of the better people*. At least at the beginning of the film was the and we do show him as a miserable piece of crap who's so fundamentally broken that even Elizabeth Taylor doesn't want to deal with him at the end, right at the point when you think everything's going to turn around and maybe a little glimmer of light will return to her life. But that doesn't happen and we get this solum negative ending instead.
It makes me wonder if this was supposed to be a commentary on the more lightheaded happy-go-lucky romance stories that were so prominent from the mid thirties all the way up until past this film. But I'm a little sceptical on that especially given that this is based off of a novel from the early thirties.
The acting in the film has me a bit conflicted. If they had played it down a little bit more that I feel as if the emotional weight of these people's horrible decisions may have meant more but I also feel as if the slightly overly dramatic acting is the only reason that this films even remembered and might be at Saving Grace from just making it another bad romance story. And I say bad in the sense of the romance is meant to be a negative and you're not supposed to look at these people as a positive model.
Overall I did consider it an enjoyable film but it doesn't really sit with you after you've seen it. A lot of what you watched just kind of filters out of your head and you start the debate why you likes the film to begin with. The answer that is pretty easy the acting is real solid and pacing is kept up nice and tight. It's one of those on Films we feel like they're going to go down 20 different venues and you kind of think they might have missed the point on some of their subplots like having Elizabeth Taylor's character interacting with this other guy who supposed to be a lifelong friend and his girlfriend a little jealous about the whole thing because she knows that her boyfriend has some form of feelings for her but either can't admit it to himself or just wants to get Beyond it.
Obviously it's not the point of the film but I still think of it more time dedicated to it could have made for a more entertaining experience.
The funny thing about this film is that apparently Elizabeth Taylor didn't care for herself. Supposedly she only took the job so that she would have a better chance at receiving the mega roll of Cleopatra the sentence in the film Cleopatra. I have no proof of any of this but it seems like an interesting idea.
You can certainly do worse.. The overall relationships are fun enough and there is something of a character Arc with most of the people of in the movie. Just kind of feels like it's pointless in the end given where the ending goes. But I suppose that's the point.
*Okay he's really not conceived as a good person at any point but he has this kind of suave attitude that makes him almost forgivable and that might just be down more to the actors ability than the actual script for the character.
I don't know I can't entirely remember and I'm trying to go out a movie that kind of went out of my mind really quickly after watching it. Which now makes me wonder how good the film actually was.
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