Tuesday 24 May 2011

Poetry in Motion (Pictures) Part 5


The 25th Hour (Spike Lee, 2002) – To His Coy Mistress, Andrew Marvell. Take a film directed by Spike Lee, starring Edward Norton as , convicted New York drug dealer, Monty Brogan living out his final day of freedom before a jail term. Stir in topical post-9/11 references that force the audience to examine the nature of humanity and society. Then add in Philip Seymour Hoffman as a lecturer reciting To His Coy Mistress to his students. The poem simultaneously acts as a metaphor for the day’s events meaning that, as with many of the poems I have featured in this series, the poem becomes inextricably woven into the narrative of the film. A thread that would leave a gaping hole were it ever to be unpicked:

Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

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