As long ago as 1970, a young Ambrose got crossways with Cornelius Ryan Cornelius Ryan, author of The Longest Day, over Ambrose's clumsy use of material from a Ryan book.
Sounds clever, but as you might expect, this mode drains batteries in a hurry and the preshoot material generally features your clumsy attempts to line up the still shot.
But in a season that has been both clumsy and comical, there is plenty of other material to work with.
To admirers of the source material, it's a more welcome tack than the clumsy reshaping that resulted in cinematic travesties of Moore's From Hell, V for Vendetta and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
Although the Pont du Gard is renowned for its appearance, its design is not optimal as the technique of stacking arches on top of each other is clumsy and inefficient (and therefore expensive) in the amount of materials it requires.
This triptych construct is both compelling and clumsy, particularly in Shizuka's scenes, where the parallels to Ophelia are the most labored and the material the thinnest, and in the forced yet harrowing ending in which the three stories collide.
(A corps of ghostly children romp through Allen Moyer's arboreal set between scenes.) But the performers emanate a clumsy, affecting spontaneity, as if they had decided to make a virtue out of their discomfort with complex material.
Horrified, Henry cites Brodie's rotten politics and clumsy words; in his heart, though, he recognizes that Brodie's script is about Annie — he knows the source material.
