"What good was a truth that could be perceived only through delusion?" This premise, however ingenious, might have yielded a schematic novel of ideas, if Shakar weren't so committed to showing his readers a good time.
Our Mutual Friend (monthly serial, May 1864-November 1865) Dickens's last completed novel is a marvel of play-acting and posturing, of taking on roles through delusion, calculation and ambition.
It slices through illusion, delusion and confusion.
GJ has an electric detached air and her brand of kindness is bracing, aimed at cutting through delusions, but somehow her harsh advice "soothes" like a full stop.
Cutting through delusions of a post-racial America, the film is a searing report on the state of the union as an industrial (privatized) prison complex, built on a justice system that gives cops more incentive to rack up busts for nonviolent drug crimes than to pursue murderers and rapists.
Compulsory injections of the correct DNA - you know, the kind possessed by intelligent and well-bred people who can see through religious delusion?
But while James only sees his own charity, blaming his mother's illness for keeping him out if work, Gail sees through his delusion, telling him: "Your father was never satisfied either.
The other is his stunning power of observation; he seems to be reading people's minds, cutting right through their delusions to get to the deeper truths.
Even after he sees through his delusions, and achieves a quasi-Buddhist acceptance of his powerlessness, he has nothing else to lean on, not even his Gandalfian staff, and wanders off into the night.
But most of the time Mr. Kelly, smoothly directed by Simon Green, tosses out grand observations ("Excess is the antithesis of style," "How can one be lonely with a looking glass?") while conveying the quiet agonies of a ruined man trying not to see through his delusions.
Less tragic than Blanche (who victimized only herself through her delusions), name-changing Jasmine is more dubious than DuBois; hers is a more conscious, opportunistic self-deception.
