Tulip Fever

Weinstein Company, The | Release Date: September 1, 2017

4.6	USER SCORE Mixed or average reviews based on 40 Ratings

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TVJerrySep 3, 2017

17th century Amsterdam saw the explosion of the tulip bulb market, which provides the backdrop for this film's amorous intrigue. Alicia Vikander plays a woman who's sold to a rich merchant (Christoph Waltz), but falls for the young artist17th century Amsterdam saw the explosion of the tulip bulb market, which provides the backdrop for this film's amorous intrigue. Alicia Vikander plays a woman who's sold to a rich merchant (Christoph Waltz), but falls for the young artist hired to paint her portrait (Dane DeHaan). The plots lines swirl around each to generate a vortex of dramatic complications that would make Shakespeare proud. As expected, the era allows for some lovely visuals, but also exposes the grittier side of the period. Even through the complex storytelling, the actors create compelling characters and elevate the narrative to a more acceptable level.… Expand

1 of 2 users found this helpful11

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srHartleySep 5, 2017

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. This film has taken a drubbing in the early reviews, and indeed there are deficient moments in the dialogue...

"You stole my heart.
YOU stole MY heart." (Or some such emphasis...)

One almost begins to question Tom Stoppard, especially since the script lacks the heady, high-density verbiage you expect from him, but looking instead to the optics, the architecture of the plot, which is where you should look, I think the film's rather spare, simple language serves us better, and that its most egregious failing is not to have presented even one single exploding car.

Those drawn to a film with historical setting in the tulip bubble, where a long-standing aesthetic was exaggerated to extreme value, should welcome a long-standing trope, also stretched beyond comfortable limits. The cloak trick: leading character fooled by disguise/appearance, not pausing to investigate and confirm, goes off to disaster. Thus fishmonger abandons pregnant girl friend, negligently discarding a fortune because falsely supposing her unfaithful. Artist mourns lover's death upon finding her cloak drowned in the canal... or even more extreme error: artist sends drunkard to collect critical parcel with his mind cloaked in ignorance of its contents: a king's ransom tulip bulb. One cannot help gnashing teeth over the decision who is the greater idiot: drunkard who eats it for an onion, or artist who sent him so unprepared while a hundred better options cried out.

The cloak-trick trope, which served Shakespeare over and over, and now appears in this tulip period immediately following his -- perhaps it was so popular because the Renaissance was struggling to finally burst the Medieval ban on empirical science. Gallileo had recently placed the earth in proper orbit and Newton would soon displace Aristotle's improper notion of gravity. Question and verify, don't assume because tradition did. We know this now -- or perhaps we just have a tradition of assuming it -- but modernity may find this cloak-trick extreme extremely uncomfortable.

But we should tolerate the anachronism, because it's origin is much older and also closer to us than time can be. To explain, I have to mention an artist whose name you probably don't know, but should, and that is Veda Vyasa. This poet has been dated, based on specific astrological references in extant texts, to 3800 BCE. And if you consider that's ancient history, (and therefore who the hell cares, anyway?) I should also mention that his best-known work is currently in wide circulation and translated into more languages than the Bible. That would, of course be the Bhagavad Gita. In its enclosing epic, the enormously extensive Mahabharata, Vyasa shows us Draupadi, the princess in exile, being sexually harassed by a powerful courtier-general. In desperation, she appoints an assignation, where she promises to submit to him, under a cloak, under cloak of night. When he actually reaches under the said cloak to possess his delicate victim, the reality is somewhat different: he encounters instead her husband, Bhima, and quickly winds up closely resembling the hamburger special at Costco. Minus the plastic wrapper. Almost as good as an exploding car. Vyasa is all about the relation between this current minute particle of reality and the unreachable extent of the field that underlies it. I personally think he knows it better than Erwin Schroedinger, who actually wrote the equation for it. I think Tom Stoppard very consciously intends for us to ponder, and we should, the ineffable effable effandineffable bond and gap between appearance and reality. What else is art about? Pyramus killing himself over Thisbe's discarded cloak and Romeo, lost with Lawrence's miscarried letter? Fortunes won and lost over an errant allele and its phenotypic streak in the tulip petal? Every moment is a mission to conceal and to uncover eternal transience. If that seems a bit too "cosmic," your consolation is a happy ending: our surrogate Romeo and Juliette get a second chance, because Dame Judi is a wiser and ultimately more practical intercessor than Friar Lawrence.… Expand

0 of 2 users found this helpful02

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DawdlingPoetNov 26, 2021

This is a reasonably good period drama. It does feature some fairly raunchy scenes, so it's perhaps not an ideal watch if your with your parents or similar but the story is intriguing and the cast do well in their performances and itsThis is a reasonably good period drama. It does feature some fairly raunchy scenes, so it's perhaps not an ideal watch if your with your parents or similar but the story is intriguing and the cast do well in their performances and its somewhat thought provoking too, so not an overly bad film. I quite liked the cinematography too. I would recommend this film, yes.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

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