Another puzzle movie where there is are ludicrously scrambled pieces. If this is all about loneliness and despair, look at how much more gripping something like The Entertainer is. There is something extremely shallow about this film: I guess if you want to make something about despair and keep it really boring, really empty, voila, then people can read about what they want the full extent of their own despair and loneliness into it.
Probably one of the reviewers here is very right: Pinter seems always lurking in the wings of any scene. Hare, however is certainly his own man, very determined fellow to lead us nowhere with some kind of minor supine surprise at the end, to let us think we have solved the Rosebud mystery of this movie: like Kane, another jigsaw puzzle of a movie.
Even Kubrick's The Killing, another scrambled movie, though hardly on this scale, would have been better told straight forwardly.
Moreover, notice the blah response of the great unwashed public to this film. This baby shot past them on quiet rails in the dead of night, because it was just too tortured for its own good.
As for a great performance by Redgrave, well, sure. The woman cannot deliver a single unbelievable line. She is one of the great great actress of all time: spooky how she disappears into every role she ever did.
The only real puzzle for me, is...you guessed it. Why did they ever bother to shoot the first reel.
