Dreaming of Joseph Lees

Out of curiosity, I picked up this movie at a video store, and was very pleasantly surprised. Samantha Morton is exquisite and believeable as Eva, a quiet girl who harbors a deep love for Joseph Lees, a geologist and distant relative.

I had never heard of Rupert Graves before but he too was tremendous as a lonely man with a personal sorrow.

The supporting cast was top-notch. This is a movie that I have seen several times and will certainly rent it again in the future. It is unforgettable.

What is the right thing to do? Follow your fantasy mate while destroying one who loves you, or staying behind and sacrificing yourself so that the one who loves you will stay alive?

Many people have had to make such a choice: the person of your dreams appears, and there is a real possibility that you can establish a relationship with that person. However, you've established a relationship with another, an uneven relationship, where he loves you more than you love him. But he is a good person, and devoted. Handsome, a good lover. But the person of your dreams (in this case, Joseph Lees) is also real, and could take you to a place where your life can be miraculous and sublime. What to do?

I enjoyed this film tremendously, and easily related to the characters and situations.

I have recently seen the movie on television, and after the first time, I found myself compelled to rent the movie, so I did. I find the characters Joseph and Eva to be utterly captivating. The cinematography of the film perfectly captured their passion, their desire, their unextinguishable love. Lee Ross perfectly played the character Harry Flite in regards to capturing the character's desperation, and maddening obsession. Ross captured the character so perfectly that it made me despise the character. With all this said and done, I found the ending to be one of two things, thus bringing me to an undecisive state. Other than that, the movie is a must see for the melancholic ambiance of the film is undeniable.

Film-making is all about Waiting they say. So is Love. This film epitomizes the seemingly unending Wait for the Right Man - that one man who signifies all that is beautiful and pure and noble of mind and body - someone worth living and fighting for. For Eva this Wait has even more poignance because she knows who that man is...that he's not just a figment of her imagination, but a living breathing man named Joseph Lees - someone whom she knows can broaden the horizons of her restricted world and love her for who she is and not for what he derives from her(which is how Harry loves her).

The case against Harry is not predetermined. It is established gradually. There are some touching moments between Eva and him when he's actually likeable. The scene in which he takes Eva out of the crowded boxing room is one such incident. Harry is at once boyish and likeable and selfish and despicable. Lee Ross has brought out these shades in his character brilliantly.

As much as it is Eva's story, it is also the story of Joseph Lees. And it is Rupert Graves, in the title role, who makes this film for what it is. He is a Dream(don't mean to pun!) in the film! I had only seen him in Louis Malle's 'Damage' which he did 7 years before 'Dreaming...', a film in which he looked much younger, though he was completely overshadowed by the oh-so-powerful Jeremy Irons who played his father. For the audience to feel any empathy whatsoever for Eva for dreaming of Joseph Lees for so long, the actor had to be someone for whom the audience would feel the same. And Rupert Graves is absolutely divine in the role! It is because of him that the audience too gets involved in Eva's quest for Joseph Lees. In any film of this sort, deriving empathy for the characters is everything. It is to the credit of Eric Styles, the director that he has managed that. From the beginning you know that these two people, Eva and Joseph *have to* be together. You laud Janie, Eva's little sister(wonderfully played by Lauren Richardson) in her efforts to bring them together. You frown at Eva's father who unknowingly acts as an obstacle between them.

Samantha Morton is excellent as Eva. It must be tough to act in a film where you have to cry so much and make it look real. She manages that. Her convulsive fit of tears in the end just before she rejoins Joseph is very well rendered by Morton. She has rendered the character with due grace and sensitivity.

Cinematography and music are two of the other wonders of this film. The former has added to the atmospheric quality of the film, capturing well the wild undulating beauty of the Isle of Man where the film was shot. The music has added beautiful lyrical cadences to the emotions in the film. Not surprisingly it is composed by a master-composer like Zbigniew Preisner whose music for Kieslowski's 'Blue' and other films is equally beautiful.

Worth dreaming....!!

When I go to the movie (having an 8 weeks unlimited movies pass) I usually have to plan. I can't be out too late, because I have to get home by bus. But I still would want to watch two movies, if possible. Yesterday the possibility was there in taking "Dreaming of Joseph Lees" as a second movie. I had to run from one screen to the other to be in time, but I managed. entering the screen that played "Dreaming of Joseph Lees", I had the whole cinema to myself. Then having watched the movie I wondered why that was and why the average is only 4.9 for this movie. I am almost giving double figures for this movie.

Some reasons maybe: - It is about very common people. - It is not sensational at all. No real violence, no real sex, etc. - Too much complex psychology. - It is too British. - The story is too simple.

The story is about a woman who by her own acting runs into the dilemma of the feeling of responsibility for Harry (with whom she lives together for a while), a psychopathically jealous partner, even jealous of a book that Eva is reading, and her love from childhood Joseph Lees, who in an explosion loses a leg. Samantha Morton (never heard of her before) plays Eva brilliantly and Lee Ross does a very good job on the complex character of Harry, the farmer. Then there is Janie, sister of Eva and only wanting her sister to be happy. And Eva doesn't really see until the end, but she is happiest with Joseph Lees, who enters her life again at a wedding.

The end of the movie: Get your handkerchiefs out for a brilliant climax....

My feelings went from "I don't know what kind of a movie this is going to be, probably not a very good one" (4.9 average) to "What a beautiful movie". It is a shame that so few people seem to appreciate this movie....And the cinema streamed empty...I was going home.