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Is there a poem you learned about from a movie?

I always think about GI Jane -

I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.

that was well integrated into the story

I first heard of this poem when I watched the movie "In Her Shoes" with Toni Collette and Cameron Diaz. It is one of my favorite movies, and I LOVE the poem.

I Carry Your Heart with Me
by EE Cummings

I carry your heart with me
I carry it in my heart....
i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

I mentioned this in another thread - The Outsiders and Robert Frost's Nothing Gold Can Stay:

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower.
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay

*

I think Viggo did an excellent job of delivering D. H. Lawrence's Self Pity.

That is a lovely poem.

When did Viggo cover a poem? And when we're talking "Viggo" we're talking LoTR Viggo, right?

Just to avoid any confusion LOL!

Yes, that Viggo. In GI Jane. He mentions it a few times.

Right, Viggo is the lead character in GI Jane (well him and GI Jane of course ). He's the one who recites the poem. It's a very good movie, although it was more powerful when it first came out because at the time women were considered completely not appropriate for military duty like that. In modern times we are more comfortable with the idea.

Ah, see it's been so long since I've seen that movie, I'd totally forgotten! But now that you mention it, I do see his chiseled face (with no hair) and I can remember him

Ahhhhh... Viggo....

Yes something like this -



I enjoyed the movie but NOT the one "pivotal" scene which I thought was very unrealistic for his character. They put it in there for shock value for the viewers but it didn't make sense in context. I hate to give it away for people who haven't seen it, unless you guys have all seen it

***SPOILER***


Lisa - You're talking about the fight scene between him and her aren't you?

OK well let's just warn readers that going forward there will be SPOILERS if they haven't seen the movie

Here's what I wrote in my review of GI Jane -

Viggo Mortensen plays the Master Chief who is in charge of the training program. He is quite harsh, as you would expect from someone who is trying to separate the "best of the best" from a group of individuals who are all quite talented. Viggo isn't a mere brute - he reads poetry by D.H. Lawrence and truly cares about his trainees. He knows that if he doesn't do a good job at his training, the men here will die (and cause others to die) when sent out into combat. I understand and applaud all of that. Viggo throughout the film shows a good balance of concern for his trainees, a desire to push them to be their best, and a desire to weed out those simply not cut out to be SEALs.

However, being a fan of the military and its task of protecting the weak, I had HUGE issues with the "pivotal scene" in the SERE camp. The movie is directed by Ridley Scott of Alien fame and you would think that this man would have respect for a strong female character and the situations that result. I very much equated Jordan to Ripley, both strong women who held their own and earned respect of those around them. But instead of just having Ripley and the others tied up or left in the sun or other "see if you can resist the concerns of your body", Ridley decides to have the Master Chief *brutalize* one of the soldiers and then almost rape Jordan. What????

If we know ANYTHING about real torture situations, it is that a torturer can eventually break anybody. We all have pain limits. There are always ways to inflict more pain! At some point either our body gives out or our mind snaps. That's why spies carry cyanide capsules, because you can't be "trained" to resist torture indefinitely. So what was the point of beating up on the first soldier? What was the point of almost raping Jordan? To prove she could be raped? Heck, any GUY there could have been raped too. Is it important for them to learn what rape feels like, just in case? Would the guys have been any more or less upset to see one of their fellow GUYS being raped vs a girl? Heck they might be MORE upset to see a fellow guy be raped because that would be even less "acceptable" to them. For Viggo's character to delve to those depths after everything he'd shown us previously was amazingly out of character - or indicated that Viggo was a depraved man who had no business training soldiers.

The movie was supposed to show us that women can be just as strong as men are. Heck, real life shows us that. There are plenty of strong female characters in movies - from Ripley in Alien, to Sarah Connor in Terminator 2, and more come out every day. There are plenty of real life female police officers and fire fighters who are depended on by their coworkers every day. It was almost an insult to have the GI Jane character go through what she did, sort of an Archie Bunker situation where you are ashamed that there really are people left out there that think a woman with strength must be a lesbian. While I applaud the movie's intentions to say "hey you remaining bigots out there, it's time to wake up", to have to involve a supposed rape to make your point is very sad. To have to taint Viggo's character with a sadistic view towards woman (as much as he tries his best to be fair much of the time) is really saying that ALL guys will always have this power/lust attitude towards women that they have to keep under control. Which is entirely unfair to men. It weakens the entire point of the story.

It's been a while since I've seen it but I didn't get that impression. His job was to make sure she quit, not to make sure she became a good navy seal. I think he was torn between training her and breaking her. I think he tried to instigate the rape scene as the final straw that broke the camel's back but it backfired because his men refused to do it. I think he was also trying to break the connection she was trying to develop with her fellow students which also backfired.

As a side note, I've haven't heard much about men being raped in war situations (although it is certainly possible) but there are always women being raped; almost incessantly.

Are you sure? I got the impression he was treating her fairly up until then - not trying to make her quit but not making it easy on her either. And the torture of the male teammate wouldn't have to do with that ...

I'll have to watch it again but I was pretty sure there was a conversation with a superior in which he was ordered to get rid of her by any means necessary.

I liked the one read by Mathew in Four Weddings and a Funeral at his lover's funeral:

"He was my north, my south, my east and west,
My working week and Sunday rest
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song
I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong."


However, I believe that a true love never dies, it just goes to a quieter place. And, although Mathew was gay, I believe this poem could be for any relationship type.

"Beowulf" is honestly one of my favourite poems of all time. Granted in Old English it's clunky to read, but Seamus Heaney's translation is remarkable. I'm considering that is more a movie based on a poem, at that.

Else, 'Funeral Blues' by Auden mentioned by Phyllis above is definitely one of my most favourite rendered poems on film. No matter how many times I watch that movie, Matthews' delivery of it reduces me to a quivering tearlump.

Me too -- this was the first movie-poem that came to mind, in fact.

Also, at least a few of Shakespeare's sonnets were read in Sense and Sensibility -- not sure which sonnets exactly, though. Not ones that I recognized (though I'm not really an expert on the Sonnets).

Good one!

'Let not the marriage of true minds, admit impediment'.

Love that.

I was hoping that more of Tolkien's poetry would have made it into the LOTR movies, extended DVDs of course, where they had the room for it. But i can't really complain, the movies were so wonderful.

Doesn't Aragorn mumble a bit of verse in the FOTR?

Oh, and Theoden has his big poetry scene as well in TT before the Battle of Helm's Deep.

I completely agree with you regarding Tolkien. I wrinkled that Gollum's sing-songy poems were completely eradicated from the film - a real shame IMO.

Hopefully they'll utilize those more in 'The Hobbit'. One can dream, anyway.

Well technically you could call that "one ring" thing they keep quoting to be a poem