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Actors: Jeremy Irons, Sinead Cusack, Ethan Hawke, Lena Headey, Grant Warnock, Peter Postelwaite, David Morissey, John Heard
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| Review Summary and Plot Commentary about Waterland |
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Tom Crick (Jeremy Irons), a middle-aged and childless history teacher at a private high school in the U.S., begins straying from his lectures during class. He begins telling his students stories of his family and childhood love Mary (now his wife) in the waterland area known as the Fens in England. It soon appears that his mental unravelling is due to his worry over Mary's suddenly imagining that she is pregnant. The cause of Mary's delusion (and the reason why having a baby is impossible) is ultimately revealed through Tom's loose and frankly sexual reminisces. His students grow increasingly confused as he goes on to tell them of his grandfather going mad after the first world war and his mother's turning the family brewery into an asylum for him and soldiers who have been shell-shocked.
When he tells the class about his earliest sexual encounters with Mary and how she seeks to please him by attempting to initiate his mentally retarded older brother Dick into intercourse too, some shocked students report him to the headmaster and Tom's career at the school is finished. A further crisis happens when he returns home to find Mary has actually come home with a baby. In seeking to find the child's origins, he loses Mary and becomes totally isolated, except for one loyal student (Ethan Hawke) whom he has somehow won over. Tom's only hope seems to be to go on telling his stories, even at his farewell speech to the school, until they tear open the mystery that has denied him and Mary a child and transformed the simple, gentle Dick into a horror.
The movie is often filmed with Tom's character and class moving amidst and interacting with the historical scenes he recounts, a visual effect that destabilizes viewers as much as it portrays Tom's mental slippage.
--Karen Law, Resident Scholar
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| Analysis of Waterland |
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Our unique search engine provides a wealth of detail about
books by breaking them down into many different literary
elements, all of which are searchable (click here). |
Ratings are on a 1-10 scale (Low to High)
Plot
Time/era of movie:
- 1960's-1970's
Romance/Love/Hugging
Yes
Kind of romance:
- Unprepared for birthing/child rearing
Inner struggle or disability
Yes
Brain/Body not working?
- mental illness
Main Character
Identity:
- Male
Profession/status:
- teacher/professor
Age:
- 40's-50's
Is this an ordinary person caught up in events?
Yes
Hair color?
- brunette (Brown)
Hair type
- (man) short/standard straight
Body type
- (man) very skinny
Events of movie makes character more...
- sad
Ethnicity/Nationality
- British
How sensitive is this character?
- sensitive to others' feelings
Sense of humor?
- Mostly serious with occasional humor
Intelligence
- Smarter than most other characters
Physique
- healthy but a geeky weakling
Secondary Main Character
Identity:
- Female
Hair color
- brunette (Brown)
Hair style
- (man) short/standard curly
Body type
- (woman) average
Unclothed?
- chest
How much in movie?
- 20%
Ethnicity/Nationality
- British
Main Adversary
Identity:
- Male
Age:
- a teen
Profession/status:
- student
How much of work is main antagonist actually present in:
- 40%
Hair color
- brunette (Brown)
Hair type
- (man) short/standard straight
Body type
- (man) average
Ethnicity/Nationality
- White (American)
How sensitive is this character?
- middling sensitive to others' feelings
Sense of humor
- Cynical sense of humor
Intelligence
- Smarter than most other characters
Physique
- average physique
Setting
United States
Yes
The US:
- Northeast
Europe
Yes
European country:
- England/UK
Water?
Yes
Water:
- drowning
City?
Yes
City:
- dirty, grimy (like New York)
Misc setting
- school
Style
Accounts of torture and death?
- explicit references to deaths
Movie makes you feel...
- thoughtful
Sex/nudity in movie?
Yes
What kind of sex:
- kissing
- touching of personal anatomy
- impregnation/reproduction
- seeing breasts
Any profanity?
- Occasional swearing
Is this movie based on a
- book
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Resident Scholar Profiles
TOP SCHOLAR:
 Karen Law
SCHOLARS:
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Note: the views expressed here are only those of the reviewer(s). | |
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