Review

Ms. Garino showed us a movie of The Glass Menageries. The Glass Menageries is a memory play which is memories of Tom. He is the main character and also the narrator of this play. The Glass Menageries mainly talks about the events that he had before with his family, in which his father left the family alone. So then, Tom lives in a small apartment with his mother, Amanda, his older sister, Laura in St. Louis. He describes the fights and conflicts between the family, and also the consequences that the family had faced.

Amanda, originally from a good Southern family, because of her husband, she then suddenly came to this place. She is disappointed that Laura, who has pleurosis and is terribly shy, in which never attract any gentlemen callers. Amanda enrolls Laura in a business college. Amanda however, discovers that Laura’s shyness has led her to drop out of the class secretly and spend her days walking places alone. In additions, Amanda decides that Laura’s last hope must lie in marriage and begins selling magazine subscriptions to earn the extra money. Meanwhile, Tom, who works in the warehouse job for the family, finds an escape in liquor, cigarettes, movies, and literature, which pursues him to have chagrins with his mother. During one of the frequent arguments between mother and son, Tom accidentally breaks several of the glass animal figurines that are Laura’s most prized possessions.
Amanda and Tom discuss Laura’s prospects, and Amanda asks Tom to keep an eye out for potential suitors at the warehouse. Tom selects Jim O’Connor, a casual friend, and invites him to dinner. Amanda quizzes Tom about Jim and is delighted to learn that he is a driven young man with his mind set on career advancement. She prepares an elaborate dinner and insists that Laura wear a new dress. At the last minute, Laura knows that the name of her caller; as it turns out, it’s the crush she had in the high school, Jim. When Jim arrives, Laura answers the door, on Amanda’s orders, and then quickly disappears, leaving them alone. Tom then tells Jim secretly his plan about not paying the electric bills but leaving this house soon to have his own adventure. Laura refuses to eat dinner with the others, then is fainted. Amanda, wearing a fabulous, but old dress and discuss her story with Jim.
As dinner is ending, the lights go out. Then they light candles, and Amanda encourages Jim to find Laura in the living room while she and Tom clean up the dish. At first, Laura is shy, but his warm behavior soon opens up her. She says that she liked him in high school but was too shy to approach him. They continue talking, and Laura reminds him of the nickname he had given her: “Blue Roses,” an accidental corruption of pleurosis, an illness Laura had in high school. He then encourages Laura to be more confident in herself by saying everyone is the same. Laura then ventures to show him her favorite glass animal. Jim dances with her, but in the process, he accidentally breaks the unicorn’s horn. Laura forgives, noting that now the unicorn is now a normal horse. Jim kisses her, but he quickly pushes her back and apologizes, explaining that he was carried away by the moment and he actually has a serious girlfriend. Afterward, Laura gives him a unicorn as a souvenir.

Amanda enters the living room, full of good cheer. Jim quickly explains that he must leave because of an appointment with his fiancée. Amanda says goodbye to then she turns on Tom, questioning why he doesn’t tell them. Amanda scolds Tom of being an inattentive, selfish dreamer and then wants him to leave them. As a result, Tom accatually goes away.

The theme of this play will be carringness. The entire story is shaped by Tom’s  own memory. Tom wants to ask forgiveness from his sister. In the first part of the movie, Tom is glancing that there is a woman in the street, but then she disappears. Based on the book, I think the woman might be Laura that he has regretted to left with in the house. Tom then is walking to a place that he is comfortable with silently and his eyes are glistening with tears. We can also notice that his loneliness and sadness by watching his back because he is lowering his head. His walking paces are slow and the overall music background is sad as well to shape the story.  As he stares at the front, the story begins. So maybe  he is eager to know about Laura’s situation, he is so worried about him, so he has that imagination comes out and Laura appears.The first part is totally different from the book we read before. In the book, Tom has a small monologue in which also describing himself as the magician, and tell the audiences who is the main characters, but in the movie, the director cuts off this part. As a result, he adds this part in to emphasize the sadness of Tom. To state out how Tom feels toward his sister, to points out the regretfulness of Tom, and the director wants the audience to feel sympathy for Tom. Moreover, Tom always looks at Laura and cares about Laura when she has something. For example, When Amanda asks Laura to go out, Laura falls down in the stairs. Originally, Tom is sitting in the bed, but when he hears Laura’s voice from outside of the door, he immediately gets up and checks if Laura is fine. This emphasize that Tom is caring about his sister. Every time, he is more caring about his sister than his mother. Because his mother Amanda asks him to bring a gentleman caller to the house for his sister, he picks the nicest one and then brings it to the house.

Another theme will be the accepting of the imaginations, in which the whole family starts to  refuse the reality. Each of the family members couldn’t overcome the imaginary, so they always had a imagination world. For Laura, she lives in her own world with her glass animals. She is terribly shy and she also has physical defected, so she is always talking to her menageries and viewing them as friends because of her disability. When she talks about her glass menageries, she becomes happy and her face is filled with big similes and happiness. In the movie, she also views the animals as her most important part of her life. In the starting part of scene 2, it focused on the glass menageries at first, so people know that glass menageries are vital to Laura that she cannot live without it. Also, I remember that when Tom breaks her animals, she is so shocked and disappointed that her face is wrinkled and I can feel that her most important thing has been tear into pieces. She is heartbreaked by the acions that Tom did. This action emphasizes that she lives in her own world. Nobody can ever do anything to her most precious gem. Furthermore, when she talks to Jim about her glass animals, I can see her eyes are filled with happiness and she can never move her eyes from the animals. For Tom, his imgaination will be the literature and “movies” pursues him. At first, he might be the most normal person in the family due to his job and he is also talking to strangers. However, when he is talking to his mother Amanda about his future and the movie, he becomes angrier and insane. He says he is killer and at night his friend will kill the whole family off. For Amanda, she lives in a world that nobody is arround. At first, she tells us about her story of having 17 gentlemen callers. From her facial expressions, her blessedness couldn’t hide anymore. Whenever she mentions about the life she had before, she is beatific. However, she is the one who is faced partial to the reality; she wants her child to become normal like other children. She wants Laura to be normal, not peculiar, and she wants Laura to marry with someone who has a stable business income, so they can survive in the society. Amanda then wants Tom to keep up his job so they can have a stable family.

The play also highlights the glass animals as the hope of Laura. In my interpretation, when Tom breaks the animal, she already loses hope of having a man that she likes. She knows that she is crippled and terribly shy that nobody will ever like her as a woman. When Jim breaks the menagerie, she thinks it doesn’t matter because she thinks Jim is going to accept her, accepting the family she had, the shiness she had inside of her, and everything. Afterward, when Jim says he has a fiancee, she couldn’t afford it anymore. Then, she gives the menagerie to Jim, so maybe it represents that she already lost all of her hope on everyone.

The director pays more attention to lighting. When there is a family scene, the light is warm and it gives a note, saying it is the sweet and cozy home. It is usual to have a fight as well in this situation. However, when the time is in the future that Tom is narrated the story, the lighting is dimer and darker, also the light in the present is white light rather than yellow light which is a really uncomfortable and dazzling color. What’s more, when Tom and Amanda have some conflicts because of the movie and literature stuff, the light becomes darker and it gives the audience a sense that they are arguing. The family situation and environment gets worse and worse as it turns out. At first, the light is yellow light and that emphasize the good conditions of the family, but then, the light goes darker and darker in which draws out the worst conditions for the family. Moreover, the director focus on the music as well. I think the director is really good at applying the sad conditions to the audience. The director always uses the music to tell us this is the sad part, so that people will feel sad or worried about them. When Tom tells his mother about Laura’s situation, Amanda, as a mother, feels sad about her daughter, but she couldn’t do anything to resolve it, so the music comes out as a mother’s worried and sadness. I feel so grieved of Amanda, she doesn’t want anyone to say about her daughter, yet she has no plan to help her daughter, so maybe at this point, she decides maybe she needs to do something to help her daughter to get the gentleman caller as one source of them. The director also highlights the annoying of Amanda. As she talks in this play, I find out that she is the most annoying person. She always talks to people, mutters, naggings, and flatters. At first, I thought Amanda is a pitiful person that her husband left her, she is alone with two children, but then, in the movie, I feel like she is so annoying that I can understand why her husband leaves her. She always wants to command Tom what to do, and thinks she is the most important people in this family. She controls people’s thinking and opinions. She thinks her talking can control people’s opinion. For example, she has a selling magazines jobs in which she thinks she is able to use her tongue to sell the magazines to people by saying good things to people. Also, when she is overtalking to Jim about her previous life, she thinks she can control Jim as the next income source, but she is wrong about Jim will get into her trap.

My favorite character in this play is Laura. First of all, she is pretty that I really like her eyes. It gives me a sense of pureful and naive. Her character in the book supposedly gives us naive, but in this movie, she exposes more by looking forward and imagining Jim when she talks about her first crush in the high school that it leads the audience to see her purefulness. Several years passed by, I can feel her purefulness from her facial expression when she smiles and imagines Jim is there. Also, her acting skill is good, when Jim comes over to her, at first she is shy that never moves from her place. However, when they find more topics to discuss, they get closer and closer. She starts to talk and walk toward Jim in a positive way. Afterward, when Jim says Laura, you got to find a person that would kiss you. She is so delighted and amused by those words. Then, she is immersed in the happiness that Jim had brought her. Hugging her, dancing with her and kissing her, so maybe she then has hope about getting married with Jim, because of all those actions that Jim had done to her. She is holding the hopes as light that illuminate the family, but then she finds out that Jim is engaged; she loses her entire hope that she can never marry to her high school crush anymore. Her whole hope just disappears into pieces, so from her facial expression in the movie, her action stiff, and she couldn’t response to anything that Jim had said to her. The transitions from the happiness into sadness was so wonderful that I couldn’t see any mistakes because of the sudden of stiff and the freezing of Laura. Moreover, when she and Jim are talking about the Glass Menageries, her eyes are exposing lights through the glass animals. I can see her luster from her eyes when she views the glass animals as part of her family and friends.

I kind of like the movie because it gives me an idea of how it would be if the play is going to be the movie. It visualize the play. The actors are good at acting. Everyone devotes to make it better for producing a great play. Tom regrets to leave his sister Laura in the house, and maybe whenever he remembers it, he feels guilty and memorable. He cries most for his sister and he is worried and cares about his sister. Amanda is a good actress as well, she acts annoyed in the play, so people will stand in the view of Tom. Maybe the director wants us to feel for Tom, and his sister. The director also depicts the kindness of Laura in this play. i also think that all of the sound cue and lighting cue are in the right place, so I think it’s a great production in all.