Humbert Humber is lovely -- ·Þ³ø³¡

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Date Posted: 01:18:25 11/26/00 Sun
Author: cherbourg
Subject: Humbert Humber is lovely

I just saw the new Lolita from Cable.
It is not bad. I am not sure what actually was presented and conveyed in Nabokov'a novel and Kubrick's version(I am going to check them out anyway)so there is not camparison I can draw. But In this film, it is obvious that pedophilia is not the point. It could probably be obsession. What moved me is this Humbert Humbert character. The film focus on his crazy obsession with Lolita. Two voice overs at the end prove that Humbert is not really a povert, but rather a man who is deeply in love, if not obsessed, with Lolita. The first comes when Humbert goes to Alaska to meet the pregnated Lolita after that 3 years.

I looked and looked at her, and I knew, as clearly as I know that I will die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth. She was only the dead-leaf echo of the nymphet from long ago -- but I loved her, this Lolita, pale and polluted and big with another man's child. She could fade and wither -- I didn't care. I would still go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of her face.

And this second one appears at the very last, when Humbert is standing somewhere in the mountain, waiting for the caps to catch him.

What I heard then was the melody of children at play. Nothing but that. And I knew that the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita's absence from my side, but the absence of her voice from that chorus.

It hurts, hurts a great deal when I see Humbert offers to "save" the "pale, pulluted, and big" Lolita by asking her to go away with him, and Lolita refuses, and Humbert said passionately, you can have the money even if you stay, and its US4000! It sounds more than sad when it goes on and we discover that Lolita would rather go back to Quilty, the man who did nothing but exploiting her, but not to Humbert, who never gives up finding her and being good to, or say pleasing, her. Of course it is controversial whether Humbert really loves and cares about her, or its just his uncontrollable "need" for possessing her/ being with her. [the question is actually answered pretty much in the final voice over] However, Thinking about how "good" Humbert had been to her, compare with Quilty, we see the eternal mystery and poignance of "love"...

The last voice over is poweful and somewhat makes Humbert not a pervert but a passionate man: Humbert is sad not because of the absence of Lolita, but because the absence of her laughter among the children. This is essensial to show that he's not a prevert, but that he cares about Lolita and, it seems, he is feeling guilty for what he had done to her (or feeling sad of her �Z��). Is he regreting being indulgent with her, regreting accepting her seduction, that finally leads to not a matter of his sinned nature, but a unredemptable, unreturnable hurt to Lolita? We are not sure...but that must be a complex feeling...

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