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Lolita
Release Date: May 31, 2011
Studio: Warner Home Video
Packaging/Materials: Blu-ray "ECO-BOX"
Year: 1962
Rating: NR
Running Time: 2:33:31
MSRP: $19.98
THE FEATURE
SPECIAL FEATURES
Video
1080p high definition 1.66:1
Standard definition
Audio
DTS-HD Master Audio: English 1.0 / Dolby Digital: French 1.0, German 1.0, Italian 1.0, Castellano 1.0, Spanish 1.0, Portuguese 1.0
Stereo
Subtitles
English SDH, French, German SDH, Italian SDH, Castellano, Dutch, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Portuguese (Brazil), Swedish
None
The Feature: 4/5
Professor Humbert Humbert (James Mason) needs to rent a room for the summer. Something quiet, clean, and affordable. The one being offered by the widowed Mrs. Haze (Shelley Winters) is alright, but Humbert finds the woman insufferable - a loud, pretentious creature with designs on him. Her teenage daughter Lolita (Sue Lyon), however, moves and beguiles him. To spend the summer with this "nymphet," Humbert is willing to tolerate the mother; as he gets closer to the daughter, he will eventually give up even more than that, marrying "the Haze woman" in order to remain with his true love. But he can only keep up the charade for so long, and though his wish to be with Lolita exclusively eventually comes true, guilt over what he knows to be wrong and paranoia about losing her to someone else will ultimately upend the deluded fantasy he's been living.
Publicity for Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's most famous - and controversial - novel asked the question that was on everyone's minds - "How did they ever make a movie of Lolita?" The answer? By playing up the book's dark humor and ironic tone that were ultimately lost on many a reader, myself included. Looking at the story through those filters changes it from being "erotic" - which would have been fine except the tale concerns a middle-aged man messing around with a pubescent girl - to something absurd, which Kubrick's adaptation gets down pat. Though the treatment plays out like a severe departure from the source material, it's ultimately more true to its underlying spirit, unlike Adrian Lyne's 1997 version, which follows everything on the surface, but ignores what makes the novel more than a titillating page turner - that is, the author's true intentions.
Admittedly, I did like Lyne's much-too-literal take on things, being kind of a sucker for tragedies, but Kubrick's version is obviously the more accurate of the two interpretations. In it Mason plays the role of Humbert as a sort of a straight man to the ridiculousness of his own life and Winters, with movies like "Night of the Hunter" and "A Place In the Sun" already under her belt, continues to portray the very meaning of pathetic and desperate. The increased role of Humbert's nemesis is an interesting concept, presenting him more clearly as the man Humbert is deep down, but it stretches the believability of the story for him to be present so obviously, so often. The casting of Lyon as the title character seems similarly problematic - though I suspect her "gee whiz" portrayal is not her performance per se, but an artifact of the era's teen culture.
Despite Kubrick's version being conceptually superior, I'm actually glad both adaptations exist. It's always fascinating to see how different filmmakers approach the same material and, in the case of "Lolita," either embrace or ignore the work's polarities. Together the two films provide a demonstration of how one work can be interpreted in different ways, but - more importantly - they show we should never just accept art at face value.
Video Quality: 4.5/5
The film is accurately framed at 1.66:1 and presented in 1080p with the AVC codec. The transfer features strong, stable black levels, excellent contrast and outstanding detail, though that can be more apparent in close ups than wide shots. There are a few moments of noticeable softness - outside of some obvious soft focus "beauty shot" filtering - but they are likely inherent to the source given the consistency of overall picture sharpness. The picture also contains no artifacts from excessive digital processing.
Audio Quality: 4/5
Dialogue in the 1.0 DTS-HD Master Audio mix is consistently clear, intelligible, and detailed. The track also exhibits fine depth and fullness and has a surprisingly wide sound stage.
Special Features: 1/5
Theatrical Trailer (1:00, SD)
Recap
The Feature: 4/5
Video Quality: 4.5/5
Audio Quality: 4/5
Special Features: 1/5
Overall Score (not an average): 4/5
Warner Home Video turns in a fine presentation of Stanley Kubrick's true-to-the-spirit adaptation of Nabokov's controversial novel. The sole extra is the theatrical trailer in standard definition. As with "Barry Lyndon," the title is currently an Amazon exclusive, but is included in the "Stanley Kubrick Limited Edition Collection" Blu-ray boxed set, also coming out on May 31, 2011. This collection of nine Kubrick films is available through other retailers, in addition to Amazon.