Which Lolita Suits You?
by Julie C. Roth
A man sits at his desk in reverie about his first love. We see her in the golden light of memory, 14 years old, like him. We feel with him the sand on her knee, the texture of her clothing, and how wondrous she is to him. We learn that she died of typhus four months later.
When we return to the present, the man opens his journal and delicately lays his bookmark aside. We recognize it as the ribbon from his first love’s garment. And we feel enormous compassion for him.
This, explains Humbert Humbert, is how he came to be obsessed with young girls.
Almost gives you whiplash, doesn’t it? We have Adrian Lyne’s new film version of Lolita to thank.
Now, when Humbert offers up this explanation in the celebrated book by Vladimir Nabokov, he does so as an intellectual dodge — fascinating, isn’t it? he’s saying. No sadness. No guilt. Explaining it is explaining it away. This Humbert lives inside his own head and feels little for anything outside of it. Example? When Lolita tells him she thinks he tore her up inside, he worries only that she might go to the police–but even that fear only lasts about a minute, until he feels the need to comment to the reader about the way the gas station attendant is washing his window. No doubt about it, this guy’s an over-educated monster.
But with Jeremy Irons playing him–lighting up when Lolita enters the room, chastely delighting in her presence–it’s hard not to like him. Which is unsettling, if you let yourself think about it.
Lolita
And you can’t help but love Lolita too. She’s a gangly, affectionate, unself-conscious 12-year-old, dancing with abandon in the living room. It breaks your heart to watch her become more “knowledgeable” and manipulative as the film progresses, trading sexual favors for extra privileges and a larger allowance.
Totally different from the girl in Stanley Kubrick‘s 1962 film version. This Lolita never seems less than 18 years old. Never does she seem awkward or innocent or without the upper hand. There is no twelve-ishness about her at all. And when we arrive at the end of this movie, we’re left with the feeling that she set the whole plot in motion, using the silly adults as pawns. Which I guess is supposed to keep us from feeling too badly about her.
Clare Quilty
Kubrick’s version came out in the era where movies sniggered about sex, so we’re not allowed to delve too deeply into any of this. The Clare Quilty character, who stalks and ultimately steals Lolita from Humbert, is built up to keep things light. Played by Peter Sellers in a host of ludicrous disguises, a la Dr. Strangelove, Clare Quilty is a bizarre nuisance at worst. You can’t imagine this clownish, stuttering man stalking Humbert and Lolita, let alone running a sinister ranch for making porn videos.
But today we take sex very seriously. So we never see the new Clare Quilty in full face until the final scene. Glimpsed in shadow or under the brim of a hat, always in smoke, he is menacing like the devil. If this CQ were to seek you, you would be very frightened indeed. And if you were to recognize yourself in him, as Humbert does, you would be sickened unto murder. No matter how good his intentions or how truly he loved Lolita, Humbert is clearly just as guilty.
Which version should you see? Both movies stayed amazingly faithful to Nabokov’s book, but somehow the three are different enough that you could take a tour of late 20th century anxieties with them:
1955 — Published a decade after Einstein thought up the atom bomb, the book introduced us to Humbert Humbert: intellect as a life-destroying force.
1962 — In the year after the birth control pill was introduced, Kubrick’s Lolita foreshadowed men’s anxieties about women no longer being dependent, child-like creatures.
1997 — And with today’s Oprah-ing of America, Lyne’s Lolita shows that we can sympathize with a pedophile but worry about the long-term consequences of Madison Avenue’s sexualization of children.
But, for now, just make sure you see Adrian Lyne’s beautiful, compassionate film while you can.
Julie is Executive Producer of NetGuide
(Cybergrrl originally posted this article on October 9, 1998.)
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