It has been interesting thus far to see how the different films have approached bringing the sonnets to the screen; with some they have sought to turn the words into a narrative, with others they just deliver them as if on a stage, and then some seem to do things that link to the sonnet but not really. Sonnet 14 is one of those as it seems to thematically link more than try to translate the words. It talks about the writer being unable to predict the future but saying for certainty that the subject's end is also the end of truth and beauty. So there is a certain sense of the end of things to the words and this feeling is very much brought into the film as we join an old woman on a dark and stormy beach in Queens.
Visually the film looks great. The clouds and sea and dramatically presented and the whole film has very little color. It does manage to present the character clearly though, so I assume that much of this was done after the fact rather than being shot in the middle of a storm. The sense that the woman is being filmed in a much more peaceful place than the visuals suggest does actually help, since there is a feeling that she is coming to her own end and accepting it such, and as per the last few lines, her end is the end of everything else but she is not really affected by it.
Reading the sonnet before and after the film, I must confess being unsure of what the writer is saying because there does appear to be an alternative to this doom and death, but it is an alternative that the film doesn't seek out or try to find meaning in either, since the character seems content in the midst of the approaching storm. So on that front I didn't think that it really added much to the sonnet itself, but it is hard not to be engaged by it for how well it does the peace conflicting with the striking storm clouds and waves in a very aesthetically arresting short film.
Visually the film looks great. The clouds and sea and dramatically presented and the whole film has very little color. It does manage to present the character clearly though, so I assume that much of this was done after the fact rather than being shot in the middle of a storm. The sense that the woman is being filmed in a much more peaceful place than the visuals suggest does actually help, since there is a feeling that she is coming to her own end and accepting it such, and as per the last few lines, her end is the end of everything else but she is not really affected by it.
Reading the sonnet before and after the film, I must confess being unsure of what the writer is saying because there does appear to be an alternative to this doom and death, but it is an alternative that the film doesn't seek out or try to find meaning in either, since the character seems content in the midst of the approaching storm. So on that front I didn't think that it really added much to the sonnet itself, but it is hard not to be engaged by it for how well it does the peace conflicting with the striking storm clouds and waves in a very aesthetically arresting short film.