"At the center of the circle is a woman ahead of her time," it says on the DVD cover. (I often wonder who wrote the back covers of DVD's and my guess is some promo person who never saw the movie.)
I once got a book out of the library that consisted of Dorothy Parker's witticisms. I read it and thought "You had to be there." I just couldn't get into it. I just didn't find anything she said that witty.
I knew that Mrs. Dorothy Parker and her round table in New York consisted of some of the brightest literary talents of the time so I wanted to know more about her. So, when I saw the DVD at my local library, I borrowed.
This film (which I watched twice) depicted Dorothy Parker as droll - very! Yes, Dorothy Parker, as acted by Jennifer Jason Leigh, was droll, and in context, funny. I actually agree with the term "biting wit," also used on the DVD cover.
The mostly male writers she was surrounded by included playboys and playwrites, poets and screenwriters, in Hollywood and in New York City. She was there at VANITY FAIR magazine, and in the planning for THE NEW YORKER magazine but how? Was she a muse? An inspiration? One more alcoholic?
Rather, I think Dorothy Parker was "a depressive," as they used to call people who were always depressed - very! She had some things to be depressed about too. Raised without a mother,having a husband who abused her back in the day when few women could go without a husband, unrequieted love, an abortion, all these were in her experience.
Somehow she was an inspiration anyway, respected anyway, invited anyway.
Perhaps what impressed me most about Mrs. Dorothy Parker, who appears to have not been able to write in her elder years after so much of a life, was that she left her estate to the civil rights leader Martin Luther King. Her poetry for the film was used with the permission of the NAACP. The film neglected to explain this important fact. It did not reveal what had gone on in her life or her mind that moved her to do so. I think it would have been a better film if it had been explored or even used as the trajectory.
The movie attempted to recreate a scene of friendship in which a great many people who became important and known for their work interacted. None of these characters could really be fleshed out in the time and space of a film.
C Christine Trzyna 2012 All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights
