Riverwood Presbyterian Church

Movies

Movie Night: The Painted Veil

by Jimmy Hopper

As noted in the bulletin this morning, we are providing a forum on the Riverblog to discuss our current Movie Night movie, The Painted Veil. The suggestions below are just that, suggestions, and everyone is free to discuss any ideas as comments. Please join in with your thoughts on the important issues raised by this movie.

• Given the circumstances, do you feel that Kitty’s acceptance of Walter’s proposal was appropriate? Should she have foreseen what would eventually happen to her in a marriage in which she admittedly did not love her husband?

• Following that line of thought, Kitty states that “If a man doesn’t have what it takes to make a woman love him, that’s his fault.” Is this simply self-justification or is there a sense in which this idea is a staple of western culture? Do we go into marriage thinking that it is our partner’s responsibility to make us happy?

• Characterize Walter’s response to the affair. Is the trip to the village simply revenge, or does he have some idea of redemption for her and perhaps for himself in work and self-sacrifice?

• Waddington(Toby Jones) is developed in depth after seeming to be the quintessential “gone native” type. How do you feel that he has come to have peace with himself and his circumstances? Does he truly love his Chinese mistress and his life or do you feel that he has “settled” for something less than hoped for? How important to Kitty is his interaction with her?

• The Mother Superior (Diana Rigg) is from a higher social class than Kitty and had her own “tainted affair” before taking Catholic orders. Do you feel this was out of religious conviction or was her reason redemption through service, and through suffering? She speaks of love and duty as a response to grace. Do you agree? Do you feel that she understands Kitty or does she make erroneous assumptions about her? Is her attitude and life helpful to Kitty in her dilemma?

• Kitty asks in the movie, “Does anyone really fall in love with virtue?” Did Walter’s self sacrificing work in the cholera epidemic cause her to fall in love with him or did it change her attitude about life so that she could fall in love with her husband? Also, is Kitty’s redemption through service, love or both? Why do you think so?

• The title is from a poem by Percy Bysche Shelley. The stanza goes as follows:

Lift not the painted veil which those who live

Their shadows, o’er the chasm, sightless and drear.

Does the overall effect of the movie state this idea? Is Shelley’s poem more nihilistic than the conclusion you got or is the ending of the movie more upbeat?