Orlando (film)

The story begins in the Elizabethan era, shortly before the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603. On her deathbed, the queen promises an androgynous young nobleman named Orlando a large tract of land and a castle built on it, along with a generous monetary gift; both Orlando and his heirs would keep the land and inheritance forever, but Elizabeth will bequeath it to him only if he assents to an unusual command: "Do not fade. Do not wither. Do not grow old." Orlando acquiesces and reposes in splendid isolation in the castle for a couple of centuries during which time he dabbles in poetry and art. His attempts to befriend a celebrated poet backfire when the poet ridicules his verse. Orlando then travels as English ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. After years of diplomatic service, he participates in a battle but flees after witnessing the first death. Waking seven days later, he learns something startling: he has transformed into a woman. The now Lady Orlando comes home to her estate in Middle-Eastern attire, only to learn that she faces several impending lawsuits arguing that Orlando was a woman all along and therefore has no right to the land or any of the royal inheritance that the queen had promised. The succeeding two centuries tire Orlando; the court case, bad luck in love, and the wars of British history eventually bring the story to the present day (the early 1990s). Orlando now has a young daughter in tow and is in search of a publisher for her book. The literary editor who judges the work as "quite good" is portrayed by Heathcote Williams—the same actor who played the poet who had, earlier in the film, denigrated Orlando's poetry. Having lived a most bizarre existence, Orlando, relaxing with her daughter, points out to her an angel. Differences from the novel Director Potter described her approach to the adaptation as follows: The film contains some anachronisms not present in the novel. For example, upon Orlando's arrival in Constantinople in the year 1700, England is referred to as a "green and pleasant land", a line from William Blake's Jerusalem, which in reality was not written until 1804. Potter argued that "whereas the novel could withstand abstraction and arbitrariness (such as Orlando's change of sex), cinema is more pragmatic." ==Cast==

When first pitching her treatment in 1984, Potter was told by "industry professionals" that the story was "unmakable, impossible, far too expensive and anyway not interesting." • The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser • Shakespeare's Othello and Sonnet 29 • "Women" ("Sūrat an-Nisāʼ) from the Quran • "The Indian Serenade" and The Revolt of Islam by Percy Bysshe Shelley Music The following songs are featured: • Jimmy Somerville – "Eliza Is the Fairest Queen" (composed by Edward Johnson) • Andrew Watts with Peter Hayward on harpsichord – "Where'er You Walk" (from Semele; composed by George Frideric Handel) • Jimmy Somerville – "Coming" (composed by Potter, Jimmy Somerville, and David Motion) • Anonymous – "Pavana" ==Reception==

Box office The film grossed $5.3 million in the United States and Canada. It also grossed $2 million in the United Kingdom; $1.9 million in Italy; $1.6 million in Germany and over $1 million in Australia. By October 1993, it had grossed $13 million. Critical response Before Orlandos release in the United States in June 1993, Vincent Canby wrote in an effusively positive review: Furthermore, Canby cautioned that while the novel stands on its own, he was not sure if the film does. He wrote, "Potter's achievement is in translating to film something of the breadth of Woolf's remarkable range of interests, not only in language and literature, but also in history, nature, weather, animals, the relation of the sexes and the very nature of the sexes." By 2010, Orlando was received as part of Potter's successful oeuvre with Matthew Connelly and had one critic affirming in the first line of his review that "Rarely have source material, director, and leading actress been more in alignment than in Orlando, the 1992 adaptation of Virginia Woolf's novel, directed by Sally Potter and starring Tilda Swinton ... Watching Orlando some 17 years after its U.S. theatrical run, however, proves a welcome reminder of just how skillfully they [Potter and Swinton] marshalled their respective gifts here, how openly they entered into a dialogue with Woolf's playful, slippery text." On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 85% based on 65 reviews. The website's critics consensus reads, "Orlando can't match its visual delights with equally hefty narrative, but it's so much fun to watch that it doesn't need to." Accolades ==Orlando: The Queer Element==

In 2017, the film was screened multiple times as part of a multi-media arts project Orlando: The Queer Element. The project explored issues of science and gender through history and was organised by the theatre company Clay & Diamonds, in association with organisations such as the BFI and the National Trust, with funding from the Wellcome Trust and Arts Council England. A one-off immersive performance using five actors—some from the LGBT community—took place on Friday 24 March at the BFI Flare: London LGBT Film Festival, alongside a 25th Anniversary screening of the film. A separate series of performances was mounted in June by Clay & Diamonds with over 30 actors from the performance training company Fourth Monkey. Together they created a site-specific piece that was performed at the National Trust venues Hanbury Hall and Knole house (the home of Vita Sackville-West, Woolf's lover, and the inspiration for Orlando). These performances were made for both the public and school audiences, with many of the performances featuring a screening of the film. The event also served part of the National Trust's "Prejudice and Pride" programme, which marked 50 years since the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in the United Kingdom with the passage of the Sexual Offences Act 1967. ==2020 Met Gala inspiration==

Orlando, both the film and the novel, was the primary inspiration for both the 2020 spring exhibition of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the 2020 Met Gala. The exhibition, entitled "About Time: Fashion and Duration", was specifically inspired by the "labyrinth" scene in Orlando, where Tilda Swinton runs through the labyrinth dressed in an 18th-century gown before she reappears dressed in mid-19th century garb. Using that scene as the initial inspiration, curator Andrew Bolton took "Orlando's concept of time and the manner in which she/he moves seamlessly through the centuries" to "trace more than a century and a half of fashion, illustrating how garments of the past influence the present." == Notes ==