This is what happen after so many years!

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)

This film will actually blow your mind away. With all of its only 4 casts getting Oscar nominations and winning 5 of the 13 categories that it was nominated for, it must be one of its kind.
The main characters, George and Martha (Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor), sets the gold standard of how chemistry between characters should be. The dialogue is quite heavy and incisive. At the time, it was considered unsuitable for general public consumption, so much so that, it became the first American movie with the 'For Mature Audiences Only' tag.
Phew! That's how I would label this flick. Watching it and digesting the dialogue is quite emotionally draining. The interplay with words, word play, cursing, abuse, flirting, heckling, insinuations, teasing and quarrelling is simply heavy with emotions.

The whole scenario happened in the wee hours of the early morning after a party in the Martha's father's place. Tipsy, George and Martha saunter back to their home. After a few minutes of meaningless conversation, George wants to retire for the night but Martha tells him that she had invited someone from the party to their home for some drinks.
What follows later is a solid 2 hours of ventilation of emotions and outpourings of deep seated sorrow between two couples. George, living a unfulfilled life, living under the scrutiny of his father-in-law who is also a History Professor under whom he is an Associate Professor. His wife is a foul mouth bossy drunk and a flirt. She is a persistent whiner who is forever not satisfied with her husband. She feels that George is a slob and an underachiever. Along the way, I gather that she must have snapped, needing psychiatric assistance.
George is embarrassed with his wife's broadcasting of personal problems and is ashamed of their childlessness. Martha, as we later find out, makes up a fictitious son who was turning 16 the next day.
The guest, Nick and Honey, has their own set of problems. Nick is a young lecturer who married his timid 'mousy' wife as he thought that she was pregnant. It turned out to be a pseudo-pregnancy. Honey, the young naive wife, has nothing to contribute intellectually that night except to be drunk and puke.
Layer by layer, all the uncertainties are teased out over the night. Even though 20 years of problems cannot be solved in a single night, George managed to convince Martha that there is no son and their 'cat and mouse' reaches a sober end.


The film's title refers to Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), an influential British feminist writer who pioneered the 'stream of consciousness' literary style while examining the psychological and emotional motives of her characters. [Perhaps the 'fear' of VW refers to the film's characters who are suffering marital discord in the emotionally-draining film, and who may have 'known' that she suffered from mental illness and ultimately went insane and committed suicide.] The title is also a parody of 'Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?', a tune sung in Disney's Three Little Pigs (1933) animated short film. [Wikipedia]