Yogiraj Kumar

I read the book before(much before) I watched the movie. Frankly speaking I feel that the director missed the essence of the book by a large margin. The magic of Lolita, the novel and the girl, is in her innocence and growing up girlishness, her insecurities combined with the discovery of her emerging womanhood and the seductive power it wields. She is a child woman(and the author says that there are many such nymphets), more sensual and magical than sexual. To add to it, enters Humbert Humbert. Lo takes him back to his magical blossoming of manhood(and the lost love) and starts the beginning of his doom. He knows the futility of it all and yet wishes to regain that lost moment, but now with Lo. He knows its a lost cause but goes on, hypnotized by events and caught on in their momentum which ends tragically. It is as if, two unrelated life stories meet in a whirlwind for a brief spell and end in tragedy. Nobody is to blame. The inexorable forces of life are at work. Some people see this story as pedophiliac in its essence, and so miss the entire point. Its not sex but the beauty of blossoming that the author wants to focus on. The utter confusion, the wonder, the total possession of the heart and mind, the mesmerizing moments, seemingly so ordinary but with an unexplained magical power that is forever. That's magic. Its a man's doomed attempt to regain, this very magic, this paradise lost is what is at the book's heart. Jeremy Irons's character was not developed within the storyline to give Humbert Humbert the depth it needed. Lolita came across as forced in her innocence and emerging sensuality. Maybe the casting needed more deliberations.