Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

“Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” is a very interesting movie. It was almost exhausting to watch. The head games and the power struggle between the couple truly made your head spin. I kind of felt like I was one of their house guests at the party, and I was witnessing a very troubled marriage and got caught in a very awkward situation. This is truly a classic American film. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton really gave impeccable performances of their characters Martha and George. This film is probably the best adaptation of a stage play ever brought to the big screen. The camera work was intense. There were a lot of close ups and use of hard shadows on their faces that expressed who these characters were. One thing that I noticed during the film was the framing of the scenes. The power struggle was expressed by the positioning of the characters, as well as the elements in the background, such as books on a shelf or pictures on the wall.  All these components really added background of who these people were. The close ups also looked slightly distorted as they would spiral deeper and deeper into their stories. It was never really clear if they were telling the truth or not. I was also impressed to learn that this film earned an academy award nomination for every single category. Even more so impressed to find out that this was Mike Nichols very first film. He would later go onto to direct other famous movies such as “The Graduate”. The fact that he was a first time director, and really broke the production code with this film back in the day, as well as seeing huge success, I just find that very inspiring.