Pandaemonium (film)
2000 film by Julien Temple
Pandaemonium is a 2000 film based on the early lives of English poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, in particular their collaboration on the "Lyrical Ballads", and Coleridge's writing of Kubla Khan.
- Directed by Julien Temple. Screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge edit
- It's only a mite. It's not as though he created a fully grown Doctor of Philosophy or a strapping great plough boy.
- It's not the opium - it's my mind. I spend every day trying not to think.
William Wordsworth edit
- We came to create a revolution of the mind, not to canoodle on a hillock.
- Albatrosses have nothing to do with eel fishing! This is another distraction.
- You can feed him with ideas and images but I go hungry.
Robert Southey edit
- Sam, opium is not your worst addiction. Your worst addiction is to Wordsworth.
John Thelwall edit
- You have grown such pleasing huge breasts, Sara.
Dialogue edit
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Anonymous - like Homer, like the hills and clouds themselves!
- Sara Coleridge: So long as Anonymous doesn't collect the fee.
- William Wordsworth: [to Dorothy ] I wandered lonely as a cow ...
- Dorothy Wordsworth: Perhaps "cloud" would be better, William.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge: They will always be remembered... when I am dead and all my words are dust.
- Sara Coleridge: What is it? What have you written?
- Robert Southey: It's a story for the children. Called "The Three Bears".
About Pandaemonium edit
- Well, as it happens, I care. Of course, you can't libel the dead. But this is dreadfully unfair to the Wordsworths. William never betrayed Coleridge. Their relationship was vexed, but essentially civilised and creative. Mary was a good friend to Coleridge. It is true that Dorothy was a victim of senile dementia - but it was many years after Coleridge died, and not drug-related. Kubla Khan was published quite normally. The Prelude is one of the two or three greatest poems in the English language. I know all this. Probably you do as well. But will those susceptible viewers, boning up the Romantics for their A levels, know it?
- John Sutherland [1]
Cast edit
External links edit
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2001/sep/07/poetry.artsfeatures