The Old Man Who Read Love Stories

Teacher notes

Teacher Professional Development Day

Presenters: Susan Bye and Bianca Venturi

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The Old Man Who Read Love Stories

Rolf de Heer, 2001

Before viewing the film

What do students already know about the Amazon rainforest?

o What are some of the significant issues facing this extraordinary natural wonder?

o Why might the large cats that inhabit the rainforest be particularly vulnerable to

people’s increasing encroachment on their territory?

o What about the people who are indigenous to the rainforest? What are the kinds of

challenges they face?

o What are some of the motivating factors driving large-scale destruction of this vital

part of the global ecosystem?

Ask students to research key terms such as: Amazonia; the Amazon rainforest; Ecuador;

Shuar; Jibaro; colonisation/colonialism.

Think about the words rainforest and jungle: what different associations are conjured up

by each of these words?

Use an interactive white board to share some stills from the film: a shot of the jungle; the

jaguar; the dilapidated town of El Idilio; the Shuar people: What kind of world is suggested

by these images?

What about the title of The Old Man who Read Love Stories? Do we usually associate love

stories with old men? Whom do we conventionally think of as readers of love stories?

What are the typical features of a love story?

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Viewing the film

It is absolutely essential that students’ first experience of this film should be in a single

uninterrupted session. The particularly intricate and complex narrative structure of this

film should make this a priority.

When students watch this film, encourage them to pay attention to the credits.

After viewing the film

Genre: What type of film is The Old Man who Read Love Stories?

This film is very much about storytelling and styles of storytelling.

o Ask students about their own memories and the stories they tell themselves about

things that happened in the past.

o Encourage them to explore the idea that different kinds of people read and

respond to different kinds of stories.

o What is the purpose of stories?

Ask students to think about de Heer’s dissatisfaction with the original script. In the Q and

A included as a special feature on the DVD, de Heer says:

The script that I read, when I looked at it carefully, I found unpleasant; this semi-
exploitative, violent, masculine, hunting film script…but when I read the book I
thought, ‘Yes, this is lovely; this is what I want to do.’

What kinds of distinctions is he making here?

In fact, the central narrative – the story that takes place in the film’s present – is

organised around Antonio’s hunt for the jaguar. How, then, does the film avoid

being a ‘hunting’ film?

The Old Man Who Read Love Stories is actually constructed around two narrative

forms: the romance and the adventure narrative. This highlights the

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 interconnection between identity and the stories we tell about the world and our

place in it. Some people have suggested that it is useful to think of this film with

reference to the western genre:

o a story that takes place on the frontier

o corrupt authority figure wields power

o outsider saves town from threat

o women are marginal figures in an essentially male world

The connection between gender and culture is integral to The Man Who Read Love Stories

and this is most specifically played out in terms of narrative form. You might like to show

students the scene in Sleepless in Seattle where the female appeal of the love story in An

Affair to Remember is contrasted with the more conventionally masculine drama of The

Dirty Dozen. This is a great way of exploring the conventional assumptions about male

and female culture, assumptions that in a number of interesting ways The Old Man Who

Read Love Stories reinforces.

Luis Sepulveda’s book The Old Man Who Read Love Stories has been described as

an ecological morality tale.

o How useful is this term as a way of describing the film?

o Does the film have a moral?

o Is the term moral landscape more useful – if so, how might the film’s moral

landscape be described?

Focusing on the film narrative

Narrative Structure

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The Old Man Who Read Love Stories has a very intricate narrative structure. While the

story it tells in the present is a straightforward linear narrative, the interwoven memories

contribute to a dense, complex and layered narrative.

After an initial viewing, assign students a chapter of the film and ask them to list each

episode, noting its time and place.

When you put this together as a class see how many different layers of time and place can

be identified.

It could be helpful to give each of these layers a colour, so you can track, for instance, how

the memories of Nushino build up at the end of the film.

This exercise is also a useful way of clarifying the role of Josefina – i.e. how much of what

we see of her is the love story that Antonio is writing in his head and how much is rooted

in reality. In the special DVD feature Rumble in the Jungle (which is well worth watching),

you can get a glimpse of the original version of the scene where Josefina delivers the line,

‘A man who reads love stories and admits it, is less of a fool than a man who beats his

wife thinking she loves it.’ In cutting this scene so that it emerges out Antonio’s

subjective thoughts and memories, it is possible to read Josefina’s comment as a product

of his imagination.

Students should reflect on how much of the narrative of The Old Man who Read Love

Stories is presented as an objective narrative and how much from the subjective

experience of the old man.

o What is the effect of giving a character so much narrative authority?

o It is has become a common film device to use the idea of subjectivity to cast doubt on

the vision of the world that a character presents to the viewer. Is there ever any sense

that Antonio is an unreliable witness?

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As the tension builds in the present, with Antonio trying both to read the jaguar and

manage – or hide from – his fear, the memories come flooding in.

o How different is this from the climactic endings conventionally associated with the

adventure story?

o Why is the mounting tension in the present interrupted and underwritten by the

experiences of the past? What is the effect and purpose of this?

o Focus in particular on the 8 minute sequence introduced by the shooting of the gun

inside the canoe. This is the longest unbroken narrative sequence up to this point. Why

is it so long? Why is it inserted at this point? How does it feed into the sequence that

follows?

o In this penultimate sequence, note the way that editing builds the tension as Antonio

and the jaguar finally meet their shared fate. Tightly edited time lapse photography

shows time speeding up at a rate that defies the languid pace of so much of the rest

of the film. The cross fades between the jaguar and Antonio also speed up, until the

two of them are superimposed on each other and on the jungle; it is as if they have

become one. This process is echoed by the rhythms of the music, in particular the bass

of the drum. Then, as they face the end of their struggle, the music stops, the shots

lengthen and their separateness is reinstated.

Encourage the students to become aware of the various visual and aural techniques used

to weave the memories into the story set in the present. Particularly effective techniques

involve layering the film by superimposing one scene over another and using overlapping

sound as a bridge.

o Ask students to consider de Heer’s stated intention that: ‘This film has to flow like

a river.’

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 o Each student should choose a narrative sequence and focus on the way the layers

of narrative are woven together.

Themes

The Natural Order of Things

The Old Man who Read Love Stories deals with issues of ecology and the environment.

o List specific scenes that expand on this theme.

A key feature of this ecological theme is that the natural balance requires an acceptance

of the connections between all aspects of life:

o people and nature

o people and the landscape

o different groups of people

o different cultures

o the present and the past

o society and the individual.

The Shuar people are presented as living in harmony with their environment.

o What aspects of Shuar culture are viewed particularly positively?

o What is the effect of the juxtapositioning of Antonio’s memories of Shuar culture and

his experiences at El Idilio?

o How does the incident with the sloth conflict with the Shuar people’s respectful

attitude to the world they inhabit?

According to Luis Sepulveda, the author of the novel on which the film is based, his story

is one of possibility not of pessimism:

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 I intended to write something that was a metaphor for the possibility of
living in an environment different from one’s own, that harmony is possible
in a culture that is not one’s own, and that this possibility is defined and is
decided only when a deep respect for the other exists.

o Does the film hold out any possibility of this kind of harmony?

o What examples are there in the film of ‘a deep respect for the other’?

o Which characters are the least respectful and what are the consequences of this lack

of respect?

Reading

The Old Man Who Read Love Stories deals with the nature and purpose of the stories

people share and tell about themselves, their lives and each other.

o What are some of the ways that this theme is explored in the film?

Philippa Hawker commented in her review of the film: ‘This is a tale in part of redemption

through reading.’ What does she mean by this?

The theme of reading is inextricably connected with the ecological theme. Reading

suggests understanding, empathy and respect for what exists, whereas the hunters and

the prospectors write on the landscape in ways that change it forever.

o What are some examples of this kind of writing?

The film opens with a voice-over narration and the glimpse of the first page of a book – a

book telling the story of the film.

o Why are the film’s viewers constituted as readers at the beginning of the film?

o What might be some of the reasons for this device being abandoned after Chapter 2?

(Note that neither of the passages come Sepulveda’s book which opens quite

differently.)

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Colonisation and the idea of difference

The beauty of the character of Antonio is his special capacity to understand and relate to

the world he inhabits. This ability to ‘read’ his environment is connected to the lessons he

learnt in the years spent under the tutelage of his friend Nushino and the Shuar people.

He is distinguished from other non-Indigenous settlers, prospectors and tourists because

he does not ‘write over’ this new and other world with the perspective and practices

brought from outside. In other words, rather than colonise, he adapts.

o What examples are there in the film of Antonio’s skills as a reader?

o How do other characters reveal that they have not adapted to the new place they have

come to?

o What examples are there of the destructive forces of colonisation?

o How do teeth and dentistry contribute to this exploration of people being out of place?

o Discuss and analyse some key scenes with this idea in mind: For instance, in a

particularly evocative scene outside Alka Selzer’s hut, Antonio finds emeralds in the

pocket of the dead prospector and proceeds to throw them away to avoid news of their

discovery. It is as if he is sowing seeds – this is a creative, productive act designed to

ward off the destructive arrival of the prospectors, the road builders and the tourists.

Yet as part of the same scene he acknowledges there is nothing he can do to ward off

the inevitable death of the jaguar: ‘You’re already done for, Cat…. And so am I’

After Dolores dies, Antonio looks at her body with a mixture of regret and despair: ‘I’m

sorry, Dolores. This lousy jungle, it fucked us all up.’ When he is forced to put the jaguar’s

mate out of its misery, he has realised that the aggressor is not the jungle but the

destructive impulses of outsiders: ‘Forgive me, my friend. That lousy gringo, he fucked all

of us up.’ The transition traced through the character of Antonio involves his

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transformation from being an outsider who struggles against the jungle, to a man who

considers himself part of this natural world.

It is common for texts to contain a thread that, if you pull hard enough, can seem to

unravel the central theme. In The Old Man Who Read Love Stories the central theme of

Antonio as a reader achieving harmony by reconciling his present with his past is unsettled

by the depiction of Josefina and Nushino, who are each given a symbolic value that seems

to make them matter ONLY in relation to Antonio’s life and experience.

o Could these characters be considered hostages to Antonio’s redemption?

o Does Antonio actually rewrite the stories and identities of these characters?

o With this in mind, consider the words of feminist writer bell hooks [sic] who is deeply

suspicious of those who speak for others:

No need to hear your voice when I can talk about you better than you can speak
about yourself. No need to hear your voice. Only tell me about your pain. I want
to know your story. And then I will tell it back to you in a new way. Tell it back to
you in such a way that it has become mine, my own. Re-writing you I write
myself anew. I am still author, authority. I am still colonizer the speaking subject
and you are now at the center of my talk .

Rolf de Heer is acutely aware of issues of ‘whiteness’ (a term coined to counter the

tendency to make ‘whiteness’ a neutral term, a ‘given’ against which difference is

measured). In the making of his film Ten Canoes he produced a film that met a number of

issues of postcolonial filmmaking head on – particularly in terms of language. In contrast,

in The Old Man Who Read Love Stories, the Shuar Indians speak in English.

o Why in a story about colonisation might this be a problem?

o Consider de Heer’s comments about a pre-Ten Canoes way of thinking about

representing Indigenous culture. These comments refer to a film about Indigenous

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 Australians that was never made but they are relevant to The Old Man Who Read Love

Stories:

And I realised that if I was going to be as respectful of my new friends at

Hopevale as I felt, then I had to humanise them, reduce the boundaries of
difference such that the audience (predominantly white) could identify
with them as people, as characters, rather than as, perhaps exotic
savages. There was no satisfactory way to do it, but somehow, I had to
have them speak English. (‘Personal Reflections on Whiteness’, p. 4)

In talking about issues of colonisation, the term the ‘other’ is a useful one as it explains

the way that one group creates a sense of shared identity by making another group

strange. While the Shuar people do this very thing to Antonio when he talks of the lives of

the mountain people, the process of ‘making strange’ is destructive when it is used by a

dominant culture to ‘write over’ another culture.

o You can explore the treatment of this idea within the context of the film with

reference to the scene where the gringo attempts to take Antonio’s photo.

o However, it is also useful to look at the representation of Nushino and the Shuar

people and consider whether, in fact, the viewer is being addressed as a member of

the dominant culture and asked to observe the Shuar people as exotic and

fascinating… like the jaguar.

o This process of making strange, of creating a group identity by constructing another

group as different, can also be an issue in the construction of gender. In The Old Man

Who Read Love Stories, Josefina is exotic, different and unknowable. Moreover, she

waits patiently (always inside) for the men in her life to come to her. When she

leaves the mayor’s house, she is simply moving on to Antonio’s. Antonio is the

subject of the story being told; she is the object. Yet, could it be that Josefina’s

character is a playful reference to the female characters conventionally associated

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 with the genre she and Antonio like to read? Does this make her characterisation

more or less problematic?

We learn from the Popcorn Taxi interview (DVD special feature) that initially de Heer was

going to have actors speak in their own accents. However, for various reasons to do

primarily with creating a consistent world, he ended up opting for English spoken with a

Spanish accent. A number of reviewers have commented on the awkwardness of this in

the initial stages of the film.

o Why do accent and language pose such a problem in films made by one culture about

another?

Characters

Antonio Bolivar

It is worth noting that Antonio has the same surname as the famous nineteenth century

South American freedom fighter Simon Bolivar who fought for independence from Spain.

Ironically, Antonio has absolutely no interest in politics and compliantly votes for the

mayor as ordered. It is wise not too make too much of Antonio’s name (though its

resonance for Luis Sepulveda should not be underestimated). However, I feel that his

search for beauty and balance may well be seen as a more productive alternative to

Rubicundo’s railing at the government.

Antonio is a reader. In fact, that is how he is defined in the title.

o Why is the film called The Old Man Who Read Love Stories and not The Old Man

and the Jaguar? (I really like the way that the title conjures up the idea of the folk

tale.)

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 o We are usually taught to read, but Antonio discovers – as if by magic -- that he can

read. Note the way that Antonio’s memory of this moment of revelation is

presented visually. What is the effect of this?

o Why does Antonio express such impatience with the newspaper that the mayor

gives him to read?

o Why do love stories hold such a strong appeal for him?

o In what ways is Antonio shown to be an expert reader?

o In what ways is reading ‘an antidote against the poison of old age’?

Antonio’s wisdom and authority come from his skill at reading and understanding the

jungle environment. While he discovers that he can read the written word as if by magic,

he has had to learn to read the world around him.

o How does this happen?

o What is the role of Nushino in this process?

o Although a skilled reader, Antonio misreads/misunderstands Nushino’s request at

the time of his death.

o How does this show that he was like the Shuar people but not one of them?

The Old Man who Read Love Stories has been described as ‘another example of a Rolf de

Heer film about a character on the fringes of society ‘.

o In what ways is Antonio an outsider?

o How do his memories of his marriage to Dolores add to this sense of Antonio as

separate and alone?

o Consider what Antonio loses when he accidentally betrays his friend Nushino?

Note in particular the response of the Shuar people to his return with the body of

Nushino’s killer and then the scene of his departure.

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 o Why are outsider figures often able to see and understand the society they inhabit

more clearly than those at the centre of things?

From the beginning Antonio connects with the jaguar because of his finely honed capacity

for empathy.

o In what ways does Antonio express his deep understanding of the pain and grief of

the jaguar?

o How do we see this connection develop and change while Antonio pursues her in

the jungle?

o Antonio initially believes that putting the male jaguar out of his misery is a kind of

resolution, an ending to his and the jaguar’s story. Why isn’t it a resolution? Why

does the jaguar go on to relentlessly pursue Antonio?

o When describing the relationship that forms between the jaguar and Antonio,

Richard Dreyfuss (see Rumble in the Jungle) suggests that they have made a deal.

What are the terms of this deal?

o Why does Antonio throw away his gun and kill the jaguar with a poison dart?

Josefina

Josefina is undoubtedly a problematic character. Indeed it is hard to think of her as a

character; perhaps she could be described as a blank page on which the other characters –

particularly Antonio – write.

o Ask students to jot down everything they know about Josefina.

o How do they find out about her? How much is presented from the perspective of

Antonio and how much from within the unmediated narrative of the present?

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 When Antonio thinks about Josefina, is he remembering actual events in the past or is he

creating his own love story with Josefina at the centre?

o This is not to say that Josefina is a fantasy – just those moments when Antonio

imagines the two of them alone together.

What is the effect of Josefina’s voiceover?

o Does this give her ownership of the story?

o Is Antonio in fact part of her love story?

o However, this does not alter the fact that within the story her character is more of

a male fantasy figure than a multi-dimensional character.

Focus on the scene where Rubicundo takes Antonio to meet Josefina.

o Note the colours of Josefina’s room and her bright clothing. (In doing this you are

looking at elements of mise en scene –the staging of the scene.) What does this

tell us about her? How does this contribute to our understanding of the character

and her role in the story?

What can we make of the fact that we never see Josefina outside?

o How does this link up with the opposition that the film sets up between male and

female culture.

Nushino

Could Nushino be described as the love of Antonio’s life?

How could Nushino’s relationship to the world he inhabits best be described?

What is Nushino’s greatest gift to Antonio?

Why does Nushino say to Antonio ‘You are not one of us but you are like us’.

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 o These words are uttered twice. On the first occasion they express inclusion and

acceptance and on the second they are a regretful acknowledgement of the

difference that will separate them in death in a way that couldn’t in life.

o What is the result of Antonio’s accidental betrayal of his friend at the moment of

his death?

o How does Antonio bridge this difference and lay Nushino to rest?

In what ways are Nushino and Josefina linked both visually and in terms of the narrative

structure?

Nushino is also like Josefina in that he comes across more as a symbolic figure than a

developed character.

o Is this a problem?

o Nushino is presented as someone in complete harmony with nature. In this way he

brings to mind the mythical figures in the James Cameron 3D extravaganza Avatar. In

what ways is it problematic to represent as a metaphor real people engaged in a real-

life political struggle?

o The Old Man Who Read Love Stories is a narrative about the destruction wrought by

colonisation. However, in exploring this theme, could it be argued that the film

subjects the Shuar people to another form of colonisation.

Rubicundo

What is the effect of the contrast between Rubicundo’s bloody and brutal dental practice

and his debonair manners and brightly coloured clothes?

How does Rubicundo’s way of ‘being in the world’ connect him to Antonio and his desire

for beauty?

In what ways might Rubicundo be described as an outsider?

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 What does Rubicundo’s willingness to act as go-between for Antonio and Josefina tell us

about his character?

Why does Rubicundo go on the expedition with the rest of the men?

Dentistry is an inherently barbarous practice, linked as it is to decay and the gradual

breaking down of the human body over time. At the same time, granting someone the

power to work inside your mouth is an enormous trust – there is little that renders you

more vulnerable.

o How does the scene where the prospectors come whooping into town add to our

understanding of Rubicundo’s view of his role?

o Why does Rubicundo turn his dentistry into a performance? And why do all of the

villagers (including Antonio) gather round to watch?

o What is the effect of the portable dental chair perched on the edge of the river – what

is the point being made?

The Mayor

He tells Antonio that, for all intents and purposes, he is the government in El Idilio. How is

the idea of government and the centralised authority of the state represented in the film

and in the guise of the figure of the mayor?

Our introduction to the mayor is through the sound of his voice coming from behind the

closed doors of his office.

o Note how he is represented visually in the other scenes that he appears in. Note in

particular, closed doors and windows

What does the trip into the jungle tell us about the mayor?

Just as Rubicundo works as a go-between connecting Antonio to the life-affirming

possibilities presented by Josefina and her love stories, the mayor is also an intermediary –

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 it is he who brings the gringos into Antonio’s world and it is his threats that force Antonio

to go into the jungle after the jaguar.

The gun is the most potent symbol of the destructive power of the invader. The mayor

reaches for his gun at any opportunity, desperately wielding it to create a barrier between

himself and the rest of the world.

In the quite shocking scene where Alka Selzer’s donkey arrives in town screaming in pain,

the mayor is the one who puts it down. The casualness with which he shoots the agonised

creature contrasts with the anguish Antonio experiences as a result of witnessing the pain

of the wounded jaguar.

The World of the Film

Place is incredibly important in this film. It can be a bit of a cliché to describe the setting of

a narrative as another character but in this film this is undoubtedly a useful way of

thinking about the world that these people inhabit. The characters are defined as much by

their relationship to the environment in which they live as they are by their relations to

each other.

o Ask students to list the main characters in the film and their relationship to the

natural world they are living in.

Pay close attention to the way that the jungle is represented visually, particularly in

relation to people:

o Many of the shots of the people in the jungle are quite claustrophobic. One of the

most evocative shots is of the hunting party standing on the bank of the river after

disposing of the dead bodies. In this wide shot. they are reduced to a cluster of

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 vulnerable men shrouded by the jungle in the same way as the bodies are shrouded

in the calico sack.

o People are often filmed at the edge of the river with the dense jungle as a

backdrop.

o Note the intensity of the darkness of the jungle in the night and the various ways

that manmade light breaks into the darkness.

o Focus on the way that the town of El Idilio is represented in relation to the jungle it

adjoins.

Note the use of sound to register the presence of the jungle.

o The film’s sound designer James Currie has commented that de Heer considered

that ‘in a lot of this film, the sound is actually more important than the picture’.

o Why is sound so important in creating a sense of the jungle?

Why are there so many shots of the jungle through windows? What is the effect of this?

Focus on the opening sequence.

o What is the effect of the gentle, slow, forward movement shot with which the film

opens?

o How does this position the viewer in relation to the forest?

o What can be made of the superimposed images that drift across the landscape?

o As this leisurely opening comes to a close, we are given a glimpse of El Idilio. What

is communicated in that brief shot?

o Describe the way that Antonio’s hut is represented in this shot.

Note the way that interiors are used to represent both people’s emotional states and their

connection to each other and the world they share.

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 o Focus on the scenes set in Alka Selzer’s hut and note how the windows, doors,

light and darkness convey the changing mood.

o Think about the sequence where Antonio hides in the canoe in terms of the theme

of the dis/connection between the inside and the outside world. When Antonio

makes the decision to face both his past and the jaguar, he emerges from the

canoe as if from a cocoon.

When you analyse the visual relationship between characters in space, you are focusing on

elements of mise-en-scene. These include such factors as setting, set, lighting, costume,

position of actors.

o A useful technique for developing an understanding of mise-en-scene is to begin

by capturing stills and focusing on the details before taking another look at mise-

en-scene within a specific scene or sequence and then within the film as a whole.

Some Key Quotes from the Film:

Consider the narrative context of these quotes and how they relate to and expand on the themes

of the film.

1. ‘You are not one of us, but you are like us.’

2. ‘It was a kiss of impassioned intensity, a kiss to remember their lives by.’

3. ‘A man who reads love stories and admits it, is less of a fool than a man who beats his

wife thinking she loves it.’

4. ‘Can you really read? I could never see the use in it myself.’

5. Antonio reads his stories of love, ‘Because the thoughts are beautiful, because the words

are beautiful, and the sentences and [it] sometimes makes me forget the barbarity of

man.’

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 6. ‘Curse on that gringo. Curse on all the gringos and the prospectors and the settlers and

the government and the tourists.’

7. ‘Nobody can tie down a thunderbolt; and nobody can take for his own the rapture of the

other.’

8. ‘Antonio Bolivar discovered that he possessed the antidote against the poison of old age –

he could read.’

9. ‘The whiteman hunter carrying a gun violates death with the poison of pain.’

10. ‘You’re a whiteman’s hunter now, Antonio. You carry a gun and the fear.’

Consider these quotes in thinking about The Old Man Who Read Love Stories

1. Actor Richard Dreyfuss who plays Antonio: ‘I don’t know if you could ever call this a love
story but it is a remarkable story about love.’ (‘Rumble in the Jungle’, DVD special feature)

2. Reviewer Andrew L. Urban: ‘The film includes many of the supporting events and asides,
snatches of life and snippets of humour that inhabit novels, but never stumbles over
them.’ http://www.urbancinefile.com.au/home/view.asp?a=8507&s=reviews

3. Andrew L. Urban: ‘And perhaps the film’s greatest strength is its sinewy ability to keep us
involved in the character and avoiding the trap of turning the story into a jaguar hunt.’
http://www.urbancinefile.com.au/home/view.asp?a=8502&s=interviews

4. Luis Sepulveda: ‘…I intended to write something that was a metaphor for the possibility
of living in an environment different from one’s own, that harmony is possible in a culture
that is not one’s own, and that this possibility is defined and is decided only when a deep
respect for other exists .. The main character is a man who lives in exile, not in his place of
origin, who had to migrate for various motives and faces life’s challenges without trauma,
transforming the experience into one huge metaphor of life and beauty.’ (Queiman,
Miguel Angel ‘No Soy un Escritor Chileno’ Quimera 121 (1993): 21 (translated by Camilo
Gomides and Joseph Henry Vogel)

5. Cat Hope: ‘Sound designer James Currie also gives special attention to different locations
in the film – the ambient sounds define spaces such as the riverside, a large hall, a small
hut or the open jungle at night, enhancing the way viewers differentiate between these
places – and to the colour and texture in the voice of the Old Man (Richard Dreyfuss) as he
reads his trashy love novels, reinforcing the film’s emphasis on the pleasure in the simple
things of life.’
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/04/31/sound_design_rolf_de_heer.html

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 6. Of The Old Man Who Read Love Stories, Rolf de Heer has said ‘It’s the most reflective of
me as a human being.’
http://www.urbancinefile.com.au/home/view.asp?a=8502&s=interviews

7. Philippa Hawker: ‘A new Antonio emerges from the narrative – a figure with the ability to
find and dispatch the jaguar, and a past for which he needs to make amends.’

References

De Heer, Rolf, ‘Personal Reflections on Whiteness and Three Film Projects’, Australian
Humanities Review, Issue 42, August-September 2007,
http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-August-September-
2007/Deheer.html

Hawker, Philippa, Review: The Old Man Who Read Love Stories, The Age, 11 March, 2004.

hooks, bell, ‘Marginality as a Site of Resistance’, in R. Ferguson et al. (eds), Out There:
Marginalization and contemporary Cultures, Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1990, pp. 241-43.

Hope, Cat, ‘Hearing the story: Sound design in the films of Rolf de Heer’, Senses of Cinema, 2004.
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/04/31/sound_design_rolf_de_heer.html

Pomeranz, Margaret, Stratton , David, ‘Review of The Old Man Who Read Love Stories’, The
Movie Show, http://aso.gov.au/titles/tv/ep4mosho/clip1/

Sharp, Ali. ‘The Old Man and the Jungle’, Metro Magazine: Media & Education Magazine, No. 140,
2004, pp. 32-34.

Starrs, D. Bruno, ‘An Avowal of Male Lack: Sound in Rolf de Heer's the Old Man Who Read Love
Stories ‘ Metro Magazine: Media & Education Magazine, No. 156, March 2008, pp. 148-153.

Starrs, D. Bruno,’De Heer de Sound: Jim Currie on Designing Sound for Rolf de Heer’, Metro
Magazine, No. 161, June 2009, pp. 144-149.

Urban, Andrew L. Review: The Old Man Who Read Love Stories ,
http://www.urbancinefile.com.au/home/view.asp?a=8507&s=reviews

Urban, Andrew L., The Old Man Who Read Love Stories: Interview with Rolf de Heer,
http://www.urbancinefile.com.au/home/view.asp?a=8502&s=interviews

FINAL NOTE FOR TEACHERS: The novella from which the film was adapted is beautifully written
and a quick and interesting read. I would very much discourage students from reading it as it is
very close to the film in many ways but is quite different in certain key ways: most specifically in
terms of the character of Josephina and the death of the jaguar (an ocelot in the book). However,

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it will give you an insight into de Heer’s interpretation and the film’s emphasis on a particular
understanding of the gendered archetypes.

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