People sometimes ask me why I do not drink.  My go-to answer involves describing how all alcohol, be they beer, spirits, or wine, smells like something I would put on a wound.  In other words, it does not appeal to me.  I have tried beer once.  It came after the Chicago Cubs won the World Series in 2016, thus fulfilling a promise I made to myself and others.  I took one sip, said it tasted like feet, and never picked it up again.  Next came a hard apple cider that was equally distasteful to my palate.  This represents the sum total of my experience with adult beverages, and I could not be more content.  The next time someone inquires about my teetotaling ways, I think I will tell them to go watch Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966).  It is number sixty-seven on the American Film Institute’s (AFI) 100 Greatest American Films of All Time list.  After seeing it, I cannot tell you why anyone would ever take up liquor.

For a while during my viewing of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, I thought the two main characters dead.  They are George (Richard Burton) and his wife Martha (Elizabeth Taylor).  We meet them as they come home from some kind of function on the campus of the university at which George works.  He is in the history department, of course.  They have clearly been overserved wherever they had previously been, but figure, why stop now?  I say this now so as to not have to continue to describe it later, but they keep drinking, and drinking, and drinking, and drinking, and drinking.  It is not hyperbole to say that barely a moment goes by when one of them is not consuming some alcoholic concoction.  I may not have much personal experience with such stuff, but I find it incredible that they remained alive but rather no longer among the land of the living.  Another key aspect of this film is the constant bickering.  Of course, alcohol is largely to blame for their antics.  As it turns out, there is a larger issue with their marriage, but we will get to that later.  For now, what starts out as somewhat innocuous bantering becomes full throated shouting matches as they lob insults at one another aimed at doing as much emotional and psychological damage as possible.  It is not comfortable to watch.  As a perhaps unbelievable aside to all this, the film is billed as a comedy.  I will grant that the writing is clever at times, but I was not laughing, at all.  I find it hard to believe that anyone would while watching it.  At any rate, they ebb and flow back and forth between barely tame prodding to actually having their hands around each other’s throats depending on the stimuli of the moment.  Part of that stimuli and the final component to be understood about the film, is their two guests, Honey (Sandy Dennis) and Nick (George Segal).  They are newlyweds and he has recently taken a position in the math department.  They come to George and Martha’s unhappy home at her behest.  Despite it being 2:30 am (yes, you read that correctly), they arrive at the front door just as another squabble is reaching a crescendo.  Guess what they do?  That is right, they drink some more.  Nick is obliging because Martha’s father is the president of the university, and he is hoping to gain some influence and thus increase his chances of advancement.  This becomes fodder for Martha to attack George some more, pointing out how he has remained “bogged down” in the same position despite the possibility of moving up in his department.  Indeed, George and Martha continue to trade verbal jabs at one another all while Honey and Nick are present.  Do you have an inkling as to what anesthetizes them to the drama?  I bet you do: alcohol.  At one point, the intensity of the bickering rises a few octaves, triggering a response in Honey that causes her to have to vomit.  While Martha attends to Honey, George and Nick go outside to discuss.  During their conversation, Nick all but says that he is willing to sleep with Martha in order to aggrandize himself.  For the most part, George ignores the comment.  What he is more interested in is how Honey had earlier let slip that Martha had told her about George and Martha’s son.  This is a sensitive subject for him, and it continues to weigh on him.  After they go back inside, Nick decides it is time for him and Honey to go home.  I would have been out the door in the first minute, or would have never come over at all, but that is me.  Unbelievably considering all the liquor they collectively have on board, they decide to drive Honey and Nick home.  It is not going well, but it is made worse when they stop to go dancing.  Given the hour, they are the only ones in the joint.  It starts with Martha and Nick dancing rather suggestively with one another, kicks up another tense notch when she ridicules George’s failure to get his book published, and ends with George attempting to throttle Martha.  Their freshest argument spills out into the parking lot while Honey and Nick opt for walking home.  After a few minutes, Martha jumps in the car, peels out, picks up the poor newlyweds (they are basically hostages at this point), and goes home.  George walks back there and sees Martha and Nick upstairs.  It is at this point that he devises his ultimate plan to get back at Martha.  At length, Martha comes down and starts caterwauling into the night for George.  When he finally reappears, it is with a bunch of flowers and news.  This last bit is that he has received a telegram that their son is dead.  Nick says he finally gets it, though I am ashamed to say it took a minute for me.  Anyway, there was never a son.  They could never have children of their own, so instead they made up one.  The one rule was that they did not tell anyone, which Martha broke.  Thus, George gets his revenge by saying he is dead.  It is morning now, and Honey and Nick walk out of a finally quiet house.  We close with George and Martha holding hands, and him singing the title song.

So, yeah, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a really screwed up film.  I was uncomfortable watching it, and not just because some of this hit a little too close to home for me.  Who wants to watch this train wreck of a relationship batter itself for two hours?  I would almost call this cinema verité, but that is usually reserved for documentaries.  I can handle that kind of realism in documentaries.  I prefer my movies to be more idealistic.  Idealism aside, I am not sure what is entertaining about it.  This includes a few solid references to Catholicism.  At one point, it becomes evident that Honey had an abortion.  This clearly negatively impacts her demeanor, as these unfortunate procedures often do.  This is not to suggest that if you get one you will automatically become some flighty wife with a vomiting problem.  All I am trying to do is to suggest the alternative if you are considering getting one.  The other Catholic moment is at the end when Martha is in yet another throe of hysterics and George begins praying over her in Latin.  A key feature of what he says is something we Catholics say in Mass, “Christ have mercy.  Lord have mercy.  Christ have mercy.”  Yes, “Christ” and “Lord” are interchangeable.  That is also not the point.  We need God’s mercy to function in life.  George and Martha particularly need it at the end of the film, though I am guessing his recitation is divorced of any spiritual significance.  Whether you believe in God or not, think about your life and where it would be if someone at some time had not shown you mercy.  For George and Martha, they eventually show it to each other.

Still, sitting through Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’s two hour plus fight is not worth seeing the reconciliation at the end.  I do not think they have really reconciled, either.  They just seem to get tired of arguing for a few moments.  It is like the person behind the camera snuck out of the room during a lull in the battle.  There are good performances here, and clever dialog.  You can keep it all.