I'm surprised at some reviews who state Knightly doesn't have to do much but wear nice dresses and look pretty, shows how far in England we have come since 17th C and accepting of women's talents (clue: not very far). In fact Knightly is the one holding the whole thing together, Fiennes is badly cast, in the first half of the film I think he manages about 20 lines. He's meant to be cold hearted and frankly a rapist but not speaking doesn't really portray anything, he needed much more dialogue. The same goes for Cooper as Grey, the Duchess falls in love with him but how I'm not sure as there's barely any interaction that we see.
Much more could have been done in the early years of their marriage, where the Duchess falls for another man and at the same time, as we quickly hear in a line to Bess, the Duchess suffered many miscarriages and also had stillborn babies, which were boys. This wasn't explored at all, the film would have been very lengthy but what we end up with is a very skimmed over film.
What I did take from this film was how it explored the suffering of many high society women. An earlier review below from someone states they couldn't care less of their suffering because of the money and servants they had when they are a hardworker themselves, that person simply shouldn't be reviewing films, completely out of touch with norms of our past and how hard they had it behind all the grandeur. To be jealous of people who lived several centuries ago is laughable. We have a women who was in a loveless marriage, embarrassed by her husband and his lover, shamed for not producing a male, she was raped, couldn't be with the man she loved and bore a child that was taken away from her but alas at least she had some nice dresses ey! I worry for today's society....
Much more could have been done in the early years of their marriage, where the Duchess falls for another man and at the same time, as we quickly hear in a line to Bess, the Duchess suffered many miscarriages and also had stillborn babies, which were boys. This wasn't explored at all, the film would have been very lengthy but what we end up with is a very skimmed over film.
What I did take from this film was how it explored the suffering of many high society women. An earlier review below from someone states they couldn't care less of their suffering because of the money and servants they had when they are a hardworker themselves, that person simply shouldn't be reviewing films, completely out of touch with norms of our past and how hard they had it behind all the grandeur. To be jealous of people who lived several centuries ago is laughable. We have a women who was in a loveless marriage, embarrassed by her husband and his lover, shamed for not producing a male, she was raped, couldn't be with the man she loved and bore a child that was taken away from her but alas at least she had some nice dresses ey! I worry for today's society....