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Persuasion (2022)
Not persuasive
Tongue-in-cheek adaptations can work. This one doesn't. On any level.
Aside from the postmodernity of it all being rather stale by now, it is just a flat, poorly paced retelling of a book adaptation that has been done so well so many times before, so why bother?
When well executed and motivated, breaking the fourth wall can be very effective. I could find no reason for it being done so frequently in Persuasion, especially when done so clumsily and without conviction as to be laughable.
The anachronisms could have been funny and clever. Instead they were jarring. Allusions to contemporary culture and society may have been more in place had more (any) attention been paid to making the costumes and makeup more accurate for the time period.
The sloppy attention to detail appears deliberate and studied at times, and at others merely bad cinema. If it were at least consistent there could have been some merit to it.
The dialogue is not only jerky and lacklustre, but completely erratic, veering in from Regency preciousness to contemporary slang, even within a piece of dialogue from a single character. There was exactly one line that I found wryly funny in the spirit of Jane Austen, and only three laugh-out-loud moments, which is a very good indication of just how little justice this movie does to the novel.
None of this is helped by really mediocre delivery from the actors. Not even Richard E. Grant can muster his usual bitter tone. The two leads' wooden presence is not helped by their unvarying breathy monotone that has no pace and no subtext. Not one character aroused genuine sympathy or antipathy.
The photography is rich: sweeping (and suspiciously clean) urban and pastoral vistas, silhouettes, lots of meadows and cliffs and beaches to tramp around on. And everyone does a very thorough amount of tramping around. But it is too rich, too lush, too heavy and too self-conscious for a movie in which the plot and the tension between the characters should carry the narrative. Completely out of place with the pretentious grittiness and over-the-topness of the small details of the mise en scene and the script, it basks in its own grandeur and self-importance, detracting from the action and dialogue which are already on the back foot thanks to mediocre script, performance and directing.
Amateurish in every respect. I can find nothing to commend this film.
Isadora (1968)
A sensitive and balanced homage by Redgrave (and her hair)
Biopic of the iconoclastic dancer Isadora Duncan. Set in the last year of her life in the South of France, with flashbacks to her earlier years, each focusing on a different lover (but by no means all of them, and a little disappointing that the mores of the time probably prevented portrayal of her homosexual relationships).
I have known about this film since I saw as a kid the famous still of the accident that caused her death, and have wanted to see it ever since. Even more so when I found out that she was married to Russian poet Sergei Esenin.
I adore Vanessa Redgrave, and with two reservations - that she doesn't really look much like Duncan (while being characteristically gorgeous and watchable) and her unconvincing American accent - she gives a wrenching and believable performance as the histrionic dancer whose grip on reality becomes increasingly tenuous as tragedies and disappointments accumulate. It would have been so easy to overplay this role, but Redgrave gives it just the right touch of passion and neurosis without ever descending into melodrama.
I know nothing about dance, but Redgrave's dancing performances totally convinced me, and for that alone she deserved her Oscar nomination. It must have taken an incredible amount of work and preparation from her, in addition to learning dialogue in convincingly accented French, German and Russian.
In many of her movies, Redgrave's hair is a character on its own, and this one is no exception. I think that that was one of the things that didn't gel for me in the movie: as beautiful as it is, it became intrusive. I think she was cast partly on the basis of her glorious mane aside from her acting talent, but it is superfluous to the action and it doesn't fit with my idea of Isadora Duncan.
Despite its weaknesses as a big-budget, big-name movie of its time, it still deserves to be more widely known and viewed.
Rebecca (2020)
Lush retelling misses the mark
"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again". As one of the best-known openings to a novel, it deserves to be treated in a film adaptation with all the weight it carries for the reader of the book, imbued with all its evocative Gothic spine-tingling foreboding. And yet, what we get from Lily James's narration is a deadpan, matter-of-fact voiceover that may as well not even be there but for its iconic status. It adds absolutely nothing to the film. This sets the tone for the entire movie: a crisp, loud, overproduced Hollywood slickness at odds with the tale of grimy undercurrents of stiff-upper-lip depravity encountered by an ingenue hopelessly out of her depth in a marriage and a household conspiring, ironically, to keep _her_ the spectre she has always been.
For glitzy production values, this film scores highly. The sets and camera work are lurid, the costumes (barring a ridiculous tweed sports jacket worn with mustard linen pants, repeatedly) in themselves beautiful, the upstairs-downstairs tropes trotted out faithfully; winsome actors behave winsomely (or diabolically, as the case may be).
But, for all the things it could possibly be in 2020, Du Maurier's 'Rebecca' is none of that. Like its eponymous character, it is haunting, spellbinding, unrelenting and perverse. The key source of pathos - and the genius of the novel - is not in the protagonist's clawing at the air or hitching up her skirts and running to her room to weep, but in the sinister, the unsayable, the unsaid. Ben Wheatley, rather, makes a point of saying everything. Loudly. Perhaps such an unsubtle re-telling was calculated to appeal to a lazy contemporary audience, and, if so, it probably succeeds and deserves more than 3 stars.
However, there are so many ways in which Du Maurier's novel can be re-read in the first half of this century that could still indulge well-worn and familiar tropes without dumbing down the screenplay or hamming the acting, or simply trashing historical or textual accuracy (Mrs de Winter's trashy suicide blonde hair, Mrs Danvers wearing makeup). The feminist and queer subtext of the novel, the dynamics of social class, the moral ambiguity of many of the characters, all deserve more than a garish cardboard cut-out treatment in today's cinema that is not hampered by the restrictions that were faced, and so deftly circumvented, by the Hitchcock (there, I said it) version.
One cannot, and should not, expect a film adaptation to precisely reproduce a novel. But to turn it into a pop-up book does grave injustice. Even entirely on its own merits, the film does not hold together well. While Ms James tries hard to love the camera, one does not get a sense of her sheer terror, nor her motivation for it - it is all circumstantially dictated by her surroundings, not her performance. Her transformation into a determined chatelaine-detective hell-bent on protecting a husband for whom she had little affinity until he "opened up and showed his emotions" will no doubt resonate with some viewers, but, independently of its inexplicable departure from the novel, stretches credulity. As charming as Ms James is as an actress, the role requires more nuance and depth than charm: she does neither dowdy and skittish nor grimly empathic very well. Her success in portraying "gaslit" would be more at place in a remake of the famous Bergman melodrama than in a Gothic horror. She looks pretty, but the second Mrs de Winter is not a pretty character.
Armie Hammer as Maxim is unfairly given a character whose lack of cohesiveness renders him almost an afterthought worthy of a romantic lead rather than a man whose demons multiply and torment the immature psyche of his inconsequential second wife. After their initial meeting, belonging more properly to a romantic comedy, there is no chemistry between him and his spouse, not even negative chemistry, purely because there is no substance to him.
Certainly, there are highlights. Kristin Scott-Thomas in particular as Danvers does a commendable job of transcending the flamboyance of the script and direction to create the sense of menace engendered by a character whose derangement and passion have been heavily suppressed.
Overall, if you have not read the novel, or were unmoved by it, then you may well thoroughly enjoy this film for its lushness and the transparency of its narrative. You may find the melodrama compelling and the facility of its "messages" easily digestible, but I wanted more of less and less of more.
Enola Holmes (2020)
Overstated, saccharin fun for the whole family, but not for feminists or ACD fans
Apart from an obvious vehicle for Brown, I was unable to find any point to this tedious, poorly paced and poorly scripted film. The feminist message is as subtle as the clichés of Victorian England, strong-willed women and fourth-wall breaks that are regurgitated at the audience at every possible opportunity, to the point of tedium. Liberal reinterpretations and adaptations of Conan Doyle's beloved character can be and have been artfully and cleverly done, but the supposed sister of the legendary Sherlock and Mycroft in this version is simply a pretty martial arts dilettante who dabbles a little in word puzzles and relies on the gauche, predictable and transparent plot, rather than intellectual prowess or observation, to solve mysteries no more challenging than those tackled by the Famous Five. Her opponents are cut-out caricatures rather than anything against which she can really test her mettle. From a movie with a feminist message in 2020 I expect more than Mary Poppins with an uppercut and a couple of famous relatives. Nobody seemed to be comfortable with the script that lurched through a stilted pastiche of pseudo-Victorian English or in the sumptuous but unconvincing design.
Superficially charming family viewing, but do not expect subtlety, humour, accuracy or intellectual stimulation.
Great Performances: Chess in Concert (2009)
Worth watching, but too many weaknesses
The semi-staging of the concept of "Chess" works very well in some aspects, but reveals the weaknesses that Rice, Ulvaeus and Andersson made so many attempts to resolve. This filmed concert has its own weaknesses in some areas, too.
That the (revised) plot is somewhat dated is not at all a problem. There is enough drama to maintain interest in the characters and their motivations, all against the clever foil of timeless game.
The staging did not benefit as much as it could have from its layout or from the animations in the background which added valuable information but whose execution was at times tacky and amateurish. I had the impression that the dancing could have been better rehearsed, but even then seemed uninspired and supported the plot and visuals but without adding anything beyond breaking some of the static nature of the blocking of the singing characters.
Musically, the unevenness of the score becomes apparent in the use of the choir and the uninspired recitatives that seem to be trying too hard to join the musical numbers together in a way that is not apparent in the concept album.
There are very noteworthy performances that held my attention: Pascal, Bedella, Ellis and Peters were all in very fine form, adding richness to their interpretations. Pascal in particular dealt more than adequately with the vocal demands of the role and excellent characterisation. Groban was vocally certainly capable and very pleasant to listen to, although I found his characterisation a little too earnest and mawkish for the character of Sergievsky: in particular, his sudden infatuation with Florence Vassy was not convincing. Pellow was competent, although the part in performance and voice could have done with more gravitas.
It was Idina Menzel's performance that contributed most to my disappointment. I think she was poorly cast and possibly vocally too immature for Vassy and would have benefited from a master class with a dramatic operatic soprano or champion belter. With very little sense of the music, ensemble work, nuance or dynamic range, she belted her way enthusiastically and athletically through everything. Her excessive melisma and vibrato were in my opinion generally unnecessary and ill-judged, at times creating harmonic distractions from the score and ensemble to the detriment of the whole. Physically and emotionally she did not appear to embody any of Vassy's character at all, focusing only on getting the notes out. Loudly.
For any fan of the musical, it is a pleasure to see and hear this concert version, and it is recommended, but prepare for some disappointments.