strange and random happenstance

Persuasion
Based on the book by Jane Austen
Release Date: April 1st, 2007
Starring: Sally Hawkins, Alice Krige, Anthony Head, Julia Davis, Michael Fenton Stevens, Mary Stockley, Peter Wight, Marion Bailey, Amanda Hale, Sam Hazeldine, Jennifer Higham, Rosamund Stephen, Stella Gonet, Nicholas Farrell, Louis Shergold, Rupert Penry-Jones, Joseph Mawle, Finlay Robertson, Tobias Menzies, Maisie Dimbleby, Sarah Buckland, and Tilly Tremayne
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

All is chaos at Kellynch Hall. Anne Elliot, the daughter of Sir Walter Elliot and the younger sister of Elizabeth Elliot has tried all she could to get her family to retrench but the time has come to face reality. As her father and sister stuff their faces with delicacies the decision has been made to lease the house and move the family to Bath. The father of Elizabeth's dear friend Mrs. Clay has found a naval man without children to take the house. A perfect fit, as his wife has nothing to do but make sure the house is preserved. Though upon hearing that their name is Croft Anne is beset by emotions she thought long gone. Eight years previously she was engaged to Mrs. Croft's brother, Fredrick Wentworth. The engagement was broken as it was viewed he didn't have any prospects. He is now a wealthy captain and is coming back into Anne's life looking for a wife. Anne has no hope that she might regain his heart, instead tucked away with her younger sister Mary at Uppercross she sees Fredrick set his cap at Mary's sisters-in-law, Louise and Henrietta Musgrove. Anne is aflutter and constantly aware of his presence. He is kind, but he is no longer hers and it aches so painfully. When the party from Uppercross takes a trip to Lyme Regis the expected course of all their lives is upended. Louisa has a fall and Captain Wentworth's friends must nurse her back to health while Anne is sent off to Bath to rejoin her family. Soon Captain Wentworth comes to Bath and Anne can't help hoping that perhaps things have changed. Perhaps she can hope again. She has somehow attracted the attention of her cousin and her father's heir, Mr. Elliot, and could this jealousy spark Captain Wentworth into making his feelings known? Or will Fredrick lose the love of his life because he embraced the opposite of all that he initially regretted in Anne's behavior all those years earlier?

ITV's Jane Austen season of 2007 did a lot to rectify issues I had in previous Austen adaptations. Consisting of Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion, while Northanger Abbey easily won the day, Persuasion wasn't that far behind. What this adaptation did while not being 100% faithful to the book was to give us an intimate, introspective, and artistic adaptation that emotionally connects you to Anne Elliot. This adaptation favored music that pulled on your heartstrings instead of attempting to jam all the book's dialogue into a ninety minute movie. This allows the quiet to fill the space, to let you dwell as Anne has dwelled on the loss of Wentworth all those years ago. You can actually feel a void opening up inside you as Anne's pain becomes your own. In this adaptation Anne is always the touchstone for the audience. She is front and center, it is her POV that we take as our own. The camera work reinforces this with her always on screen while other characters are off screen, their dialogue sometimes buried in the background, not fully heard, because as Anne is our conduit we only observe what she does and a human can only see and hear so much, they're not omniscient. Yet it takes awhile for the viewer to get at what the director is trying to do. For the first few minutes all you can think of is how jittery the handheld camera work is and how close the closeups are. But then you start to realize that the agitation in the camera work reflects Anne's state of mind, and while yes, it's jittery, you realize that it also makes what would be a static image on a television screen alive. The camera and Anne have a symbiotic relationship, with the modern technology being there to reflect Anne's emotions. This can be seen when Anne looks directly into the camera. It's not gimmicky like in Mansfield Park with a wry and arched brow that makes you want to slap Frances O'Conner or just too much like in The House of Mirth where you're counting Eric Stoltz's pores, here it lays bare Anne's soul thanks to Sally Hawkins's portrayal. Sally Hawkins is such an amazing actress that the smallest facial gesture, the intimation of a tear conveys so much. So while this adaptation doesn't go for strict accuracy the feeling is correct and that can cover a plethora of sins.

Yet sometimes the lack of faithfulness results in absurdities. The main absurdity of this adaptation is Anne and the running of Bath. As in, she seriously runs all over Bath after Captain Wentworth. First she runs after him when he suddenly leaves a concert and accosts him in the entryway. Secondly she runs after him when he leaves the Elliot's residence after he was inquiring after Kellynch Hall for his sister. This then starts the main running sequence that rivals Frank Potente's race through Berlin in Run Lola Run. She runs outside and is directed to the Croft's residence where she runs into Captain Harville who gives her Wentworth's letter and sends her to the Pump Room, where the Croft's say she's just missed him, and at this point when she starts running again, you might be laughing a little, because seriously, all the running! Yes, a panting Anne finally runs into Wentworth and all is well. But seriously, ALL THAT RUNNING THOUGH! Even Anne's poor friend Mrs. Smith had to run to tell Anne the truth about Mr. Elliot and his schemes. Yes, Mrs. Smith, who in the book can't even walk due to her horrid health joins Anne on a leg of her epic race. From the Elliot residence to the Croft residence running along the Royal Crescent actually away from the main part of town and everyone's residences for those who know Bath and who know where everyone in the book lives, poor Mrs. Smith is panting out her story. She's trying to break through to a distracted Anne about Mr. Elliot and yet, all I could think of was, seriously, stop running for five seconds and hear her out! But what bothered me more than just the absurdity of this situation was that this shows a total lack of propriety. A woman in this time period would NEVER have done this. And yes, I know that by showing Anne breaking with convention it shows how her love for Captain Wentworth overrides all other concerns. But still! This is Anne Elliot! It's a total break in her character. If I wasn't so emotionally invested by this point I would have totally written off the adaptation for this need for speed. But as it is, I was there for every single second of her run panting with fervent hope that she wouldn't be too late.

Of course the observant reader will notice that this running was all necessitated by the moving of some important dialogue to an earlier part of the book. Anne's speech about women loving longest after all hope is gone is originally said to Captain Harville and overhead by Captain Wentworth, leading to him writing his soul piercing confession which reunites them near the end of the book. Instead Anne's speech is entrusted to Benwick when they are all seated at the Harville's home in Lyme Regis. In between talking about poetry and prose she decides to drop her big speech as a confidence to Benwick while Wentworth is way on the other side of the room being quite boisterous and therefore he doesn't hear it. This of course then forces the narrative to find some other contrivance for Wentworth to hope and write that letter to Anne. Here it's Wentworth coming to the Elliot's residence in Bath and asking if his sister and brother-in-law should give up the lease on Kellynch because news has reached them that Mr. Elliot and Anne are to live there once they are married. Anne of course refutes this instantly and then is interrupted by Lady Russell and the running begins. This asking after Kellynch is just too forced. Too direct. Anne and Wentworth are both stumbling in the dark unable to realize that the other is still in love with them and this just seems too active. The way Austen wrote it is sweet. It dawns on Wentworth how wrong he was and thus lays his heart bare in the only way he has at his disposal, a letter. How else is he to hope unless he overhears Anne's speech? Asking after a lease on a house, that's not romantic, it's pragmatic. Plus he goes home, then writes the letter, then has to be hunted down. It's just too much work. There's also the fact that we know how they both feel so this seems to be done just to draw out the suspense a little longer. You can't have perfect happiness without a little hurdle, and apparently the previous eight years wasn't enough for this adaptation.

But any faults can be forgiven, even the odd detail of Captain Wentworth apparently buying Kellynch Hall, by the superb cast. You couldn't hope for a better cast. Of course the casting that made me giddy was that of Anthony Stewart Head as Sir Walter Elliot. Buffy fan that I am seeing "Giles" relish playing this vain and pompous man was a dream come true. Seriously, just cast him in almost anything and I'll watch. I say almost because there's no way anyone's getting me to watch that Shondaland show Still Star-Crossed. As for the rest of the cast, yes, it's a little weird seeing The Borg as Lady Russell, but she's a far less domineering Lady Russell than other versions, and I appreciate that. But I'm not going to sit here and just list why I love every actor, and seriously, I love every single actor in this all the way down to Cully's husband from Midsomer Murders, when there are two that need to be talked of, Sally Hawkins and Rupert Penry-Jones. Sally Hawkins has been the darling of independent British cinema for years, especially working with Mike Leigh, even winning a plethora of awards for their collaboration Happy-Go-Lucky. But it's her more miniseries roots that brought her to my attention first in Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky, and later in The Young Visiters, Byron, and the Sarah Waters adaptations of Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith. Yet it's in Persuasion that you can see how she can inhabit a role so completely that dialogue isn't even needed to convey what she is feeling. As for Rupert Penry-Jones, well I might have written him off as a pretty boy with The Prince of Hearts, Cambridge Spies, Casanova, and his basically replacing Matthew Macfadyen on Spooks, but then I watched Whitechapel. Holy hell, that show is amazing and his portrayal of a driven yet completely OCD DI makes it one of my favorite shows ever. Persuasion mined the best of British drama and has a stellar cast that makes you shake your head in amazement that all these people are in one place at one time.

Though I feel that this review would be incomplete without me taking a shot at PBS. Oh PBS, I have so many issues with you. Seriously, SO MANY. Substandard releases could be brought up here, but instead I'm going to take you to task for your editing. Seriously!?! Stop it! Thankfully you've basically stopped editing the DVD releases because of the fan outcry for which I really have to thank Downton Abbey. But I'm still waiting for my Sally Lockhart mysteries with the sex scene back in... Instead I'm going to bitch about your broadcast editing. I watched this adaptation of Persuasion when it first aired in England, then when it finally aired the following January on PBS I was excited to watch it again but found it lacking. As in lacking all scenes with Captain Wentworth and Captain Harville talking to each other in and around Lyme Regis. I actually had to turn it off I was so enraged. Here's the thing about movies, television shows, any kind of visual broadcast: it's the vision of a person or group of persons that go to the trouble to make this beautiful show. That vision should NEVER been lessened, censored, or randomly changed not for "objectionable" reasons but to make more time for your sponsors! PBS made a pledge to bring quality television to America and more and more it's about the appearance of doing so without actually doing it. Even since Exxon left Masterpiece no longer theater has been in a steep decline and it's come to the point where I no longer even watch the channel. I can't abide editing, and as for speeding up the frame rate, which you totally did during season one of Poldark, it actually makes me physically sick. Also, why can't you air shows at the same time as England? I mean, you've fixed it with Sherlock so what gives!?! Yes, I know, I shouldn't end a review that is glowingly in favor of a production with a negative, but do you ever get the feeling that PBS isn't really involved in these shows at all and is just taking credit for what the BBC and ITV are doing?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, Anthony Stewart Head, Bicentenary Ball, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, ITV, Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Midsomer Murders, PBS, Persuasion, Run Lola Run, Rupert Penry-Jones, Sally Hawkins, Whitechapel

Murder is Easy
Based on the book by Agatha Christie
Starring: Steve Pemberton, Shirley Henderson, Sylvia Syms, Benedict Cumberbatch, Lyndsey Marshal, James Lance, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Camilla Arfwedson, Hugo Speer, Anna Chancellor, David Haig, Margo Stilley, Jemma Redgrave, Russell Tovey, Stephen Churchett, Steven Hartley, and Julian Lightwing
Release Date: July 12th, 2009
Rating: ★★
To Buy

Miss Marple is on a train when she meets a very distracted female passenger on her way to London, a Miss Lavinia Pinkerton. Miss Pinkerton is distressed about the possibility that Scotland Yard closes for lunch because she has to talk to them because she believes there has been two murders in her town. Miss Marple isn't sure what to make of her, but Miss Pinkerton's parting words that murder is easy if no one thinks it's murder makes Jane pick up Miss Pinkerton's discarded newspaper, The Wychwood Gazette, to read about the tragic death of the Vicar due to bees. A few days later when she reads of the death of Miss Pinkerton on an escalator in the London Underground Jane packs her bags for Wychwood and is determined to get to the bottom of Miss Pinkerton's suspicions. Arriving for Miss Pinkerton's funeral claiming to be an old friend Jane is soon taken into the community's confidences about the upcoming election concerning Major Horton, James Abbot, and Dr. Thomas, the other recent accidents, the secret trysts, and the nosey yet attractive American who is visiting. Though one of the town's residents sees through Miss Marple's act. Luke Fitwilliam is ex police and is back in Wychwood to clear out his mother's estate and can tell when someone is lying. Miss Marple comes clean, dropping her doddering old lady act and the two of them set out to solve these crimes, another of which has just been committed as Dr. Humbleby drops dead of acute septicemia. Can they catch the killer before even more "accidents" happen?

By the time Julia McKenzie quietly sidled in as Miss Marple taking over from fan favorite, and apparent belligerent drunk Geraldine McEwan, there were only four remaining books and two short stories containing Miss Marple left to adapt. Well, when a series runs to twenty-three ninety minute movies and is drawing on a base of only twelve books staring a character, liberties will be increasingly taken. While this started with McEwan, having Marple show up in four stories she had no right to be in, McEwan somehow pulled it off, nosing her way in. Whereas McKenzie was more passive, just a figure in the background as the series took more and more liberties with the mysteries, heavily expanding and changing them, much to the audience's displeasure. While I'm a fan of McKenzie, she is an incredibly talented actress, she just didn't have the oomph to force her way into these new narratives. I felt like this was the slow death of Marple... it didn't surprise me in the least when the BBC took over the Christie franchise and quickly put Marple out of it's misery. It was a pale imitation of what it once was, whereas Poirot had only gotten better over the years and ended on a high note. Therefore it should come as no surprise that I had actually, until rewatching Murder is Easy, entirely forgotten this episode. The fact that Benedict Cumberbatch was in an episode of Marple was pretty much a surprise to me. But in no way an unpleasant one.

Personally I never got the Christie purists who complained about the changes. Until now. Changing one or two things isn't a crime, but here? They took a solid mystery and tried to make it more modern and more Christie simultaneously by adding in incestuous rape and then having all the suspects rounded up for the big reveal. The mystery worked fine as originally written and would have featured FAR more Benedict Cumberbatch if his character hadn't been relegated to Miss Marple's sidekick. But even if Benedict hadn't been playing the role of Luke Fitzwilliam if you think my favoritism is swaying my opinion, if it had been anyone else, the changes just don't work. There is barely a shadow of the original story. Murder is Easy was written to be about a rather witchy town with lots of people who are at odds, all of them a bit of an outsider, instead we have a happy little village where on the surface everyone is getting along. Yes, they still have dark secrets, but they were bland. It was all who was sleeping with who and not who was doing Satanic rites up on the hillside. And the problem I have is that there are so many actors whom I legitimately love in this, but throwing a whole bunch of celebrities onto the screen isn't going to solve a production that had the temerity to think they knew better than Christie. This adaptation just doesn't work. All the changes throw the dynamics of the narrative off so that you can't actually enjoy watching it.

Each and every change to a character has a ripple effect until at the end the calm stream becomes a massive waterfall. I just want to shake the writers and scream WHY in their faces as long as my breath will hold. They could have just slipped Jane into the story, not changed EVERYTHING. As a starting point let's take Luke Fitzwilliam. Luke is supposed to be the stranger, the interloper that Jane becomes. By having him be a local KNOWN to be ex police, well the who idea of subterfuge and a secret investigation is out the window. The narrative instantly because about Miss Marple being cleverer than the cops with her sitting smugly behind doors from where she's secretly running the interrogations. I mean, it's just a boring police procedural at this point, NOT a classic of crime. Bridget Conway, the love interest, becomes not a local engaged to the big MP, but an American looking for her real parents? Um, why!?! In fact there's only TWO DEATHS, out of the seven in the book that happen the same way. What, those seven different accidents weren't good enough for you ITV people? Apparently death by bees is far sexier... and I'm not even going to talk about the stupid hat dye.

But what makes this adaptation utterly unbelievable is the change of the timeline. In the book aside from the final three deaths they are spread out over a longer period of time, about a year or so. Having the characters be killed by "accident" over the course of a year, well, that makes it more plausible that no one would have cried foul. But to have all these people "accidentally" die over the course of a few days!?! Well, even the ever delightfully bumbling Russell Tovey as PC Terence Reed should have cottoned onto them all being camouflaged murders even without Miss Marple appearing on the scene. I mean, seriously, that many bodies so quickly? And they didn't think, hang on a minute, do we maybe have a serial killer!?! By this point I was actually hoping they'd all die for their stupidity except for Jemma Redgrave who was oddly endearing as the Doctor's manic widow. And the fact that besides just a regular PC there was Luke Fitzwilliam on the scene, a true officer of the law, how stupid are these townspeople? The only real joy I got from this episode was watching Russell Tovey and Benedict Cumberbatch work together. After watching them recently on Sherlock, it's fascinating to see how in just four years they had grown as actors.

In the end though I just want to know, why the change of motive? In the book Honoria Waynflete is a bitter woman pissed at being jilted and seeing her family lose their fortune, but underneath it all she was just insane. She killed just to kill, which is the most terrifying of criminals. Here she was raped by her brother and had the baby and put it up for adoption. When the baby, all growed up, shows up in Wychwood, well, ANYONE who might have known her horrid secret must be killed. It all kind of eliminates the evil... because the killer was a victim who was only trying to cover up a horrible secret she's kept hidden for years. She is sympathetic, to an extent. But you can at least understand the motive... It just makes the story less than. A classic full of sinister townsfolk or a tragedy that has repercussions for years to come... I wanted a mystery, a proper tale of criminals and instead I got this. It just didn't feel worthy of Christie. It comes from modern sensibilities that want to understand and feel pity for the killer. There can't just be evil, that is now reserved for the realms of horror. A mystery has to be complex and understanding and despite being the bestseller of all time ITV felt that they knew better. Personally this was the end of Marple for me, and if I could give one final piece of advice, if would be to Luke Fitzwillim; don't get involved with the girl. She's the product of incestuous rape and her mother was a serial killer. Crazy runs in her family so now you go and run for the hills.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, Agatha Christie, Alterations, Benedict Cumberbatch, Benediction, Geraldine McEwan, Incest, ITV, Julie McKenzie, Marple, Miss Marple, Murder, Murder is Easy, Poirot, Rape, Russell Tovey, Sherlock

Death and mayhem to continue in the most murderous fictional city in the world. And if you've been following the recent developments of this beloved show, you'll know, all was not right in Midsomer. After John Nettles announced his retirement from the show, which will culminate at the end of the upcoming 13th season, fans went into a frenzy. Who would replace the beloved Barnaby? John Nettles is worshiped by legions of fans, if you've seen the Catherine Tate Daniel Craig sketch, you know what I mean. His departure seemed like the end of an era... and for awhile it seemed like it might be the end of the show. ITV has been putting off announcing his successor for so long now, almost a full year, that fans have nervously been speculating if the show would just get cancelled. Could Midsomer Murders be the newest fatality, going the way of Tony Hill and Wire in the Blood? While the press speculated Philip Glenister or Peter Davison... you could also sense a rising sense of the shows demise. Sure Barry Jackson (Doc Bullard), Jason Hughes (Jones) and Kirsty Dillon (WPC Gail Stephens) had all been confirmed as being signed under contract. But I couldn't see Jones leading the show. In an ideal world, Troy would return, Cully would divorce her dud of a husband from Robin Hood and they'd lead the show into a new golden age... yeah, I know, wishful thinking... doesn't stop be from hoping though!

But ITV has put us out of our misery! Yes, that warrants an exclamation point, because it's good news. The show will go on! They waited until last night's episode, "The Sword of Guillaume" aired. Why you say? Because in it we are introduced to John Barnaby, the cousin of Tom, and the new star of our show. So who is John Barnaby? Well, you've seen him before in Midsomer, while Victoria Hamilton was dispatching people at the local tea room in "Garden of Death." From the show Life of Riley, to The Street, to The Mrs. Bradley Mysteries, he's been around for quite some time, and payed his dues. But Neil Dudgeon is an actor of the same ilk as John Nettles, and I can see why ITV waited for the announcement, because people could instantly see how he'll fit into the shows dynamic by watching tonight's episode.... which I must go watch right now! Of course, if you are one of those who is in mourning after 13 years of Barnaby and almost 30 years of John Nettles on our screens, read this lovely letter to John Nettles from The Guardian, and if John Nettles finds himself with spare time, remember, Elaine Figgis is waiting...

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 4 comments  

Labels: Catherine Tate, Cully, Daniel Craig, ITV, John Barnaby, John Nettles, Life of Riley, Midsomer Murders, Neil Dudgeon, The Mrs. Bradley Mysterues, The Street, Tom Barnaby, Troy, Wire in the Blood