sbrumfit Reviews

Bridgerton (2020– )

Shallow and boring

[3/10 · 10 January 2021]

I suppose people think that watching something in costume somehow qualifies as high art. This depressing mess of cliche certainly proves that it does not.

The writing is utterly banal. Dialogue is drab with the only concession to period language being an absence of contractions: 'I cannot agree.', 'He does not love you'. The acting is wooden and the actors and all seem just a little too pleased with themselves. But they're beautiful, so I suppose that's enough.

It's depressing that, once again, Britain is portrayed simply through the guise of crinoline and wigs.

Little Dorrit (2008)

Average; not a patch on the 1988 film version

[5/10 · 27 January 2012]

I watched the Christine Edzard film of Little Dorrit aged fourteen and was so enthused by it that I ended up doing work experience on her next film. For this reason I resisted watching this version for a long time. I relented recently having just read the book, but I was right to be wary. Watching this version reminded me how good the 1988 Edzard films were. This version has good production values and some very strong performances (although I still find Matthew McFadyen annoyingly wooden), but it lacks much of the book's depth and subtlety, while ironing many of his characters (who are always larger than life) into shadows of their written selves. The story has been 'distilled' and the stakes raised so that it has become a quest story, rather than a social satire with a quest element. Everyone seems about ten years too young for the parts they play, except Clare Foy, who is altogether too tall, too old and too knowing for Little Dorrit. They are also far too clean, as is London, and William Dorrit's room in the Marshalsea is so enormous it might qualify for the status of 'suite' when in fact the rooms in the Marshalsea were shared and less than ten feet square. Plus the language is far too modern and some of the details anachronistic (Clennam would NEVER have kissed his mother hello in 1826, even if she hadn't been a fearful old battle-axe). Most annoying of all, this version explains and signposts through scenes that have no place in the book, while cutting others (like the wonderful introduction of Flora Finching) back to the bone.

The Edzard version takes a more consistent approach to the point of view issue by telling the story twice, once from Clennam's point of view and then again from Little Dorrit's (and in a sense this version, with its shifting perspectives, is truer to the book). The camera-work is far more engaging in this version; Edzard's camera is static, a cool observer, whereas this version employs a liquid, flowing approach that gives the geography of the city greater life and a more sinister edge. Nonetheless the film is far better cast and its use of the original dialogue is more authentic.

The summary of Episode One in the DVD set describes Amy as an 'enterprising young woman'. This misses the point. She is a girl under pressure, a child, like so many in the developing world today, whose responsibilities are far greater than they should have to bear. It's Dickens's exploration of exploitation and imprisonment, in all its forms, that forms the essence of Little Dorrit. And I'm not sure this version does justice to any of these themes.

Australia (2008)

Overlong, overacted and unimpressive.

[2/10 · 22 February 2009]

What a pity. I loved Moulin Rouge and Romeo + Juliet but this was an overlong, pretentious indulgence. There are two separate films trying to get out of this, the first a Lawrence-of-Arabia type desert quest and the second a war adventure. They might have worked had either been given the chance to develop, but the characterisation was clunky and sentimental, the story weak and predictable and neither developed into much more than a pastiche of better films dealing with the same subject matter. There was a certain poignancy to the portrayal of the aboriginal community but at the expense of dealing seriously with the issues, which might not have mattered so much had the film not been given historical relevancy by the context given at the start and end of the film. If there had been another scene shot just at the point of sunset I might actually have left the cinema. Plus surely for this of all films they might have found some vaguely Australian music for the climax rather than the quintessentially English Elgar! Having said all this I thought the cattle were very good. They alone among the actors managed to lend a certain realism to their performance.