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I’ve been a huge Ralph Fiennes fan since first seeing him play the gorgeous intellectual Charles Van Doren in Robert Redford’s production of Quiz Show back in 1994.  Being used to seeing Fiennes play debonair, heroic, self-certain characters (with the exception of Spider, and maybe Oscar in Oscar and Lucinda)  seeing him play the deferring and restrained butler, Bernard Lafferty, to the fiesty, spirited and super wealthy tobacco heiress, Doris Duke (Susan Sarandon), took a little bit of adjustment. (He can’t always play strong and interesting characters afterall!)  And Bernard Lafferty certainly is not interesting, though his relationship with Duke is, and that’s why the movie works.

In fact, we learn very little about Lafferty, except that he came to America from Ireland after both of his parents died when he was nine. He found himself employment as a butler to Peggy Lee and Elizabeth Taylor (the movie is based on true events, by the way) and somewhere along the way developed a drink problem.  His stint in rehab ended his employment with Taylor and he found his way to Doris Duke, who having just fired her previous butler for serving her melon ‘too chilled’ was in need of a replacement.

We must assume that Lafferty intuitively sensed Duke’s fickleness and perhaps this goes someway towards explaining his restrained demeanor.  Though he does seem naturally to be a shy guy, whose bland personality is starkly contrasted by the energetic livliness that is Doris Duke.

Duke, played brilliantly by Sarandon, is a vivacious and culturally curious older lady, who happens to sleep with many of her younger male staff , most likely to compensate for the loneliness and isolation that her wealth has  brought her.  She develops a curious bond with Lafferty who happens to be gay and who appears to want nothing from her, other than to care for her.  Duke, being defined by her money all of her life and because of it, cynical of those she associates with, is taken aback and touched by Lafferty’s uncomplicated nature and request.

Doris Duke: What do you want from me? From me.
Bernard Lafferty: Miss Duke?
Doris Duke: What do you want? I mean, you don’t fuck me, do you?
Bernard Lafferty: No, I don’t.
Doris Duke: You don’t steal from me. Do you steal from me?
Bernard Lafferty: No, I don’t.
Doris Duke: Well then what do you want from me?
Bernard Lafferty: I just want to take care of you.

Perhaps it is true and he is not chasing her fortune but the movie does little to help us work out Lafferty’s real intentions.  He does refuse a half a million dollar bribe from Duke’s lawyer to disappear, which could be seen as evidence that he truly cares for her.  But half a million is a small sum compared to the five million she left him.  Could he have forseen her generous gift.  I don’t think it is something he could have been certain of and so I’m inclined to conclude, like Duke, that Lafferty’s intentions are good.  Afterall, Lafferty, like Duke, was a lonely individual and that is the one thing they shared in common and the one thing that really connected them.  Duke’s financial adviser and lawyer, Taft, chooses to see Lafferty only as a gold-digger.

If you want excitement and intrigue, this is not the movie for you.  The movie completely lacks plot and jumps almost episodically from one event to the next.  It is a study of the growing trust between two very different characters.  Laftterty knows how to restrain himself so that he may better fit into Duke’s world.  Throughout the movie, he conveys the sense that he knows he doesn’t belong and that at any moment his world (the one he borrows from Duke) may shatter around him, despite Duke taking him on her many cultural trips abroad.  When he falls victim to his vice, alcholo,  Duke doesn’t abandon him.  Instead she sends him to rehab and while she makes him suffer (for drinking from her wine cellar), it is apparent that she will eventually forgive him in her tough love kind of way.  Duke is a woman who doesn’t (or can’t) express caring emotions too easily.

Only on watching Bernard and Doris for the second time, did I appreciate just what a fantastic job Ralph Fiennes did with the character and what skill it took to act a man with so little personality of his own.  There is one scene when Duke is singing at the piano (being played by one of her young gigolos), Bernard enters with drinks and is encouraged to sing a Peggy Lee song, (I Love the Way You’re Breaking My Heart).  Fiennes plays this scene with such subtlety. It is exquisite to watch and could be seen as the movies attempt to affirm the true friendship that exists between Lafferty and Duke. That’s how I like to read the scene.

The movie doesn’t attempt to make overt judgements on the nature of their relationship but even in real life, Lafferty’s relationship with Doris was never proved or disproved to be anything other than a caring one.  While the movie could have taken artistic licence with the events and wrapped everything up Hollywood style, it chose not to.  Some say it suffers because of this but for those of us who enjoy character driven movies, it was a pleasure to watch two of our greatest actors portray two very different characters so brilliantly.

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I wouldn’t have thought much of Ridley Scott’s 2006 production of Tristan and Isolde if it hadn’t been for Rufus Sewell’s performance. Why don’t we see more of this guy? Not only is he gorgeous but he can really act too (check out the video below for proof!!) James Franco was okay but I’m not a huge fan.  I find his acting a little bland (maybe I’m biased after sitting through 127 hours and feeling like the film took 127 hours to end!)

Sewell was captivating as the kind and vulnerable, yet brave and heroic Lord Marke of Cornwall.   Ultimately he is betrayed by his wife Isolde and his ward, Tristan, which is all the more tragic because never has there been a man more deserving of love.  It’s corny but it’s true.  Lord Marke is so loved by his people and essentially a very decent guy (having lost his hand in battle to save Tristan who was then a child and then taking Tristan into his care and favouring him over his flesh and blood, his nephew Melot).  It’s all just too sad and tragic for poor Marke.

I can’t imagine anybody having suited the role as well as Sewell.  He also gave a great performance as the very odd, but very brilliant biophysicist, Dr. Jacob Hood in Eleventh Hour (which was unfortunately cancelled) .  Here’s hoping that we see Rufus again in the bigger roles he deserves.

Here’s a clip of what is probably the best scene in Tristan and Isolde.  What a gorgeous scene that draws you into the heart of a man suffering in love. That doesn’t happen too often in the movies !

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I spent the last couple of evenings watching David Yates’ 2001 adaptation of  Trollope’s, The Way We Live Now.  I loved it. David Suchet is riveting as the devious but very charming,  Augustus Melmotte.   Shirely Henderson as his very odd, but ultimately likable daughter, Marie, is also superb and with stellar performances by Killian Murphy and Matthew MacFayden, the whole production is captivating from beginning to end.

The story has all the period drama necessities, top hats, cinched waists, and all sorts of dilemmas about love, marriage, wealth, social standing and reputation.  Think Jane Austen with a great big dollop of comedy.   Trollope obviously had a great sense of humour and has spilled this into many of his characters who at times can seem like caricatures rather than fully developed personalities.  But it works.  Sir Felix (Matthew MacFayden) is a lazy, immatature mummy’s boy, who gambles what little money his family have and plots to marry the very wealthy’s Melmotte’s daughter, Marie.  Of course, it all goes wrong, largely due to his pathological and childish self-centredness (and his gambling addiction too,  as he gambles away the money Marie gave him for their elopement).

Marie, who at the beginning of the series is to all appearances a spoiled and unhappy young rich woman, tolerated by her mother and beaten by her father, is for me the true heroine of the story.  Ecstatic at having at last found in Felix what she believes is a man who truly loves her  (as she is not the prettiest of girls) she shows herself willing to sacrifice everything for their relationship, including her fortune.  Felix being a superficial ‘blackguard’ ultimately rejects her and Marie finally sees the truth but in the process has grown into an independent and mature young lady.

What Trollope does brilliantly that is lacking other writing of his era is develop plot.   While he deals with the issues of social standing, love matches and wealth, by bringing the money hungry, unscrupulous Melmotte into the story along with Paul Montague’s plans to build a railway, he creates an intriguing plot that ultimately leads to the downfall of Melmotte.

Being an Englishman working in Ireland (and with a love of the Irish) Trollope understood the concept of stranger or outsider.   Originally, Trollope had planned that Melmotte’s character would be an Irishman.  Given that the Irish were largely despised by the English at that time, this would have given the character less chance of being accepted in London society.  As it happens,  without specifiying Melmotte’s nationality (but suggesting Eastern European, perhaps Hungarian), Trollope managed to make the character a crooked, deceiving but oddly likable man, who can attract the company of English ‘society’ because of his wealth.  He is not without charm and like all good con men has ample self-confidence.  But as Melmotte himself said, he stayed too long in England.  He enjoyed being an ‘English Gentleman’ too much and finally he became the victim of his own deceptions .

The portrayal of the Melmotte’s vulgarity (as foreigner unfamiliar with the etiquette of society), particularly through their eating habits adds fabulous comedic value. David Suchet, manages to portray Melmotte as almost animalistic.  The noises are at times like a tiger purring, and the these sounds made while contemplating especially suggest him as a person to be feared.  Suchet portrays the character amazingly.

Ulitmately, the stranger fails and the Englishman triumphs.  Melmotte kills himself while laughing insanely at the irony of a portrait he commissioned which sees him in a typically English, aristocratic pose. Montague, who was largely responsible for exposing Melmotte’s scams triumphs and builds his railways.   All of the loose ends are tied up when it comes to romance and love and even Sir Felix, banished by his mother’s new husband (and financial saviour) manages to maintain his gigolo habits while in some strange and foreign country.  It is ironic that Trollope ends the novel with Felix, the Baronet and gentlemen, becoming the stranger, in a country where title (which is all he had in England) means nothing.

There is so much more the the story than I have managed to tell here. I suggest, if you like period drama that you watch it.  Suchet is the real star and I guarantee, you will not be at all disappointed.

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I was left feeling flat, unemotional and uninspired after watching Never Let Me Go, a bit too like the main characters in the movie!  The film is based on the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, famed for his purgative need to under-state and while the subtley that defines his work has translated well in his other movie adapted novel, Remains of the Day (Anthony Hopkins having just a little to do with that), I don’t think it worked in Mark Romanek’s Never Let Me Go.

Opening in 1970′s England, Never Let Me Go is set in an alternative reality, where cloned humans are conditioned from childhood to accept their fate as future organ donors.  Their sole purpose is to prolong the life of the non clone population who can now live to be over 100.  When the story opens, we meet the three principal characters, Ruth, Kathy and Tommy, as children and students at Hailsham, a school that on first appearances is nothing other than a typical English boarding school.   We soon realize that this is not the case with the arrival of Miss Lucy, a teacher who struggles with the deception, eventually revealing to the children the true purpose of their lives.

The sudden revelation during class of the desolate life of self-sacrifice they are destined for, should have been one of the more disturbing moments of the film.  After all, these are children who laugh, play and bicker like normal children, who strive to express their creativity and and form childhood crushes.  But it failed to make an emotional punch,  largely because the children’s muted reaction gives us nothing to empathize with.  Their suffering is not explored.  They have been groomed for submission at Hailsham and yet beyond the gruesome stories designed to keep the children within the boundaries, there is nothing that suggests how this brainwashing occurred.   As a result, the viewer is justified in asking, why don’t they just run away.The film falters in it’s unwillingness to express the inner struggles of the characters.  At moments, it seems like they don’t have any.  As a result the viewer is kept at an emotional distance, forced to understand events for the most part, cognitively, rather than viscerally.

Despite the complications of the love triangle that develops and frames the movie, the characters are ultimately too passive to be tragic. For the most part, they refuse to struggle with their own flaws and fail to put in any fight against their oppressive destiny.  And when they do, it seems contrived.  When Ruth (played byKiera Knightly) acknowledges her lifelong jealousyof Kate, and the  subsequent pain it has caused her friends, her words of regret seem empty and harsh.  It’s difficult to feel anything for her despite her weakened state.  She is so accepting of her distorted destiny that when she finally ‘completes’ (the clones expression for death as a result of too many organ donations), there is no grief.

Only Tommy is full of anger.   Early on in the film,  we see him in a screaming rage during playtime, much to the confusion of the other children,  and later again when he realizes that he and Kathy will not get the ‘defferal’ on transplant donations that they believed those in ‘provable’ states of love got.   Tommy’s rage is heart-breaking and finally triggers our emotions.  He must surely be screaming for the anguish, the loss, the suffering, the injustice, the powerless, the incomprehensible mess that is their lives.

Perhaps the subtlety,  the muted colours, the unwillingness of the movie to move into our emotional space serves a purpose.  When Tommy screams, if we listen carefully enough we might just hear the echo of our own anguished screams.  After all, is life so different for us?  We are powerless to fight against the inevitability of our own death.  We accept it without argument because we have to.  Significantly, the authorities that control the growth of the clones and schedule their death (via transplants) are largely invisible.  There is no source of power to be angry at, nobody to blame.  It’s not so different for us. By the end of the movie, we come to realize that we share the characters plight.

There are no heroes in Never Let Me Go.  Nobody wants to root for characters who are not rooting for themselves, who shrug their shoulders at fate and passively embrace its inevitability.   The medium expects that from somewhere within the narrative, somebody will emerge with a will to overcome the oppression.  The final punch comes when we realize that Never Let Me Go is about life and death and just like the movie, none of us are heroes.

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I saw the movie Revolutionary Road before I read the book. The movie captivated me. I was instantly drawn to the characters and their plight to wrestle from the mundane routine of eveyday living, their amazing selves. Immediately after seeing the film, I bought the book.

Of course, as is very often the case, the book gives a far richer, fuller understanding of the characters and plot but I loved both the movie and the film. Hearing Winslet and DiCaprio in the lines of the book didn’t ruin it for me at all. In fact, the film remained remarkably faithful to the movie and reading the book after having seen the film was like having access to Frank and April’s therapists notes (if they had had one!).

On the surface Revolutionary Road appears to be a critique of the uninspiring 50′s suburban lifestyle that helps fracture the marriage of Frank and April Wheeler and while that is the backdrop for the story, the real point of the book is made clear in the first chapter.

When the book opens, we see Frank and April Wheeler struggling to come to terms with a failed stage production of  ”The Petrified Forest”. We know from the first chapter …  from the opening lines, that this is not going to be a story with a happy ending.

“The final dying sounds of their dress rehearsal left the Laurel Players with nothing to do but stand there, silent and helpless, blinking out over the footlights of an empty auditorium.”

For most of the book, Frank and April do appear silent and helpless in the knowledge that they are not putting in an extraordinary performance.  Despite their awareness of the  absurdity of   “deadly dull jobs in the city and deadly dull homes in the suburbs” , they haven’t done anything that would warrant applause, nothing remarkable, nothing that marks them as exceptional.

The hope and anticipation at the beginning of the book for the play is peppered with fears and insecurities that are muted through a collective belief that the players eagerness would really make it happen.   Coping with the humiliation of not being able to make it happen is the theme for the entire story.

Revolutionary Road is about April’s attempt to cope with the fact that, like the play, her life has no creative merit.   She is a woman who sees the potential to be extraordinary and yet comes to recognize that through circumstance or just plain bad decisions,  she has abdicated her freedom to creatively make the choices that will elevate her beyond the banal suburban life she lives.

April Wheeler has not managed to put in a performance in her own life that would warrant applause. She has fallen victim to “the great sentimental lie of the suburbs”.   When she does finally make the decision to break from the “soap-opera” picture of herself and plans to take her family to Paris, her efforts are thwarted relentlessly until she becomes despondent and arguably unstable.

In the book, Frank Wheeler quickly become a far more sympathetic character. This takes some time in the movie. In many ways, he is a far simpler character. His desire to be loved is stronger and more grounding than Aprils. Reading the book, you get the impression that Frank could have subscribed to the surburban lifestyle without anywhere near as much angst as April.  But April’s desire to break out awakens  his ego.  His college friends once remarked, “.. old Wheeler really had it. All he would ever need, was the time and freedom to find himself “, which would probably require “his early and permanent withdrawal to Europe”.

April uses Frank’s ego to leverage the exciting life she longs for.  Ultimately, circumstances come into play that shatter the dream.  Unlike the play, April cannot write off her failed life with glib remarks about how it was all just fun.  Her sense of frustration turns to anger which in turn, manifests as  a sense of desperation that drives her to do anything to make her dreams comes true.

The movies is beautifully filmed and captures the claustrophobic sense of the Wheeler’s 1950′s suburban American life.  Winslet and DiCaprio are brilliant together and deliver the dialogue,  the tensions and all the nuances of the characters with natural ease.  Yates’ dialogue is so non-contrived and utterly convincing. Both the film and book resonate to the heart the sense of  hurt, frustration and ultimately defeat, the characters feel, which is immediately poignant to all of us still waiting for unfulfilled dreams to come true.

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