Culturally in the U.S. the late 60's and early 70's are indistinguishable. I'd argue that the later and earlier years of any two decades are indistinguishable.
Agreed, which is why I said what I did. People tend to want to think things greatly change when a decade changes, but they don't; in reality it's as subtle as one year from another in any decade.
N.D. Porter's Carnaby Street-via-flower-power-ruffles Irene is why I couldn't keep watching.
My misunderstanding, then. I like Goldie Hawn. I did find a few YouTube videos still remaining -- most have been deleted now -- so I could at least get some sense of Porter's portrayal of Irene. She is very different from McKey's Irene; more "normal," if you will.
2) Soames and Annette... Jesus, is that relationship realistic and tragic. I do realize the stakes involved in both Soames and Annette's loss of the child. I know that almost anyone would forgive Soames for making the decision he made. But the brutality of that scene is so brutal, it's kind of like when you accidentally get ill from an innocuous or even well-liked candy. The recollection thereafter never leaves you.
Yes, I imagine there are 21st century versions of marriage (and 20th) to Soames and Annettes's marriage. It was not a marriage out of love, or lust, but out of practicality. It happens now as well, but not as often as it did then.
The childbirth scene was brutal, I agree, but that was due to the times. Neither Annette, Soames, nor the doctor could do anything about it, except make an awful choice and hope for the best. I can understand why it'd stay with you. It has me as well.
Annette was an opportunist; she admits this. It seems that all French people in all British film or literature are "credited" with some sort of personality disorder by virtue of not being British.
I wouldn't necessarily call Annette an opportunist, but I do think she was pragmatic, and she'd been raised to be that way. In her world, marriage was essentially a business proposition and one's mate wasn't chosen as a result of love. To her, as she expressed to Fleur later on, marriage was for practical reasons, and love was separate. I do agree that often French characters in British novels (and/or period productions) are portrayed this way.
She does not count on the day arriving when her husband will diminish her in her own daughter's eyes. That scene with young Fleur about the dress-changing was, to me, nearly as awful as the childbirth scene--and I mean this. To set a mother's will at naught in favor of a minor's said more loudly than the childbirth scene how much an object Annette had been and always would be to Soames.
If she didn't see that coming, then she was a fool, and I do not see Annette as a fool by any means. Soames fell for Fleur like a ton of bricks, right after her birth, even though she wasn't a son, which is what he so wanted, and had to have, initially, been disappointed she was "only" a girl.
Yes, that was the scene I had in mind, very young Fleur, who wanted to wear the white dress, and Soames giving way to her, over her Annette (who was right). However I can't see it the way you do; the childbirth scene was literally a matter of life and death, while the dress scene was merely a (probably) small daily matter, representative of what had undoubtedly gone on before, and would go on afterwards.
I think it has much less to do with Annette, and any objectification of her, than it does to buy -- and keep -- Fleur's love. Not that she was capable of love, but that was his intent. And one can
ever buy love, but he didn't realize that, because he thought he could. He made the same mistake with Irene, although not Annette. I do think a good part of his obsessive and destructive love for Fleur is because she is his daughter -- half, at least, his creation.
I know that you like Soames
I don't know where you're gotten that idea. I've never said I liked Soames, and don't see how anyone could, overall. But, I do not think he's evil, either. I don't believe in evil, unless we're talking about sociopaths or psychopaths (of which Soames is neither), and even then I think sociopath or psychopath are the correct words, not evil. Clearly Soames has something wrong with him, and makes terrible, self-destructive choices; I've always maintained this.
Uriah Heep to a certain extent is the same.
There is something Uriah Heepish about Soames.
For the record, I adore Damian Lewis and for the life of me can't account for the ascendancy of someone like Benedict Cumberbatch over him in the sex appeal department; Cumberbatch can't hold a candle to Lewis in terms of--you name it.
Yes, I know that you too are a Damian Lewis fan. I've only seen a couple of episodes of Sherlock, and I thought Cumberbatch was good in it, but it (the show and his character) didn't knock my socks off or anything. He's a good actor, but IMO,
nothing as good as Lewis. I'd put Lewis up there with Spencer Tracy, maybe even better because as good as Tracy was, he more or less played himself, and I don't think Lewis does. (Gawd, I hope not.)
Speaking of Lewis, I know you've praised him in Band of Brothers, but I can't find that anywhere to watch it. For me, his Soames and Brody were pretty much neck-and-neck as far as brilliant performances. I enjoyed Life well enough, but the writing was light fare. I tried Billions and had a hard time making it through the first episode. I tried the second, only because a friend urged me to, but found it very tedious and barely made it to the end. IMO, Lewis needs to be cast in a role he can get his teeth into, otherwise he's wasted. Is there anything else you've seen him in, other than Band of Brothers, you recommend?
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hilaryjrp
8 years ago
@catbookss--
Will write more later. No, 'twas not I who praised Band of Brothers, which I tried to watch on HBO but could not get into (the first, very long, episode had barely any Lewis at all).
Run, don't walk, to stream or buy on Ebay "Keane." It is the role that convinced Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon to cast him as Brody. It is heartbreaking, frightening, and a better portrait of mental illness combined with poverty will never be seen on any screen anywhere.
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hilaryjrp
8 years ago
She is very different from McKey's Irene; more "normal," if you will.
I just wanted to add something about this very important point you make. You and I differ in substantive areas regarding good and evil, so it's pointless to squabble over such things.
However, Gina McKee's wan, chronically depressed-to-the-point-of-slacker-like-sullenness, attitude
needs to be discussed. I think I'm going to find and watch all the way through the original Forsyte Saga, because Nyree Dawn Porter created an Irene who (at least in the beginning) is believably alluring, so that her Soames (apologies for forgetting the actor's name) seems much less of a predator. For Damian Lewis' Soames to seem a predator is natural, when you consider how truly unattractive (I mean personally, not physically) Irene is.
In fact, it's Irene's lifelong despondency that makes her affair with Bosinney so repulsive. It's as if she decides, oh, okay, I think I'll drop the maiden-in-deep-dudgeon act now. And sure, the fictional character does come to life with Bosinney. It's Gina McKee's (and the director's!) insistence on eternal moodiness that makes even Irene's eventual marriage to Jolyon seem such a "get-back" at Soames.
Perhaps this is how the director wanted Irene to appear. Perhaps Gina McKee was cast specifically because of her remote demeanor--not the robust, vivacious Irene of the 60's version.
In this case, a viewer has to ask if a director has the prerogative to co-opt another person's work (Galsworthy's) and make it her/his own. Someone did this with the late 90's version of Mansfield Park. Jane Austen's novel, while alluding, just as Jane Eyre does, to slavery and all the barbarity that went along with it, chose--for whatever Austen's (or Bronte's) reasons might have been--not to concentrate on slavery. So the question should be not if Soames was good, and Irene bad, or vice versa, but whether any director has the right to inject herself into a work someone else wrote (common 90's pretentiousness and arrogance), rather than to write her own screenplay/novel about a feuding turn-of-the-century dynasty, and go from there.
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