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Rebbie Hall totally failed in her interpretation

posted 11 years ago by stnlv
14 replies | jump to latest

Am I the only one who feels that Hall misread her character and thus failed? The character that she played and interpreted was an elitist, snobbish, selfish, teasing, cold, manipulative, using, money-grubbing, shallow jerk. Thus, scenes in which she cries and pleads with her husband come across as unbelievable from the viewer's point of view. Her claim that she hasn't been with a man in five years is not believable as is her praying and commitment to her faith. However, I do not believe the character was written that way. She was written as a woman of the future and a modern one- one who wanted a REAL relationship and marriage with guards down and fake conversation extinguished from it. Real communication and not have to be so repressed behaviorally. Cutting down the Groby tree is a symbol of that. Secondly, she was written as a parallel to Valentine since Valentine is a progressive and represents the future also. Ford and Stoppard I believe wrote Sylvia to be a very complex character where she was a product of her environment and time and thus would hold on to elitist and aristocratic attitudes but would also pine and rebel against the restrictions in front of her as far as her marriage is concerned. I never really saw those gray/grey areas in Hall's performance. It is a colorful, entertaining performance, but unsympathetic and misread.

[–] Bellatrice 11 years ago

I haven't read the book but here's my take on Sylvia nonetheless.
I think she's a woman of great passion and great appetites. I think she truly loves her husband and is frustrated by the "wall" of nobility within which he has encased himself. She's not guiltless in her adulterous flings but I think at least part of it is partly due to her inability to get hrough to her husband. They're strange bedfellows but I actually think she loves him while he loves another.

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"Austerity" is a word said mainly by people with a full stomach.

[–] patty1 11 years ago

I agree that Sylvia was complex, which is why I believe she was telling the truth about swinging from adultery to staying chaste for years, praying, etc. She was not simply a rebel; she was torn between the old ways and the new. And I thought that Rebecca Hall gave a very nuanced performance of that complex character.

[–] caroccnv 11 years ago

I also haven't read the book. My impression of Sylvia is one of a selfish, childish and manipulative person. She seems bored with anything that requires depth of thought. It would've have been nice to seen the character as a woman of the future.

[–] patty1 11 years ago

Valentine was the woman of the future, so it would have been redundant for Sylvia to be that as well. Sylvia was the one who wanted it both ways.

[–] deniseactress 11 years ago

I thought Valentine and Sylvia were parallel characters. Both feels were independent in nature but were restricted by society rules, Sylvia was able to do as she please because of nobility and Valentine did as she pleased because she was as suffragette struggling for the rights of women in society.
But again there were limitations they both were restricted by because of the era.

what Jordie?

[–] TheDuchessofM 11 years ago

Nope. Everything you saw was who Sylvia was. She wanted a relationship with Christopher on her terms. She never reached out to Christopher to see his POV because she didn't understand him or want to understand him...and she usually despised the few instances of understanding she had of him. I don't find Sylvia modern at all, just bored and spoiled and aimless. All she did during the war was cause trouble, not work for the war effort or find some purpose for her life.

[–] BridgetB 11 years ago

Tietjens explains Sylvia:

‘What she says she believes. But she only believes what she wants to, for the moment. If you call that truthful, she’s truthful. I’ve nothing against her.’

I clipped that from the book but Stoppard used it in his script. Sometimes Sylvia hated Tietjens, sometimes she desired him. She was sincerely religious--when it suited her. She even had occasional flickers of maternal feeling--although many women of her class weren't close to their children. At least while they were messy little creatures.

Sylvia was the only child of a wealthy widow with noble connections--she was quite rich. And often bored--and tempted to "pull the shower bath." She was portrayed that way in Ford's books. Also in the script--which actually made her slightly more sympathetic. Hall played the heck out of the role.

[–] Squeeth2 9 years ago

You make her sound like Tony Bliar....;O)

Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.

[–] filmfancy 11 years ago

Sylvia was quite an unsympathetic character, quite vapid, but Rebecca Hall did a wonderful job of bringing her to life.

She wanted a relationship with Christopher on her terms.

I didn't get the impression she loved him at all. It seemed as if she purposely seduced him on the train because she knew she was already pregnant by a married man. She found someone so that she could dupe him into thinking the child was his. There was some mention of Sylvia's mother also getting married 'through the back door' in Paris. So Sylvia didn't have a very good role model.

And all the pieces matter (The Wire)

[–] delalluvia 10 years ago

I found Sylvia a great character.

What I saw was a woman who had to seduce an honorable man to marry her once the cad she was with refused to divorce his wife and dumped her already pregnant.

She learns to love his goodness and nobility and intelligence and fiercely defends him to anyone who dares question either his genius or his character. She learns contempt for any man who doesn't measure up to her husband. A real man, she calls him.

But Sylvia's problem was that she had fallen in love with the man who married her out of duty. He was never in love with her nor did he ever fall in love with her. There was some aspects of her that he admired - even as late as her coming to Rouen - she was ripping someone a new one, Christopher sits down at the table listening to her and he quietly grins.

But though she gave it her all to try to seduce her husband, win him back and get him to love her, and Rebecca Hall was brilliant and heartbreaking in that scene, she just can't make him love her.

It's a shame too, because she was Christopher's equal. Valentine - at least in the series - is a virginal, wan, shallow girl. After the first blush, I'm afraid Christopher would find her rather boring. She doesn't write, her mother does, she's a suffragette but a fair weather one, one who willingly throws out her values and beliefs about women to become the mistress of a man who doesn't offer her marriage. A case of beware of wishing for what you want, lest you get it.

"Can you keep a secret? Can you know something and never speak of it again?"

[–] 10 years ago

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[–] 10 years ago

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[–] delalluvia 10 years ago

Sylvia in the book is a clinically accurate portrayal of a person with severe, untreated borderline personality disorder. The tactics she uses are those of an upper-class lady of leisure, but the roots of her behavior are in her mental illness, not in her gender or position in society.

The decision to soften up Sylvia for this series and leave out the uglier details of her behavior throws off the whole balance of the story. It makes Tietjens look like a wimp and a prude, and in the book he's neither of these things, just an aristocrat who's struggling to live up to his traditional values of "chastity, monogamy and no talking about it." The series leaves out the nastier bits of Sylvia's character: her habit of torturing animals, the fact that SHE was the source of those slanderous rumors that ruined Christopher and Valentine's reputations, made them social outcasts and ironically pushed them into an illicit relationship despite their best efforts to be good and resist their natural urges--oh, and she gets caught near the end of the final book attempting to give the pregnant Valentine a miscarriage.

Good thing the series went with a kindler, gentler Sylvia. It sounds like Sylvia of the books is too much a caricature. It would have been too easy to hiss and boo her Snidely Whiplash Evil character had they stuck to her book character in the miniseries.

Luckily, the Sylvia of the miniseries is more sympathetic and thus makes more conflict for both Christopher and the audience.

"Can you keep a secret? Can you know something and never speak of it again?"

[–] Stirchley 9 years ago

"Rebbie"? LOL.