...Which is too bad, as it's one of my favorite novels.
However, it sounds like they totally schmaltzed it to death.
The film gently waves back and forth in time between a high society wedding in 1954 (according to the novel) and the present day when Vanessa Redgrave is dying, while her daughters, played by Richardson and Collette, are in a melancholy deathwatch, trying to find time to get everything said when both time and their mother’s mental clarity are in decidedly short supply.While the woman fades to black in her deathbed, she remembers that wedding so long ago, when she had an idyll with the great love of her life that turned out, in its consequences, to be more bitter than she’d ever have guessed.
Redgrave’s younger self is played by Claire Danes, as a nightclub singer of ambiguous ability (my vote is no, if you must know, as much as I’ve always loved Claire Danes). She’s a faithful maid of honor at her wealthy best friend’s wedding. With an advanced case of the prenuptial jitters, the prospective bride is momentarily paralyzed by the fact that she’s really in love with the son of one of the family’s loyal retainers (who has grown up to be a dashing doctor).
Danes the bridesmaid is in love with him, too. So, it seems, is the bride’s drunken and painfully closeted brother, played ridiculously with nothing that resembles libido by Hugh Dancy.
And Michael Cunningham was partially responsible. What a shame.
This script is literary in the very worst way. You may not really appreciate how very good these actors are until you hear them keep this movie afloat — barely — with dialogue that should never have left the page (watch, for instance, as Toni Collette uses the word “metamorphose” in a putatively intimate conversation and gets away with it. THAT, so help me, is an actress.)
What the heck happened? The original book was certainly emotional, but Minot was good at cutting away at the right time and not over-explaining things. Plus, part of the whole point was that the main character didn't go for heart-to-heart talks with anyone - and went to her grave avoiding them, with one exception -- the man she hasn't seen in 40 years -- and that's just in her head.
In fact, most of the action takes place in her memory or in her imagination. Maybe it's difficult to dramatize that.
And what are all these bizarre love triangles? Why over-complicate things? The book does talk about her previous relationships as well as her marriages after that fateful weekend. Again, was that just too hard to show?
Oh well... on the plus side, Michael will be happy to know I won't make him watch it!
At least the movie version of A Very Long Engagement was nearly as good as the book. See, Hollywood people? It CAN be done!
