Gormenghast

Rating:
Summary: Extremely well-done
Review: This is an extremely well-done and COHERENT adaptation of the novels, which are not easy reading by any stretch of the imagination. Rhys-Meyers is probably too pretty to be Steerpike, but we shouldn't hold that against him; he did an excellent job. However, Celia Imrie was my favorite. At first I thought she was a man in drag, but she certainly sounded like a woman. Then I realized she was a woman in heavy makeup. (You can see her in CALENDAR GIRLS and realize that she's actually pretty attractive.) Great production values, music, et. al. Here,I think, is the ultimate compliment. When I saw this it was about 20 years since I had read the book, and the miniseries brought it all back to me.

Rating:
Summary: A Nice, Malicious Satire on Britain's Class System
Review: This four-hour BBC production tackles the first two books of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy and does a fine job. The story is a cross between a fantasy and a gothic tale of duplicity. There are no dragons or giant serpents, except for those in the hearts of the characters.

Gormenghast is an ancient, rambling, crumbing castle ruled over by the Groan dynasty. "I haven't seen you in fifteen years. Where have you been," one character asks. "In the east wing," the other replies reasonably. Over the centuries land has been lost so that only the castle remains. Rituals and procedures have evolved and have become so complex no one but the Master of the Rituals knows how things must be done, and everyone follows his edicts, even the Earl of Groan. Life in the castle is rigidly hierarchical; no one can move from his or her station in life. Its a hothouse of priviledge and servitude. Then a young kitcher helper, Steerpike, driven by intelligence, envy and bitterness, decides to improve his position. He does so gradually, using lies, false friendship, betrayal and murder. When the 76th Earl of Groan dies in a mysterious fire, his young son, Titus, becomes the 77th Earl. As the years go by, neither Titus Groan nor Steerpike have any use for each other. Eventually Steerpike overreaches, and the climax arrives in a battle on the heights of the castle in a roaring rain.

The BBC did the production proud by paying for stunning sets and costumes. The castle is a forbidding and eccentric place, rich and mouldering at the same time. It features an outstanding cast, with Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Steerpike and Andrew Robertson as the grown Titus Groan. Featured are Ian Richardson, Christopher Lee, Richard Griffiths, Neve McIntosh, and many others.

The names of the characters will give you an idea of the strange world of Gormenghast: Dr. Prunesquallor and his sister, Irma Prunesquallor, Swelter the cook, Flay the manservent, Mollocks, Barquentine, Fushia Groan, Rotcodd. Charles Dickens would be envious.

Peake wrote his books right after WWII. They are a thinly disguised satire on the British class sytem and the royal family. This production is a classy effort at trying to bring the books alive.

Rating:
Summary: Terrible ... simply, unbelievably, unmistakenly terrible.
Review: I read so many of the reviews both for the Gormenghast books and the DVD prior to purchasing this DVD. To be quite honest, I wanted the books in hard cover but since they're so expensive on the used book market I thought I'd sample the DVD first to be sure I'd be buying books I'd like to read more than once.

Now, that being said, you must understand I am an ardent fantasy-a-holic. I have been reading fantasy since my introduction to the genre in 1977 (the hobbit) and still after all these years simply adore a good fantasy novel. Robert Jordan, Robin Hobb, Raymond Feist, David Eddings, Stephen Donaldson, Ursala LeGuin, Patricia McKillip, Melanie Rawn, the list goes on and on ... I listed some of the authors I enjoy so you would have a feel for the type of books I enjoy! Fantasy doesn't have to be the old "Dungeon & Dragons" stereotypical junk.

It was my hope after reading so many glowing reviews that this series by Mr. Peake would be an enjoyable adult fantasy novel set with incredible character development, well thought out plot line, believable world, and edge of the seat enjoyment - be it political, action, romance, etc.

What I found was the absolute worst ... aargh. Words fail me. The characters were unbelievably moronic (I wanted to use the word "insane" ... but you might miss my meaning since they clearly ARE insane in the books). The premise of a castle as large as gormenghast is absurd. The characters were one dimensional. Only Steerpike was in any way mildly interesting - I was rooting for him to kill the whole darn batch of other characters off after about 15 mintues of viewing time.

Two sisters mirror each other ... finishing each others sentences ... what little dialog the have is nonsensical. The King's servant can't make full sentences - ever. The Cook is an idiot. The nurse is constantly crying and clearly so decrepid she can't function. Our villan (Steerpike) is devious, always in the right place at the convenient right time, never caught doing wrong, and completely unbelievable.

How can this be? This set was compared to Tolkien?!?!?! Was the reviewer as insane as Groan?

The DVD set is a two disk set with approx 4 hours of viewing time. The first viewing I managed to force myself to watch about 1 hour of video. The next day I forced myself to try for another 1/2 hour. I finally gave up when Groan was attacked by owls. Oh, for goodness sake.

DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS ONE. Anything else. Truely anything. Anything but Gormenghast.

Rick Piatt
(can I give this NO STARS???)

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding in every way
Review: Based on the wonderful fantasy novels of Mervyn Peake, this adaptation manages to capture the wonder and otherness of Gormenghast. The basic story line has been described by others, so suffice it to say that we are introduced to a world where nothing has changed for at least 77 generations. We meet the ruling family, a sad, meek earl, his wife (who utters the wonderful line -- when shown the newborn son -- "Take him away and bring him back when he is 6!"), his flighty, desperate for attention daughter, Fuscia, etc. The kitchen boy who wants advancement at the sacrifice of everyone else, Steerpike. All these characters are so finely drawn. And the language in the books is just so florid and unlike anything else I can think of (Peake describes one character as having a "tropical head"). I loved the story, I loved the writing, but I also loved this film adaptation. It is just marvelous. The acting was so good. I agree that the actress who plays Fuschia was perhaps too old for the initial scenes -- but she managed perfectly. And the actor who plays Steerpike did an outstanding job. I have always felt such pity for this miserable, evil character. It always seemed to me that there could have been a different path for him if he had only had some kindness in his life. But I especially have praise for the actor who played the doctor, John Sessions, and also for the always grand Christopher Lee, playing Flay. Finally, one must mention the earl's sisters and their fine characterization. And also, the actor that played the truly dispicable "Swelter" (with all its intimations of child abuse) did a good job. I recommend this as a must see!

Rating:
Summary: Reactions to previous reviews
Review: Yes, it is very different to the books - the "Hamlet-style" redrafting of Steerpike can be a problem, particularly when it comes to the artificially-enhanced Steerpike/Fuchsia love story...and yet, somehow, that doesn't stop Gormenghast from being a triumph for all concerned:
1) The handful of people who expected Gormenghast to be gothic horror, with the castle looking like Dracula's abode, haven't been paying enough attention to the book - or to Peake's drawings.
2) The new Steerpike is more attractive than the old - having been converted from pure-evil power-crazed manipulator to rebel-warrior taking revenge on the ruling class for the way they condemned him to sexual abuse at the hands of Swelter (something hinted at vaguely in the film and rather more strongly in the book).
3) Neve McIntosh really shouldn't have been playing the adolescent Fuchsia in the first two episodes - but in the second two episodes she's almost ideal - almost because you could argue she's too beautiful to play Fuchsia (who is "in a sense, rather ugly...").
3) The real stars of this particular show - Ian Richardson, Christopher Lee, Celia Imrie and the Cooper/Wanamaker double-act, for inhabiting some of the most difficult characters in modern literature. Particular kudos to Imrie for her portrayal of the not-as-dumb-as-you-think countess, not easy whilst struggling with all that artificial fat on her face and in her dress! And to Richardson's descent into madness after the library incident, especially when he becomes the owl-man.

In summation, then - It's certainly not a substitute for the books, but it's a valid alternative-perspective on them. Worth five-ish hours of anyone's time.

Rating:
Summary: 'EVIL AND DOUBT WERE ONE'
Review: Being familiar with the Gormenghast trilogy but having missed the dramatisation of it on television I bought this pair of videos thinking that they would cover the story of the first two books. I was not expecting the third, in which Prince Titus flees Gormenghast into the modern world outside, and which is a different story, indeed a different type of story, altogether. Not so, in the event. This film takes us a certain way into the second book, but it leaves the narrative suspended in a way that suggests that we are to expect more. Whether this expectation is valid I have no idea at all.

I certainly hope it is, because I give this production very high marks indeed. It seems to me far better than some of the critical comment suggested at the time. It gets the `feel' of the story for me quite brilliantly. The plot-line is `strange' up to a point because its author, though inspired and original, had more than a few screws loose in the top storey. However the strangeness seems to me to have been greatly overstated, I believe because of the very self-conscious and affected style of writing at the start of the first book. In fact this relaxes into a fairly normal idiom after a few pages, much as the initial harmonic style of Wagner's Tristan only lasts a few bars. The Gormenghast trilogy is fantasy of a fairly familiar type. It depicts the ambience of a huge castle that is a world on its own. It has been there for a thousand years, one gathers, but how it got built, where it might be, how its economy sustains itself and how it manages to avoid contact with the world outside are things one simply does not ask. It is a living museum, dedicated to tradition. Its inmates are a weird harlequinade certainly, but still recognisable human beings, sometimes caricatures, sometimes very realistic indeed, never in my view totally incredible. I don't read it as any kind of allegory, and the satirical elements are random and not focused around any particular theme. I detect no political stance, either in the depiction of traditionalism to the nth degree or in the socialistic views expressed by Steerpike - he was a villain indeed but the author is fairly neutral towards him and of course it would be completely illegitimate to assume that he actually meant what he was saying.

That is my reading of the books, and that is the way this film comes over to me. The casting is nothing short of superlative. Peake was also an artist (a very talented one) and we have his own pictures of some of the dramatis personae. Miss Prunesquallor here is almost Peake's drawing to the life. It would have been more or less impossible, I suppose, to find an actor who looked like Peake's Steerpike, but Jonathan Rhys Meyers carries off the part with aplomb and with a lot of the suggestion of Peake's narrative despite being handsome and personable. The casting of Warren Mitchell as Barquentine is sheer genius. The Countess herself has the right suggestion of a woman with a powerful brain who turns it on and off as the situation requires, Princess Fuchsia is a wonderful piece of enactment of a teenage girl, and I want to put in a special word for the quite marvellous performance turned in by June Brown (familiar to British soap-opera watchers as Dot Cotton of East Enders) as Nanny Slagg. I could go on. Maybe Stephen Fry is on the young side as professor Bellgrove, but my goodness he has style, and I hardly need comment on what to expect from the likes of Christopher Lee and Ian Richardson.

They can't leave it hanging like this - can they? It may be that having covered the contents of one-and-a-half books they are now faced with the problem (which I wouldn't like to try and solve) of how to combine the rest of the second book with the third, which as I say is a horse of another colour. One oddity in such a careful and professional production - my edition of the books, and the sleeve of my videos, know how to spell `Fuchsia', whereas the princess herself doesn't. I have a definite suspicion that none of them did.

Rating:
Summary: After a stumble or two, you get wow
Review: I bought this because it was highly recommended by several fellow Amazonians on the Customer Review Discussion Board. For the first half-hour of this four-hour miniseries, created by the BBC, I was trying to figure out why they thought highly of it. "Gormenghast" starts off as pure farce, with almost every character a caricature, and the whole production impressing me as a lampooning of royalty.


Ah, but then the characters start to emerge as more three-dimensional, and the scheming starts. The Groan family has ruled Gormenghst, from their sprawling city-castle, for seventy-six (going on seventy-seven) generations. Gormenghast is afloat in a sea of tradition, ritual, and customs. But, things are beginning to unwind. It all starts with a poor kitchen boy, Steerpike, who does not accept the role life has handed him, and who dares to want something more (and do something about it). The power-players here are:

Steerpike - abused kitchen boy determined to rise above everyone else

Flay - an amazingly powerful presence created by Christopher Lee, five steps above his already-impressive performance as Saruman in the Lord of the Rings films; now portraying a faithful, wise, and barely fluent servant

Titus - heir of Gormenghast, usually lost in daydreams, trying to find himself amongst all the roles imposed upon him

Wild Girl - child of Titus's wetnurse (who died in childbirth), the Wild Girl roams, filthy and nearly naked, through the forests surrounding the castle; for Titus, she symbolizes total freedom; she is as impoverished and free as he is privileged and bound

Swelt - Harry Potter's nasty uncle is now a slobbering, slobbish, lecherous, gluttonous kitchen chief, who lusts after drink, the serving boys, and vengeance toward Steerpike and Flay

Fuschia - the oldest child of the Earl of Gormenghast, but not the heir because of gender; Fuschia dreams of romance, adventure, and being noticed

Earl of Gormenghast - Ah, the poor man is gradually losing his mind; he is a tragic soul, lost despite absolute monarch

Gertrude - The Earl's wife, who usually notices little besides who white crow and her white cats

Dr. Prunesquallor - the obsequious and hopelessly circuitous and loquacious Court physician, who occasionally glimpses realty

Irma Prunesquallor - the doctor's sister, a quintessential spinster, longing only for a man to fulfill her dreams, but totally lacking in any appeal whatsoever

Nanny Slagg - oh, she cares for and loves the royal children, but would love to never have to work

Secretary Barquentine - Keeper of Records and Tradition, Organizer of All Official Rituals and Events; the Secretary longs for order and will scream at anyone who disrupts his plans


As Steerpike schemes, ingratiates, plots, undermines, and manipulates everyone, he rises. At first, I found him very admirable, as a force that was upsetting an applecart that desperately needed upsetting. But, as with all megalomaniacs, there is no such thing as "enough" for Steerpike.


I suggest that anyone watching this try to be patient. Wade through that first farcical half-hour or so, and you will find a tragedy of epic proportions, that Shakespeare and the Greek tragedians would have applauded.

Rating:
Summary: Lush and magnificent rendition
Review: From its bizzare sense of humor to its deranged social structure, Mervyn Peake's masterpiece translates superbly in film. This is a wonderful satirical and poignant look at the narrow world of a dying hierarchy. Nothing is sacred, except honor. Christopher Lee's Flay enforces the great code with protective conviction. Pay close attention to the furious mutterings of Barqentine. He fires off some of the best curse-spitting tirades ever displayed. Celia Imrie's Gertrude is the epitomy of aloof negligence. Though every character is something of a caricature, each is portrayed with great attention to the affection and intention of the novel's author.

Rating:
Summary: "There is something among us."
Review: In the ancient, fantastic and grotesque kingdom of Gormenghast, nothing has changed for centuries; tradition and ceremony are of the utmost importance. The 76th Earl of Groan rules Gormenghast, implacably. When the film begins, the Earl's wife, Lady Gertrude gives birth to a baby boy, Titus Groan. This is a important occasion for the kingdom of Gormenghast, for this means that tradition will continue--there will be a 77th Earl of Groan. But tradition is disrupted by fate. Anarchy is festering in the heart of a loathsome kitchen boy, named Steerpike (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers). Steerpike escapes Swelter (the kitchen) and using his evil mind and ruthless ambition, he forges a position for himself in the palace. By taking advantage of the many weaknesses rife in the kingdom, and by removing those who stand in his path, Steerpike "climbs faster than Virginia Creeper."

This rich, over four hour long miniseries is based on the Gormenghast trilogy written by Mervyn Peake, considered by many critics as one of the greatest works of fantasy in the 20th century. What great luck that the BBC tackled the daunting task of converting the books to the screen. The characters in Gormenghast are all created remarkably well, and the acting is superb. There's the senile Earl of Groan (Ian Richardson), and his cold, regal, and pragmatic wife, Lady Gertrude (Celia Imrie). Both parents sadly neglect Lady Fuchsia (Neve McIntosh), their beautiful, sad, and lonely daughter. The Earl's ambitious, marionette-like sisters, Cora and Clarice are the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of Gormenghast. They move, talk, and plot in unison. Various "loyal retainers" attend the noble Groan family including: Dr. Prunesquallor (John Sessions) and his man-hunting sister Irma (Fiona Shaw), loyal manservant, Flay (Christopher Lee), Secretary Barquentine (Warren Mitchell), and Nannie Slagg (June Brown). Visually, the film is superb. The gothic castle is a rambling labyrinth of hidden secrets, with 638 rooms on the first floor of the East wing alone, 503 rooms on the second floor of the East wing, and 700 rooms on the third floor of the east wing. There is the remarkable cat room, which Lady Gertrude has dedicated to a legion of white cats. In the kitchen, the disgusting boar-like chef Swelter rules with a meat cleaver and a vicious temper. In the schoolroom, Professor Bellgrove (Stephen Fry) dozes while the schoolboys play naughty tricks

One of the most interesting elements of the film is the contrast between the upstart, Steerpike, and the heir, Titus Groan. Both of these characters rebel against tradition--although Steerpike's rebellion is ruthless and murderous, and it cannot escape one's attention that both of these young men crop up as an antithesis to one another at precisely the same moment in Gormenghast's long history. "Gormenghast" is a remarkable achievement--displacedhuman






Rating:
Summary: The Message is the Medium
Review: The books flesh this production out. Having once seen part of it while walking behind the couch to and from my office while working I would catch glimpses of this strange world on the TV while my wife watched. It was intriguing enough that I chose to buy it and watch the whole thing at my convinience. That done it made clear to me that Peake was going to be worth the read and it has. Enjoy the little offered to view on amazon and read enough to order the set. Friends remember them from years ago and are glad to hear they are available in a new edition. I read comparisons with Tolkien and would agree to some extent. It would be an intriguing thesis to compare fiction of this period in light of the Great War and the impact it had on the British consciousness. Contrast that with Continental Europeans like Mann. Are there any comparisons?

But what about the DVD? The production demonstrates things that can be communicated via film media that are not possible using books and imagination. The artist effort in creating a dress, the luck in finding a white rook that could be trained to do the part, the right mix of actors and parts -- could we really not imagine anyone else doing these roles? All of that adds something to the books that communicates a message about the medium itself. The movie is not the book. The book is not the movie. There is something wonderful that each bring to story telling and imagination that the other lacks. Having both is better than just one or the other alone.