Rating: 
Summary: Three Leads Are Fantastic Plus Excellent Rendering of James
Review: I generally find Henry James' novels much too impenetrable to read. Thus, I've found myself relying on the film versions of his works instead. His work reaches its finest hour in this adaptation of his novel of the same name. I am glued to my seat every time I watch this for it is a fabulous love triangle beautifully played by all three leads. The leading man, Linus Roache, is my favorite actor in this film. He is perfect with both women plus you really feel for his predicament. He also is the most conflicted character. Helena Bonham Carter plays the woman he is in love with but, because he has no money, she sends him to Venice to captivate a rich, dying young woman, Milly, so that Milly will leave him her fortune. In the last scenes of the movies, Roache captures facial expressions of this man's conflicts that are sheer perfection. I want to see much more of Roache on the screen but he has not played that many roles as yet. Bonham Carter and the actress who plays Milly are also quite splendid. I can't think of anything negative to say about this film.
Rating:
Summary: A fascinating "modernization" of the Henry James novel
Review: I have been seeing previews for "The Wings of the Dove" for years on various DVDs that I have rented and finally got around to watching this adaptation of the Henry James novel. When I finished watching it the thing that struck me was how the attempt to modernize the story worked both for and against what James had written. Now, what makes this a particularly perspective to take on the film is that the adaptation by Hossein Amini moves the time frame of the story up eight years to 1910. That might seem a minor change, one scarcely worthy of note, but in 1902 good old Queen Victoria had not been in her tomb a year and the age that bears her name was still on its last legs (more to the point, James had been working on the novel for years, so it was clearly written during the Victorian Age). When you change the setting to 1910 it is then the end of the Edwardian Age, which makes a big difference, especially from the standpoint of English morality.
Kate Croy (Helena Bonham-Carter) has taken as her lover Merton Densher (Linus Roache), who has neither the position nor the fortune to win her hand. Kate's father (Michael Gambon) is destitute, and they both depend on the good graces of her dour and demanding Aunt Maude (Charlotte Rampling), who forbids the union and has a rich man in mind for Kate who seems willing to marry for love but would like it even more if money was involved. When Kate seeks independence from her aunt she enters the circle of Millie Theale (Alison Elliott), an American girl who is known as "the richest orphan in the world" and who is seeing the world before she dies, and a plan is hatched. Merton will woo Millie, marry her before she dies, and inherit her fortune, at which point he can marry Kate and the life they envision will become reality. I think you see it coming from a mile away that Merton will fall for Millie before she dies, and that there is a price to be paid for such an undertaken.
James makes this story even more interesting because Millie harbors little if any illusions as to what Kate and Merton are up to. Kate tells Merton their plan will succeed because she knows how Millie loves, but she never realizes that the same is true for the American girl. Besides, Millie is touring Europe on her own agenda, which is to drink deeply from the cup of life before it is untimely ripped from her lips. For her, Merton's attentions are something else to be experienced. Perhaps she knows that he will play the part so well that at some point he will stop acting, and perhaps it does not matter to her because when she is dead in grave the difference will not matter a whit.
The shift in period matters because the master plan here runs more against the grain of Victorian morality than it does compared to the looser standards that followed. Within another decade the English would be fighting a war involving machine guns, poisoned gas, bombs dropped from airplanes, and a new array of modern horrors. Move the story forward another eight years and we would expect Kate's character to be urging Merton to murder Millie, which would actually make her more like the Kate in the novel than what we find in this 1997 film.
In the end, the fact that Kate and Millie like each other and that Millie implicitly acknowledges and accepts the deal that is represented by Merton, makes a big difference. The question is not whether the plan will work, but what will Merton and Kate be like when it is over and what will have happened to both their relationship and the plans that they have made. Millie is in love with life, and some of that rubs off on Merton, so that he is not the man Kate sent off into the arms of another women. In his attempt to get what he wants, he comes even closer to something he can never have and in the final scene all that Kate can offer to him seems rather hollow.
The performances in "The Wings of the Dove" are, for the most part, beautifully understated. Bonham-Carter was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, as was Amini's adapted screenplay, Eduardo Serra's cinematography, and Sandy Powell's costume design. Ultimately, I think Amini's decision to move the story forward from the end of one age to another, is on the mark and the changes that required in James' novel work if for no other reason than having Kate know how much she is risking in sending Merton to Millie's side from the very start makes the human drama much richer.
Rating:
Summary: magnificent little drama
Review: I love the premise of this story, very intriguing: a rich young woman named Milly is dying and her best friend Kate senses that Milly is in love with her boyfriend, Martin, so out of compassion (and hopes that she will leave Martin all her money when she dies), Kate works out a calculating plan to get Martin and Milly together. One problem, they start falling for each other, and Kate starts getting jealous, afraid that she will lose Martin's love. The last sequence of the film was riveting, and the final scene was simply heart-stopping. It'll make you gulp and sigh.David Rehak
author of "Love and Madness"
Rating:
Summary: Great
Review: I loved this film. It's based on a Henry James novel, and I hate Henry James's contrived writing. So that I loved this film is a minor miracle. But I loved this film.
Rating: 
Summary: Acceptable....
Review: I loved this story by Henry James, it was haunting and yet some of its truths are still very much true even in the new millenium. While the film overall is a little dark that I suppose supported the sordid tale that is being told. The characters were portrayed as Henry James wrote them originally. Although I thought the ending was a bit gratuitous.
Rating:
Summary: powerful and haunting
Review: I saw this movie a while back and then remembered it again and decided it was time to rent it once more. When I did, I saw so many things I've never seen the first time I had viewed it. This film makes me feel for every character, especially Milly. I rent this movie at least once a month honestly. That is how much I love it. You learn lessons watching the way the characters interact with one another, and its moral outcome. It is almost like an adult fable, but not to an extent of happy endings. Speaking of endings, the movie's end is very powerful and melancholy. The way the man gazed off in a silence is haunting. Above all, I truly recomend this film to anyone that would like to see a serious, dramatic perfomance by these three main characters.
Rating:
Summary: Dove flies off with you!
Review: I saw this movie in the theater and was entranced. Seldom is there a film so beautiful to see with substance as well.
Excellent on all levels. I highly recommend it to anyone who appreciates good literature as well as a good movie.
Rating:
Summary: A heartbreaking tragedy of true friendship
Review: I seem to have a different take on this movie than most people. The three main characters--a working class journalist, a young woman who has been raised by her well-to-do aunt, and a wealthy heiress--find themselves involved in a tragic love triangle. All three members of the triangle, in my view, deeply love one another. Circumstances force the three to adopt a plan which, on the surface, seems unspeakably corrupt. The plan requires the three to pretend that they all love each other. And when they carry out the plan, they discover that there has been no deception: all three really do love each other to the depths of their souls. I don't want to reveal the precise ending of the movie, but let me say that the real tragedy comes when the characters stop letting love guide their actions and instead allow guilt to rule the day. Very very very few movies make my cry, but this was one of them. This was a true tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.
Rating: 
Summary: Miramax: ever hear of anamorphic?
Review: I'd like to review this film, but Miramax (and others) are still polluting the market with non-anamorphic transfers. The single star is for that bone-headedness. The film may deserve 5 stars for all I know.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful Movie
Review: If you are looking for a sappy love story with a happy ending, find another movie. The story was heartbreaking, the costumes wonderful, and the setting breathtaking. I'm going to search for the soundtrack as soon as I finish writing this review.
|
