InformationRap
This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.
Juana
what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.
tedg
I am usually offended, retroactively offended by Ivory - Jhabvala films. They have a quiet, deep consistency that draws respect the same way a cathedral does. But the uncomplicated emotional links and the sentimental world in which they exist gets to me, and taints dreams for days afterward.Good news. Here is that same hushed god of relationships and presentation, but it is turned on the process of film-making itself. This isn't the complex, multiply nested structure of "Vanya on 42nd Street," but it is similar.In the film, the main arc is two "films" competing with each other to exist. One is the sort of slick, attractive think that is now synonymous with Merchant-Ivory. The other is something more intuitive, emotional, experimental. These two film realities become characters in themselves, resolving in just the same way we would later see the characters in "Remains."The "slick" one is pretty and connects with presentation values we can understand. It is backed by the establishment that finances "art," and thus wins in the contest. Along the way, the worst features of both are highlighted.The "gritty one" requires obedience to a cult, destruction of marriages, ruining of souls and penury. But it transcends and makes one whole. The nicety nice one is a matter of effete conspiracy and Brahman tastes. Needless to say, as we follow writer Jhabvala and her two collaborators, the nicety nice wins, as it does here. And at the same cost.The actors who provide surrogates for these two are lovers who have fallen out. When together, they confuse performance with life. There is a third way, shown by the lost husband of Sean Young's character. His acting has no pretension to art; it is neither ambitious nor pretty, simply entertaining.The device around which this revolves — the script for the competing plays — is a lost manuscript by Jane Austen. As if everything I have mentioned so far is not a sufficient fold of life on the film, this film comes from the acquisition of that same manuscript. You will recall that Austen could be said to have shaped the modern long form novel, based on her own fold: the parallel stories of people who are seriously motivated by the urges of the time overlain with observations on how arbitrary and silly those are. While Merchant, Ivory and Jhabvala are smart enough to know the costs of what they do, they decide anyway. Silly works.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.
laurel21000
Boring and annoying are two adjectives that spring to mind regarding this film. The only aspect that salvaged it from being completely unbearable was the presence of Anne Baxter.Until she appeared on screen it all just seemed to be a series of disjointed scenes bound only by a shared pretentiousness. And then, boom, there she was and suddenly the electromagnetic field changed.It was interesting to observe how powerful the presence of a single person can be. Because, in this case, Baxter brought a coherence to the film. With her appearance, the different elements seemed to fall into place. At least to a degree.I tried to figure out what it was about her that seemed to make this happen. Was it "star" quality? Was it a gravitas that came from her years of experience? Or did she, as opposed to the other actors here, perhaps resist the "direction" that was being given and merely follow her own course as far as interpreting her character. I don't know. I couldn't figure it out.The only other actor who created a real character as opposed to a caricature was Kurt Johnson who played Victor. And Sean Young was quite good.The others were giant clusters of affectations. Robert Powell who played Pierre was especially annoying. Granted his character was supposed to be so. But he was not interesting annoying. Just annoying annoying.
som1950
This very long1980 movie isn't the worst Merchant/Ivory/Jhabvala movie (that would be "Jefferson in Paris") but is numbingly dull even to an admirer of many of their movies. I'd assign blame mostly to Jhabvala's screenplay about two radically different troupes vying for the chance to première a (real) recently discovered play written at age twelve by Jane Austen. From what we see of it, Austen wasn't much of a playwright at age 12 (who is?!). Jhabvala imagines a charismatic experimentalist Svengali (Robert Powell) pitted against a socially well-connected aging actress whom he had used and abandoned earlier (Anne Baxter in her last big-screen role paying off the sins of Eve Harrington?). She wants to stage an operatic version. It defies plausibility that the experimentalist actors have operatic voices, but the audience has to simply accept that, while trying to care about any of the characters struggling to survive whimsical arts patronage. I could muster a bit of sympathy for Baxter, and more for the very handsome spurned husband played by Kurt Johnson, but couldn't care less about the "star" played by Sean Young (in her first screen role) or about which absurd production got supported and mounted off- Broadway.
sore_throat
First off I want to say that this is more of a drama with comedic overtones. The comedy is very subtle and dry. Of course, I'm not very familiar with Austen's work, so I'm certain that some of the jokes were completely over my head.This film is too flawed for me to recommend, but I wouldn't dismiss it either-you know the type. It is somewhat pretentious and at times incomprehensible. The pace is very slow; a trait which here works equally for and against it I think.What I did like was that, for a drama/comedy, it has a very weird vibe, almost dark at times. Or maybe it was just me.It all adds up to a film that was alternatingly boring and intriguing. I say only check this out if you like seeing something different and don't mind a slow pace. I would be interested in seeing what a Jane Austen fan thinks of this film.
