Jane Eyre (2011). from BBC Films. 2 hours and 1 minute. Don't bother, particularly if you've watched other Jane Eyre television and movie versions. Nothing new here, and so flat and tasteless as to make cardbored (stet). Does it need to be added that the hair of the actress playing Jane is much too light -- nearly blonde! -- and she's much too pretty?Not that matters in the least. If ever there was a work that deals in emotions it was Jane Eyre. This version is a sketch of the book with no emotion, no detail, no point.
The very much shorter than the previous ones, season 4 of Larkrise to Candleford was an acceptable way to escape stresses. It's good there will be no more though. Since Brendan Coyle, Laura's father, left to become Lord Grantham's valet at Downton Abbey, one of the primary hearts of the series was absent. The couplings at the end were not entirely satisfactory. Am I wrong? Aren't Alf and flighty, silly Minnie a bad match for each other, even with impulsive, loose-moraled Caroline home from the prison house? Alf's marrying Minnie, and you know the babies will come 1-2-3-4-5-6. Minnie has never shown the slightest talent for managing -- anything. Alf refused a really good position training crews to handle the new steam harvest machine for the big landowners in favor of a'staying on the land,' the land that isn't his and belongs to the Big Landowner investing in the steam harvest machine and harvest crews. How long does Alf think he's going to stay on that land harvesting by scythe? He'll be forced into joining one of those seasonal crews in the end, for far smaller pay, rather than this offered high-paying full-time position, with future advancement certain.
Ah well, Alf will be dead in a few years in the trenches of WWI. Minnie and all those kids will beg in the streets until Dorcas Lane takes them all on because she's grieving the loss of her adopted son, Sydney, who went to war as a surgeon and died of some horrid disease. Dorcas, having lost the post office and the forge to progress welcomes the chance of occupation -- and Minnie's grateful servitude, as Dorcas's income is severely reduced.
However, the bright spot is charmed Laura. Her young man, the newspaper publisher, editor and journalist, now husband, will probably not die in WWI, but he will risk his life reporting from the fronts, loving every minute of it. In that time Laura will manage to squeeze out a novel between two pregnancies, which will have a mild success, will not be able to have the time to write again for herself until her middle-age, when she writes her memoir of growing up in a world that no longer exists. This sells in numbers beyond anyone's expectations or dreams. After the death of Daniel and Laura, their children learn that during the war their father had a passionate liaison with a French dressmaker. Laura and Daniel's youngest daughter is determined to find the sister she never knew she had, born out of her father's Great Adventure. Life goes on.
El V's had a wonderful, profitable, productive (of more work) time in Colombia. He gets home tonight about 1 AM. I so glad. I missed the fellow, though I myself was far more productive alone these last 8 days. I wrote a lot of pages, by golly. Still, I'm so glad he's on the way home.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment