Critique of “Cranford”
In the US, PBS’s Masterpiece recently ended its season with the 3-part Cranford, based on three novels by Elizabeth Gaskell; she’s best known as a friend and biographer of Charlotte Bronte. Mo Ryan recommended Cranford, but I found it disappointing. It featured some great performances, especially from Dame Judi Dench and Imelda Staunton, but this tale of a matriarchal town too often used its female denizens as butts of jokes, many of them cruel. The treatment of men was quite negative. Many were thoughtless or bad: a man who discouraged his daughter from marrying, a drunken poacher, a prank-playing friend, a prodigal son who broke his mother’s heart, a brother who deserted his sisters without explanation, and was welcomed back without it. Two especially kind, honorable men were killed off abruptly. One man took a self-imposed exile to India. In all, the tone shifts were extreme, and there seemed to be an underlying misanthropy about it that put me off. Only the removed observer, Mary, seemed immune to trouble.
Was anyone else aloof to the charm of Cranford, or am I a curmudgeon? I’ve recorded two other Masterpiece movies from earlier in the season, My Boy Jack and A Room with a View. Did anyone watch these, and what did you think? I’m hesitant to spend time on them after investing five hours in Cranford.
May 28th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
My Boy Jack was interesting, if a bit predictable. If Daniel Radcliffe can get Harry Potter behind him, he might actually end up as a pretty good actor. Room With a View? Skip it, and rent the old Merchant Ivory version instead. This new one wasn’t worth the time.
May 30th, 2008 at 10:07 am
If you do happen to see “Room With A View” - (or if Lisa is willing), would you please explain it to me?
My wife and I watched it YEARS ago (the Merchant Ivory version that was mentioned above), and all I can recall is a complete sense of boredom.
June 1st, 2008 at 8:48 pm
I left My Boy Jack and deleted the new Room w/a View. W, here’s what Timeout, my favorite film guide, has to say about the Merchant Ivory, since all I can conjure up is an image of bluebells:
Hard on the heels of David Lean’s grandiose, touristic version of EM Forster’s A Passage to India, the Merchant/Ivory/Jhabvala team get the scale of Forster’s vision down to its right size. The story of the awakening of young Lucy (Bonham Carter), thanks to the liberating effect of the Tuscan countryside and the Latin temperament, is translated with perfect judgment, with the only lapses occurring over Forster’s wry sense of humour. His satiric judgments can too often become arch: the ‘grotesquely’ illustrated intertitles here are a miscalculation of this order. None the less, in line with Forster’s dicta on ‘fully rounded characters’, there is a fine gallery here; and the ‘tea tabling’ effect of the Home Counties upon grand emotion, from an era when dynastic families could topple over a single kiss, is mapped out with perfect precision. Decent, honest, truthful and, dearest of all to Forster, it connects.