Tag: Literary adaptations

My Cousin Rachel (2017)

Rachel Weisz and Sam Claflin in a dance of romance and suspicion in My Cousin Rachel

Director: Roger Michell

Cast: Rachel Weisz (Rachel Ashley), Sam Claflin (Philip Ashley), Iain Glen (Nick Kendall), Holliday Grainger (Louise Kendall), Simon Russell Beale (Court), Pierfrancesca Favino (Enrico Rainaldi), Andrew Havill (Parson Pascoe), Andrew Knott (Joshua)

Did she? Didn’t she? That’s the key phrase this deliberately ambiguous film returns to again and again. Is Cousin Rachel a serial schemer, seductress and possible murderer? Or is she just – well I guess just really unlucky? It’s a difficult line to tread –ambiguity is extremely challenging to bring to film, as it’s a medium that’s pretty decisive in what it shows us first-hand. But My Cousin Rachel pulls this off with a creepy aplomb.

At some point in the 1830s, Philip Ashley (Sam Claflin) receives a letter from his cousin and guardian Ambrose, who has recently passed away in Italy. The letter obliquely accuses Ambrose’s wife, his cousin Rachel (Rachel Weisz), whom Philip has never met, of poisoning Ambrose. As Ambrose died before he could prepare a new will, Philip inherits his estate – but still harbours a rage against Rachel, suspecting her of murder. However, when Rachel comes to stay with him, Philip finds himself increasingly drawn towards, and besotted with, her.

Roger Michell gracefully directs and writes this intriguing little mood piece, a fine chamber-piece thriller. With an unsettlingly lyrical score and shot with a beautiful eye for the Cornish countryside, My Cousin Rachel not only grips, but rings true with anyone who has either (a) fallen blindly in love, (b) suffered from romantic obsession or (c) been paralysed with jealousy. Which is probably just about everyone.

The film relies for its success largely on Rachel Weisz’s exceptionally intelligent and thoughtful performance as Rachel. She looks perfect for the role – she’s both the sort of woman men would fall wildly in love with, and old enough to settle into an unsettling, semi-incestuous flirtation with Philip. Her performance works because Weisz plays the part with exceptional skill, never tipping the wink to the audience, but skilfully modulating and adjusting her performance with every scene so that you remain as uncertain about her actions and motives as anyone else.

Apparently Weisz made her own mind up on Rachel’s guilt and innocence, but never told Michell or Claflin. Intriguing to think that while they shot scenes of domesticity or passion, that only one of those involved really knows what’s happening – a mood that totally carries across to the viewer. Weisz plays the part with complete strength of conviction and straightness – every scene is played as if the feelings in it were completely true and bereft of manipulation. She makes it unreadable, while having a face overflowing with emotion and feeling. Does she understand Philips feelings early and manipulate him? Or does she genuinely not expect his romantic intentions?

Michell skilfully shows how Rachel wins over people with ease. Even the dogs immediately gravitate towards her. Parson Parscoe and his family flock around her. Philip’s servants smarten themselves up and make every effort to make a good impression on her. His godfather Nick seems to oscillate continually in his judgement of her, but even he seems powerless in her presence. The camera carefully hovers and focuses in on Rachel, with many shots focusing on her face alone – seducing us as much as the rest of the characters. We almost never see her except in scenes with Philip – so we have the same information as he does for making our minds up.

Sam Claflin is equally key to the film as Philip. In many ways Philip is quite the whiny teenager – you could easily dismiss him as a romantic young idiot, an obsessive would-be Romeo, who makes a series of terrible decisions through listening to his penis rather than his head. But despite that –/ perhaps because his errors and mistakes seem so universal – it’s easy to sympathise with him. Rather than want to slap him anger, you want to do so in frustration – “don’t do that, you idiot!” Michell and Claflin play his increasing disintegration brilliantly. Is it poison? Or is it his increasing jealousy and obsession unhinging him? Who hasn’t been involved in an unequal romantic obsession?

It’s not a perfect film. Philip’s obsession with Rachel is alarmingly sudden – perhaps too sudden. Towards the end, Michell becomes slightly too enamoured with mystery – a final, lingering shot introduces an element of uncertainty about a character we have never had cause to suspect, which feels like a little too much. At times the lingering camera seems to be trying to suggest more in the performance than Weisz seems willing to give away.

But these are quibbles. The film is well-directed and filmed, and terrifically acted – Glen and Grainger are very good in key supporting roles – but it’s a triumph for Rachel Weisz. Weisz seems like an actor it’s easy to overlook, maybe because she has never quite got the star vehicles her talent matches – but this film is a clear reminder that, at her best, she is an extremely gifted performer.

The Deadly Affair (1966)

James Mason deals with marital and professional deception and betrayal in spy thriller The Deadly Affair (in every meaning of the word!)

Director: Sidney Lumet

Cast: James Mason (Charles Dobbs), Maximilian Schell (Dieter Frey), Harriet Andersson (Ann Dobbs), Harry Andrews (Inspector Mendel), Simeone Signoret (Elsa Fennan), Kenneth Haigh (Bill Appleby), Roy Kinnear (Adam Scarr), Max Adrian (Adviser), Lynn Redgrave (Virgin), Robert Flemyng (Samuel Fennan), Corin Redgrave (David)

The Deadly Affair is a faithful adaptation of John Le Carré’s first novel, Call for the Dead, that first introduced to both Le Carré’s distinctive vision of espionage (a world where spying is a dirty, depressing business, miles away from Bond), and also his principal recurring hero George Smiley – although Smiley here is renamed Charles Dobbs (Paramount held the rights to several recurring Le Carré characters as it was making The Spy Who Came in From the Cold). The Deadly Affair often gets forgotten in the list of Le Carré films, which is unfair – this is a fine, gripping, character-led thriller.

Charles Dobbs (James Mason), a senior case officer in British intelligence, meets with Samuel Fennan (Robert Flemyng): a civil servant in the Ministry of Defence, who has been anonymously accused of being a Russian agent. Dobbs all but agrees to clear Fennan in a friendly meeting – only for Fennan to go home and commit suicide. Dobbs investigates, but quickly finds that the facts – and the story of Fennan’s wife Elsa (Simone Signoret) – don’t seem to tie up. Working with retired police inspector Mendel (Harry Andrews), Dobbs investigates further – against the wishes of his superiors. This also helps to distract Dobbs from his disastrous home life with his serially unfaithful wife Ann (Harriet Andersson) and her growing closeness to his old war friend Dieter Frey (Maximilian Schell).

The Deadly Affairhas an old-school, unflashy, Hollywood professionalism to it, very smoothly directed by Sidney Lumet. Lumet and photographer Frederick A. Young slightly exposed each shot of the film to give the colours a drained, murky quality, which works extraordinarily well for the grimy Le Carré feeling. Lumet uses a series of careful POV and shot-reverse-shots to involve the audience neatly in the action – we are nearly always seeing events from someone’s perspective, and this helps us empathise with the characters and action. He also uses London locations expertly – everywhere is carefully chosen and shot for maximum impact, creating a world of dingy backstreets that perfectly matches the feeling of the story.

It also helps that Lumet changes very little from what was already an excellent source novel. It’s an intricate “whodunnit” puzzle, twisty and challenging enough to keep the audience guessing. What the film does really well is introduce Dobbs’ wife Ann as a central character in the storyline, and to make marital betrayal and deception a complementary subplot, alongside Dobbs’ involvement in the world of professional bluff and counter-bluff: during the day he practises the very same deception that pains him so much at home. (Le Carré would effectively lift some of the ideas of this film adaptation and reproduce them in later books, most especially Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy.)

This marital disharmony becomes a key theme in the movie – two people who are totally reliant on each other but can’t seem to stop hurting each other. Ann is in many ways the hellish wife – serially unfaithful and largely unrepentant – but Dobbs is equally difficult, unnervingly patient and silently (but never vocally or perhaps even consciously) judgemental. They have a complex arrangement, but also a clear understanding of each other, and their conversations sound like careful, familiar routines. Like a scab, Dobbs keeps picking at this wound of his wife’s infidelity – early in the film he returns home after a late call out to find his wife naked in bed. She rises to greet him provocatively, and they kiss, but Dobbs seemingly can’t let go of his own sense of impotence. Later Ann demands Dobbs expresses some rage and jealousy – as if looking for him to show some sort of feeling.

It’s a neat sub-plot for a film that focuses on a series of major personal and professional betrayals – I counted no fewer than five over the course of the film but there are probably more depending on how you define it – and which shows how spying can become wrapped up in personal affairs. Despite Dobbs’ apparent pride at treating his work with a determined coolness, everything is so very personal in this film. Characters react often with emotions rather than cool rational thinking – with the exception of one character who uses the emotions of others very rationally to manipulate them. Even the final confrontation of the film has a sad loss of emotional control at the centre of it – and leads to actions bitterly regretted by the survivors.

James Mason is very good as Dobbs, buttoned-up but slightly run-down, a man who presents a face of calm control and wisdom to the world, but at home is an insecure, deeply pained, impotent mess. Determined and principled in the world of espionage, he is hopelessly in love with his wife, to the extent of practically allowing her free rein to do as she wishes. Despite being in nearly every scene, it’s also a very generous performance, quiet and unshowy, that often cedes the scene to his partners. Harriet Andersson (though clearly dubbed) manages to make Ann someone who feels sympathetic and understandable – even though she is a colossal pain.

Lumet also gets some wonderful performances from the rest of the cast, not least from Harry Andrews who I think steals the movie as a narcoleptic Inspector Mendel, obsessed with facts and possessed of a dry professionalism. The film also gives a gift of a role to Simeone Signoret, a woman with a troubled past and indeterminate motives, bubbling with guilt and resentment. She is given no less than three tour-de-force scenes (one played almost in complete silence) and plays each brilliantly. There are neat cameos as well from Max Adrian (as a campy popinjay running Dobbs’ department) and Lynn Redgrave as an eager stagehand for an amateur theatre company with some vital evidence.

The film’s conclusion revolves around two masterfully done sequences: one during a performance of Edward II (by the real Royal Shakespeare Company – spot several familiar actors on stage), the second an emotional confrontation at a dock that erupts into violence. It’s a wonderful dwelling on betrayal and its impacts. It also works an absolute treat as a low-key counterpart to Bond at his Swinging Sixties height, while still packing a jazzy score from Quincy Jones (which at first seems completely incongruous but actually helps to establish the mood really well). Directed with professional assurance with a host of fine performances – it’s a little bit of an overlooked gem.

Macbeth (1971)

Francesca Annis and Jon Finch as the murderous Macbeth’s in Polanski’s dark Shakespearean adaptation

Director: Roman Polanski

Cast: Jon Finch (Macbeth), Francesca Annis (Lady Macbeth), Martin Shaw (Banquo), Terence Bayler (Macduff), John Stride (Ross), Nicholas Selby (King Duncan), Stephen Chase (Malcolm), Paul Shelley (Donalbain), Richard Pearson (Doctor), Diane Fletcher (Lady Macduff)

Roman Polanski is always going to be a controversial figure. If he wasn’t also a gifted film maker, his reputation would be even lower than it is. His life has been a parade of misfortunes and misdemeanours. Macbeth was filmed a few years after his wife, Sharon Tate, was brutally murdered by Charles Manson. Hard not to read something into the director’s decision to film Shakespeare’s most infamous murderer. Certainly it was hard for reviewers at the time to disconnect the two. Throw in the fact that the film was made by Playboy Productions’ short lived film-making arm (with Hugh Hefner as Executive Producer) and you’ve got a film ripe for a poor reputation.

However, Macbethis actually a dynamic, well-filmed, surprisingly textually savvy production of this shortest and most intense of Shakespeare’s tragedies. While there is no doubt that this very much Polanski’s personal vision of Macbeth, it’s a fascinatingly dark, grim and horror-inflected production that really gets to grips with the darkness at the play’s heart – and also with the slightly empty, little-boy-lost quality in Macbeth himself (until then a character seen on screen largely as the brooding thane, laid low by his evil wife).

Polanski’s Macbethtakes place in a world where violence is second nature, life is cheap and grim slaughter is around every corner. One of the first acts we see is a soldier checking bodies on the battlefield. Finding a wounded soldier, he breaks his spine with two sickening blows from a flail. That’s just a precursor for the violent mood that will follow. Mangled bodies and bleeding corpses constantly appear, from Duncan’s guards to the twisted corpses of the Macduff children. Even when relaxing at the court, the Macbeths set up a bear baiting (kept off-screen) – the bear’s corpse (along with a few dogs) is later dragged through the palace corridors, leaving a trail of blood.

Polanski’s Scotland is a savage, medieval, uncivilised place. Macbeth’s castle is a more like an elaborate farm, with wooden huts and mud-stained floors, than a mighty fortress. Every character looks swarthy, run-down and dirty. Colour has been drained out of the film in favour of muted greys and browns. There is precious little hope here, just a terrible onslaught of violence and murder that never seems to stop.

The brutality is constant, and Macbeth is up to his arms in it. Even the murder of Duncan doesn’t pass off without a hitch – the King awakens and has to be dispatched with panicked desperation. Banquo is finished off with a sickening axe thud in the back, his body dropping lifelessly into a stream. Even Macbeth’s faithful factotum Seyton is brutally lynched while trying to prevent his soldiers from deserting Dunsinane. The assault on the Macduff family is hideous in its fierceness: the house is burnt down, the servants (and its implied Lady Macduff) raped, while the children are brutally murdered (thankfully off-screen in most cases). It’s a harrowing slaughter that brings to mind World War II atrocities – and of course Polanski’s own recent tragedy.

In this world, Macbeth is intriguingly presented as far less of a noble poetic hero than audiences at the time would have expected. Jon Finch’s Thane is low-key and lost, a puppet in the events happening around him. He’s almost like a slightly at-sea kid, who’s stumbled into power and has no idea what to do with it. His poetic soul is revealed as flashes of inspiration in an otherwise empty man. With many of the speeches internalised in voice-over, Macbeth’s sound and fury is deliberately toned down – by the end he seems weary and finished in a way few other Macbeths feel. His isolation throughout the play is complete – he’s incapable of relating to other people.

Similarly, Francesca Annis presents a fresher view of Lady Macbeth than a cartoon villain. While clearly still alluring (there was much controversial, Playboy-related, buzz to her famous naked sleepwalking scene) she’s equally as adrift as Macbeth is, totally unprepared for the psychological impact of murder. Excited and perhaps even a bit turned on by power, she falls apart as the impact of her actions grabs hold – it seems to be happening from the very start, her swooning when seeing the corpses of Duncan’s guards seems genuine rather than forced. Polanski even places her suicide on screen – her despairing leap accompanied by screams of terror from her waiting women.

In this grim world, there is a paganish, primitive feeling. Macbeth is crowned in a strange ceremony that involves him standing bare foot on the stone of scone. The Thane of Cawdor is executed by being hung by a metal chain (he defiantly jumps from the battlements rather than being pushed) while the court stares on. The witches are a crazed harem of naked women of all ages, engaged in bizarre, sadistic ceremonies in a secret subterranean den. The opening shot of the film uses a bright, bleached yellow sun that seems to stretch over a desolate coast-line, where the witches are burying a human hand clutching a dagger. Macbeth’s visions are a series of surreal and disturbing images, while Banquo’s ghost is an increasingly bloody and terrifying image as the scene progresses. There is a sense of strange powers hanging over everything.

And maybe that power is fate. This is also a fatalistic film, which runs with the theory that Shakespeare’s tragedies are almost circular in nature (very much inspired by Polish writer Jan Kott in his excellent book Shakespeare: Our Contemporary) with fate as a machine that traps people into an endless cycle of repetition. This feeling runs throughout Macbeth’s increasingly fatalistic disengagement with the world – the (excellent) sword fights at the end even see him fight with a certainty in advance of the results. The cyclical nature of this world is hammered home at the end, as Donalbain sneaks away from the celebrations of Malcolm’s crowning to consult with the witches in their hovel – hold onto your horses, the cycle is all set to begin again.

The film is also creative in its use of Shakespeare, in particular in its expansion of the character of Ross. Polanski and his co-screenwriter, famed theatre critic Ken Tynan, again followed Kott’s theories by repositioning Ross as the ultimate political opportunist. Helped by John Stride’s expressive performance, Ross is a constant figure of vileness, allying himself eagerly with whoever is on the rise. Ross assists in the murder of Banquo, murders the murderers and aids the destruction of the Macduff family. Overlooked for a chain of office in favour of Seyton, he swiftly reverses his stance and flies to Malcolm (much to Macbeth’s later fury) and then loudly leads the cheers for Malcolm’s crowning. It’s a neat side story, done with camera asides and no dialogue changes, but it adds a lot of interest to the film.

Macbeth ends with a gruelling beheading of Macbeth – and stylish angles gives the impression that we are experiencing Macbeth’s final moments of consciousness as his head is passed around Malcolm’s soldiers. It’s a neat way to end a violent and dark production of the play, shot through with Polanski’s personal awareness of the darkness of the human soul. The film sometimes loses its pace a little bit, and most of the performances leave very little impression – there is a reason why virtually no one in this film had a really established film career. Even the language of Shakespeare isn’t central here: it’s the experience of a brutal, dark and grim world that matters. It’s the images and visuals that stand out. It’s very much Polanski’s Macbeth.

The Day of the Jackal (1973)

Edward Fox takes aim as suave assassin The Jackal

Director: Fred Zinnemann

Cast: Edward Fox (The Jackal), Michel Lonsdale (Deputy Commissioner Claude Lebel), Terence Alexander (Lloyd), Michael Auclair (Colonel Rolland), Alan Badel (The Minister), Tony Britton (Inspector Thomas), Denis Carey (Casson), Cyril Cusack (Gunsmith), Maurice Denham (General Colbert), Olga Georges-Picot (Denise), Barrie Ingham (St. Clair), Derek Jacobi (Caron), Jean Martin (Wolenski), Ronald Pickup (Forger), Anton Rodgers (Bernard), Delphine Seyrig (Colette de Montpellier), Donald Sinden (Mallinson), Timothy West (Commissioner Berthier)

The definition of lazy criticism is to say a story doesn’t work because we know the outcome. If that was the case, no production of Hamlet would ever work, and no adaptation of a best-selling book would ever find favour with an audience. We’d be bored by films based on history and we’d be even more indifferent to the hundreds of films made every year that follow accepted narrative structures. What makes a film compelling is often not the destination, but the journey. How do we get there? What do we learn? How does it make us feel? All of these things are keenly observed throughout Fred Zinnemann’s masterful adaptation of The Day of the Jackal.

The year is 1962 and the French President Charles de Gaulle is blamed by many for weakening France by granting independence to Algeria. The Organisation Armée Secrète (OAS) hire an English professional assassin known only as The Jackal (Edward Fox) to assassinate De Gaulle. When word of the target leaks to the panicked French Government, Commissioner Claude Lebel (Michael Lonsdale) is given an impossible task – identify a man of whom the government knows nothing and stop him from carrying out a plan only he knows the details of. Meanwhile, the Jackal relentlessly goes about his meticulous planning.

So anyone with passing familiarity with history will know that de Gaulle was not assassinated in the early 60s. Watching The Day of the Jackal, you know that the Jackal will fail. But that’s not the point of the film. Instead it’s a masterful, streamlined thriller that completely understands how much we can invest in watching someone go about a job with calm, cool professionalism. It’s the ingenuity and meticulousness that makes the film compelling, the way each angle of the Jackal’s plan is carefully considered and information slowly delivered to the audience. In some areas we are a couple of steps ahead of Lebel’s search. In others we are as far behind as he is: we may know the weapon and the Jackal’s secret identities, but we know as little about his final plan as Lebel does – it’s only when it’s revealed that all the pieces we’ve seen make perfect sense.

It’s a film that has been assembled with all the grace and skill of a master clockmaker. Zinnemann’s direction and Kenneth Ross’ taut screenplay make every second count. There isn’t a single piece of flab on the bones of this movie, every scene carries a piece of vital information that contributes to the overall picture. Zinnemann sprinkles the film with careful passing shots of calendars and clocks, making the sense of a countdown towards the Jackal’s strike hang intimidatingly over the whole film. The film is gripping, right from its opening reconstruction of the almost-successful OAS assassination attempt on De Gaulle in 1962. Everything feels perfectly interlinked and connected, each scene brilliantly builds on top of the ones before.

This is quite simply an unshakeably brilliant engine of a film, a relentless ride with tension and excitement dripping from every frame. It’s not afraid to be cruel or dangerous – and some of the victims are truly blameless – and it’s not afraid to show that violence and cruelty are weapons as much for the authorities as the Jackal (the cruellest act, after all, is committed by the French Army on poor loyal Wawlinski).

A large part of the success of the film rests on Edward Fox’s performance in the lead. Fox gives the Jackal an unshakeable, public-school, confidence, an attractive resolve that sees him meet every obstacle with a cool elán, resolutely unperplexed by anything that he encounters. Fox’s superb performance succeeds in making you engage with (and even root for) a man who is a cold-blooded professional killer, who commits murder (when provoked) without hesitation. How does this happen? Again it’s his efficiency, his expertise. The film totally understands how engrossing watching talented people go about their work can be.

The film makes the minutia of setting up an operation immensely compelling. In careful detail, we see exactly how the Jackal goes about getting a false passport from the authorities. How he scopes out a potential place to conduct the assassination. His careful preparation of disguises and fake identities. In one gloriously done scene, we see him practise using his specially constructed rifle on a melon at a huge range. Carefully he takes a series of shots at the melon, adjusting the sight each time to make the weapon as accurate as possible. The scene is a showcase for the Jackal’s meticulous professionalism (you can see why the producers were outraged when the scene was cut from a TV screening in the 1980s – it’s practically a highlight of the movie).

Similar investment, however, is made in the detailed footwork involved in tracing and detecting the Jackal by the French and English police. Michael Lonsdale is a perfect foil for Fox’s urbane cool, with his dour, grey, crumpled Label, a man selected somewhat unwillingly for a mission but who slowly reveals the cool head and nerves of steel that made him perfect for the job. The police-work used to try and close the net on the Jackal is as intricate as the hitman’s own work – careful plodding through files and methodical calculation and educated guesswork. It’s as far from the rush and tumble of Hollywood as you can imagine – but somehow, because it feels so real, every discovery against the odds by the authorities becomes hard-won and exciting. The sense of a net being skilfully built also serves to make the Jackal’s skilful evasion of each trap all the more compelling.

And the tense race against time lasts for the whole of the film. The film brilliantly keeps this cat-and-mouse game alive, with the police and the Jackal constantly leap-frogging each other to stay one step ahead. Each move and counter-move has all the intricacy of a chess game. There are enough twists and turns to keep every audience member gripped. The eventual assassination attempt itself is built up to beautifully – a wordless, tense but brilliantly assembled montage of liberation day celebrations keeps both the police and the audience on their toes as to where the Jackal will strike from. The finale of the film turns on a twist of fate that is simply a brilliant coup de theatre. There is even a droll little coda that deepens the mystery of the Jackal even further.

Zinnemann’s direction throughout is flawless – calm, measured and methodical, and never allowing flash or bombast to drown out events. It’s helped as well by the wonderful cast of actors – a real who’s-who of British and French character actor talent, with Alan Badel’s smooth Interior Minister, Eric Porter’s cool but fanatic OAS leader, Cyril Cusack’s quiet gunsmith and Derek Jacobi’s eager young detective particular standouts. I also have a lot of time for Olga Georges-Picot’s quietly moving performance of a woman pushed to extreme actions by grief.

The Day of the Jackal is another of those near perfect movies. Everything it sets out to do it does perfectly, and it rewards constant viewing. It’s got some terrific unflashy performances and is a perfect demonstration of why professionalism and expertise can be so engrossing. It wraps this up into a deliciously tense confection, where every scene bubbles with undercurrents of drama and danger. There is not an off-beat – instead it’s a brilliant piece of pulp cinema that transcends itself into being something truly adept and dramatic. You can’t take your eyes off it for a second. I don’t hesitate for a second in saying it’s one my favourite thrillers.

The Circle (2017)

Emma Watson struggles against the surveillance state in shockingly bad adaptation The Circle

Director: James Ponsoldt

Cast: Mae Holland (Emma Watson), Tom Hanks (Eamon Bailey), John Boyega (Ty Lafitte/Kalden), Karen Gillan (Annie Allerton), Ellar Coltrane (Mercer), Patton Oswalt (Tom Stenton), Bill Paxton (Vinnie Holland), Glenne Headly (Bonnie Holland)

Is there anything sadder than seeing a book you thought was fantastic get totally screwed up by film producers? Worst of all, Dave Eggers, the book’s author, even gets a screenwriting credit here. I hope to God his contribution was a rejected earlier draft, rather than the bland, aimless drivel on display here. It would be too depressing to think he gutted his own work and then mutilated its corpse.

Mae (Emma Watson) is thrilled to land a job at The Circle, an all-powerful, Google-style corporation with a virtual monopoly over the internet. However, she discovers while she works at the Circle that there are (of course!) dark secrets at the heart of the company, and that its charismatic CEO Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks) may not be all that he seems.

Imagine an adaptation of 1984 at the end of which Winston Smith defeats Big Brother but decides there are positive sides to living under a dictatorship, so carries on doing so. That’s exactly as ballsed-up as this total misreading of Egger’s gripping critique of our internet age. In this terrible adaptation, the novel is neutered beyond recognition into just another bland “Big Corporations Acting All Corporation-y” nonsense. The film is pretty much exactly as awful as the book is brilliant.

Where did it all go so completely and utterly wrong? Did they not understand the book? The novel is not only a critique of the pervasive power of its shady Google-like organisation. It’s also a savage attack on our own tweeting, social media obsessed world – the sort of world where private actions are theft as they rob everyone else from experiencing them vicariously through tweets, photos and posts. It’s this part of the story the film completely (and almost wilfully) misses the point of.

They seem terrified at the thought that the social media Twitteratti might take against the film if it too openly attacks the actual users of systems like this, with their (at times) shallow, demanding and entitled pushing of their own opinions, and intrusions into others’ lives. Instead the film gives a complete pass to all the users of the systems, while attacking the corporation providing them. So we get the bizarre set up of a film that seems to say it’s totally fine for normal people to record everything and push it all onto the internet, turning their world into a judgemental surveillance state, but it’s evil for a corporation to create the devices they use to do it.

Even the film’s criticism of corporations isn’t very clear, largely because we never get a sense of the Circle’s power and its hunger for getting more and more control. The film throws away its involvement in politics and its control over everyday lives. Perhaps because it knows so many of the viewership love gadgets, there is no exploration of the creepy, controlling aspect of the many tracking and recording devices the Circlers wear throughout the film, as there is in the novel. Instead the target is the shady business people at the top (not that we learn anything about what they want) because everyone hates businessmen don’t they? Nice easy target. I can tweet my loathing of them very easily.

It’s a film devoid of any challenge. A character’s suicide from the book is changed to an accidental death. The more vulnerable and desperate of the characters from the book have been deleted. The obsessive self-definition the Circlers gain from what other people tweet about them is downplayed. The ending of the film completely inverts the novel, and leaves us with a bizarre final image of our hero kayaking on the lake, but warmly smiling at the drones watching her, even after she has destroyed the “villains” who run them. It makes no sense whatsoever. My jaw literally dropped when this happened by the way.

Mae is a character who now has no consistency. Her growing obsession with the power of social media – and the destructive effect it has on her actual human relationships – is completely ignored. It’s the key part of her character from the book, and its removed here to try her as traditionally ‘likeable’ as possible. An anti-hero becomes a flat out hero. The film shows the impact of actions she carries out in the book – particularly on Annie – but removes these actions from the film. Why do people slip into depression or depart from the film? Who knows. Left with nothing to work with from the original book, Emma Watson gives a bland and forgettable performance. No one else really makes an impact, playing dull, neutered versions of the characters from the source material, devoid of depth or interest.

The Circle might be one of the worst literary adaptations I’ve ever seen. It guts the original book and removes any of the most challenging and interesting content. It’s terrified of criticising in any way anyone who might be watching. It’s a satire on the social media age that has no satire in it, and is desperate not to talk about social media. Worst of all it will discourage people from reading the original novel. In the words of the modern age: #uttershit.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994)

Kenneth Branagh struggles to bring Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to life

Director: Kenneth Branagh

Cast: Robert De Niro (The Creature), Kenneth Branagh (Victor Frankenstein), Tom Hulce (Henry Clerval), Helena Bonham Carter (Elizabeth), Ian Holm (Baron Frankenstein), John Cleese (Professor Waldman), Aidan Quinn (Captain Robert Walton), Richard Briers (Grandfather), Robert Hardy (Professor Krempe), Trevyn McDowell (Justine Moritz), Celia Imrie (Mrs Mortiz), Cherie Lunghi (Caroline Frankenstein)

In 1994 Kenneth Branagh was the heir of Laurence Olivier: a man who could act, direct and produce, who never had a false step, whose every film was a success. In other words he was ripe for a kicking, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was the stick used to beat him. It was practically the founding text of “Branagh-bashing”, for a time one of the favourite sports of the British press.

Victor Frankenstein (Kenneth Branagh) grows up obsessed with defeating death, traumatised by the death of his mother. Training as a doctor in Vienna, after the murder of his mentor Professor Waldmann (an effectively serious John Cleese), he uses the body of the murderer to create the Creature (Robert De Niro) – but, horrified by what he has created, he flees home to Geneva. While the Creature comes to terms with being an outcast, Victor marries his sweetheart Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter) – only for her to become a target when the Creature vows revenge.

Okay the good stuff about this film: the production design is terrific, the Frankenstein house in particular a marvellous set. It’s also a very faithful adaptation, pretty much following the book (apart from a late, horribly melodramatic “Bride of Frankenstein” sequence). Branagh gets some affecting moments out of the film, particularly in the calmer moments – De Niro gives an interesting performance and the retention of the Walton framing device in the Arctic is well done. There is a good film in here. But it’s buried completely under the overblown shouting, swooping cameras and booming music that covers the rest of the film.

Contrary to his reputation as a purveyor of intricate Shakespeare adaptations, Branagh has always been a lover of big movies, who brings an operatic intensity to cinema. The problem is he goes too far here. This is at times so ridiculously overblown and frenetic in its tempo, you start to think Branagh is trying too hard, desperate to make a big budget smash. Wanting to make a big, gory, gothic horror film, he dials everything up to eleven, and the sturm und drang eventually becomes a tale full of sound and fury signifying nothing.

Interestingly, this intensity is particularly overbearing in the Frankenstein scenes, rather than those focusing on the Creature. Several scenes are filmed with the camera swooping round in circles over long intense takes, while the score thunders away. This principally happens in scenes of high emotion – the deaths of Frankenstein’s mother and his mentor Waldmann are both operatically overblown (in the latter Branagh literally cranes up and screams “No!”). Eventually it all becomes too much. You are crying out for everyone to take a breath and just deliver a line calmly.

Now I can see what Branagh is doing here. He’s looking to emulate the high-Gothic semi-camp of 1930s horror films. That’s the charitable explanation for why he spends the entire Creature-birthing scene running round topless (he must have spent ages on that chest), with Patrick Doyle’s score booming away, while the camera swoops and sweeps around him. Branagh is partly channelling Colin Clive’s mad scientist from James Whale (he even bellows “Live!” in pure Clive style twice in the film), but by going for overwhelming bombast in his performance, he misses out on making the character relatable. Now Victor is a selfish asshole of course, but we should at least relate to him a little bit: I’m not sure many people can in this film.

It’s a real shame because there is in fact, under the frantic editing and dizzying camerawork, a quieter, more intelligent film trying to get out. Branagh’s Frankenstein is a man deep in trauma about death, unable to cope with losing people, whose fear becomes a dangerous obsession. The romance between Victor and Helena Bonham Carter’s sweetly innocent Elizabeth has a lot of warmth (the chemistry is also excellent: no surprise to hear that the actors started a long term relationship on the set of this film). There are moments here meditating on life and death, but they constantly get lost in the next ridiculous bloody action scene, or explosion of overblown acting.

Similarly, De Niro mines a lot of confused sympathy from the Creature – probably because he seems the quieter and more “normal” person, for all his scars and acts of murder. The sequence with the Creature looking after the family of a blind man (a decent Richard Briers) sees De Niro mine a great deal of vulnerability and innocence from his situation. The contained camera work and restrained acting make these the finest scenes in the film, more memorable than any of the blood and guts that fill the final half hour.

De Niro and Briers: Your only chance to see Travis Bickle and Tom Good share a scene

And those blood and guts are a problem, because this is not a scary film. Not even one little bit. Instead it’s either ridiculous or juvenile – in a sequence where a character literally has their heart ripped out by the Creature, Branagh can’t resist not only having the Creature holding it up to the camera, but for the camera to jump to a close up of the heart literally beating in its hand. Not scary, not gross, just stupid and childish. At any points of tension we get the pounding music and running around and shouting like a Gothic Doctor Who. If only Branagh had taken a breath and treated the material more calmly and sensibly we could have ended up with something creepy and spooky, rather than garish.

It’s a real, real shame because honestly there are some good things in this movie. I’ve mentioned De Niro, but Tom Hulce is also terrific as Clerval and Bonham Carter very good as Elizabeth. There are moments of real class in the design and production – I’ve lambasted Patrick Doyle’s score a bit, but there are some very good tracks in here. The problem, much as it massively pains me to say it because I love him, is Branagh. His performance and direction is just too much: too giddy, too overblown, too frantic, too overwhelming. The film comes across less as a tribute to old style melodramatic horror movies, more a very intelligent gifted man talking down at fans of the genre, giving them what it appears the genre is about on the surface, rather than the depths that actually appeal to people. Despite its merits, the film is not alive, but dead inside.

Pride and Prejudice (1940)

Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson in a just-plain-not-right version of Pride and Prejudice

Director: Robert Z Leonard

Cast: Greer Garson (Elizabeth Bennet), Laurence Olivier (Fitzwilliam Darcy), Mary Boland (Mrs Bennet), Edna May Oliver (Lady Catherine de Burgh), Maureen O’Sullivan (Jane Bennet), Ann Rutherford (Lydia Bennet), Frieda Inescot (Caroline Bingley), Edmund Gwenn (Mr Bennett), Karen Morley (Charlotte Lucas), Melville Cooper (Mr Collins), Edward Ashley Cooper (George Wickham), Bruce Lester (Mr Bingley)

There is an expectation that old-school adaptations of literary classics from the Golden Age of Hollywood somehow set the standards of adaptation, that all others will be judged against. That may well be the case with the 1939 Wuthering Heights, among others, but it really isn’t the case with Pride and Prejudice, which is essentially a bastardisation of Austen’s original, as if the book has been humped by Gone with the Wind and we are now watching its offspring.

Do I need to tell you the plot? Well I probably should tell you this movie’s version of it. The Bennet sisters are sassy young things always on the prowl for husbands. Lizzy Bennet (Greer Garson) flirts with the proud Mr Darcy (Laurence Olivier), while her sister Jane (Maureen O’Sullivan) wins the attentions of Mr Bingley (Bruce Lester). But how will pride and prejudice affect the course of true love? Find out in this Aldous Huxley (!) scripted version of Austen’s classic, adapted via a second-rate stage version.

What’s bizarre about this film is how wrong so much of it feels. Now I’m no Austen expert, but even I could see that all the costumes for this production are completely incorrect for the period. Turns out of course that the producers just had a lot of mid-19th century clothing and thought it looked better. Other things feel like low-brow farce: the Bennet sisters and their mother race Caroline Lucas and her mother in carriages in order to be the first to greet Mr Bingley. That’s right, it’s Pride and Prejudice with a horse-drawn drag-race. Who thought that was a good idea? But what can you expect of a film with the tag-line “When Pretty Girls T-E-A-S-E-D Men into Marriage!”? It even takes good lines from the novel and inexplicably rewrites them to make them worse – Darcy’s snobbish and personally hurtful dismissal of Lizzy at the Merryton assembly “I am in no humour to give consequence to young ladies slighted by other men” here becomes “I am in no humour to give consequence to the middle classes”. Why?

I ask you – do these costumes look right?

That’s before you get into the casting. While some of it is pretty good (Edmund Gwenn is very good as an ineffective Mr Bennet, while Mary Boland has a neat line in shrieking as Mrs Bennet) others are downright bad – Bruce Lester is stiff as Mr Bingley, Edward Ashley Cooper is forgettably dull as Wickham, and Melville Cooper hideously overplays as a Collins who seems to have stepped in from a Marx brothers film.

Other parts just feel a bit wrong. Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier as the leads are marvellous actors, but neither of them produces a version of these iconic characters that feels remotely true – or even recognisable. Garson not only looks too old, but she doesn’t have the sense of playful intelligence and spark that Lizzy Bennet needs: she’s more of a slightly aloof tease. Laurence Olivier is reasonably good as Darcy, but the character is re-invented as much softer and more playful from the start, and his willingness to be teased by Lizzy early in the film makes her rejection of him make very little sense.

Their relationship has a flirtatious element throughout, fitting the film’s reimagining of the novel as a sort of romantic comedy in period costume, with elements of Hollywood screwball – but bearing no resemblance at all to the actual relationship Lizzy and Darcy ought to have. At Bingley’s garden party they engage in a playful archery competition (he assumes she’s a novice, she of course is an expert marksman). In itself the scene is good fun, but Darcy’s polite apology and willingness to look a little foolish, means it doesn’t hold together when she condemns him for arrogance. In fact, you’d be pretty hard pressed to identify much pride or prejudice going on at all. The main obstacle to their relationship is shown as Wickham’s denunciation of Darcy – but since Lizzy hasn’t actually seen Darcy do anything particularly bad, it seems particularly forced.

Furthermore, the film makes Lizzy seem like a ditzy schoolgirl, since literally one scene later she has spun on a sixpence and is devoted to Darcy. This is also a flaw of the film’s telescoping of events – within five minutes it feels Wickham elopes with Lydia, then Wickham comes into money, then Darcy reveals his true character, then Wickham and Lydia return. The film rushes through these events, in order to fly towards its artificial happy ending (all the Bennet sisters are given appropriate suitors in a clumsy final shot) without any real sense of Austen, or any real eye for the sort of subtle social satire she had carefully worked into her novels.

The film’s individualist take on Pride and Prejudice does at least distinguish it from other productions I suppose, but it’s terrified of the depths to the story or its characters, and seems to do everything it can to neuter its “bad” characters – Caroline Bingley barely appears, and it’s hard to believe that any reader of the book could picture Lady Catherine as she’s reimagined here: a sort of playful wingman to Darcy’s courtship of Lizzy.

But then this never feels like Austen – it’s got more of an early Gone with the Wind vibe to it, but played as romantic comedy. Lizzy here is an aloof, determined, slightly foolish, but strong-minded Scarlett-O’Hara-lite, while Darcy is a neutered Rhett Butler charmer. The production does everything it can to look like Gone with the Wind in its setting and design. Austen’s social commentary is phased out and replaced with low comedy and bantering lover style dialogue. I suppose as a film in itself, it’s perfectly fine, but as an adaptation of one of the greatest novels of all time, it’s sadly lacking.

Love and Friendship (2016)

Kate Beckinsale in a true star turn in Whit Stillman’s brilliant Love and Friendship

Director: Whit Stillman

Cast: Kate Beckinsale (Lady Susan Vernon), Chloë Sevigny (Alicia Johnson), Xavier Samuel (Reginald DeCourcy), Emma Greenwell (Catherine Vernon), Morfydd Clark (Frederica Vernon), James Fleet (Sir Reginald DeCourcy), Jemma Redgrave (Lady DeCourcy), Tom Bennett (Sir James Martin), Justin Edwards (Charles Vernon), Stephen Fry (Mr Johnson)

Films based on Jane Austen are hardly a new thing. There have been dozens of productions on film and television of Austen’s biggest hitters (P&P, S&S, Emma…). What a delight therefore to get an Austen adaptation that takes a very different approach and with material much less familiar. Stillman has even renamed the source material (Lady Susan) with the title from another piece of Austen ephemera, making it playfully fit into the famous X & Y titles.

Lady Susan Vernon (Kate Beckinsale) is notorious throughout society as its most outrageous flirt. After a failed affair with Lord Manwaring, she retreats to the country home of her late husband’s brother Charles (Justin Edwards). There she soon ensnares Charles’ brother-in-law Reginald DeCourcy (Xavier Samuel) into an understanding, while simultaneously promoting the marriage of her reluctant daughter Frederica (Morfydd Clark) to the wealthy bumbler Sir James Martin (Tom Bennett). Naturally there is outrage left and right.

Watching this film the first question that springs to mind is what has Kate Beckinsale been doing her whole career? Clearly on the basis of this been wasting her talents in umpteen Underworld movies. This film plays to all her strengths: her sophistication, elegance, the intelligence and sharpness she can convey in dialogue, mixed in with a distant quality she has. She’s absolutely on top of her game her as the aloof, completely selfish and manipulative Lady Susan, and bitingly funny. Her A-list status translates perfectly into a cast of largely unknowns: just as she would in real life, she seems to glide amongst the other characters in the film like some demi-god descended from the stars.

Beckinsale is one of the brightest stars in this terrifically dry and witty adaption by Whit Stillman of a little known Jane Austen work (I confess I’d never heard of it before!). The film has a frosty tongue and a sharply observant eye, and delights in the absurdities and eccentricities of the Austen upper middle classes as much as it does the ruthless bitchiness and selfish back-biting of the marriage game. It’s the perfect film to remind everyone that there is so much more to Austen than the lazily inaccurate perception of love and romantic clinches in the rain. Stillman really brings to the forefront her accurate understanding of people, and her sharp satirical eye.

The film fairly canters along – sometimes with such haste that the intricacies of who is related to who and how are a little lost, despite some witty freeze-frames that introduce each character like calling cards – and it’s often blisteringly funny. It has a brilliant mixture of verbal put-downs and catty asides (often delivered with a cool sharpness). The film is not afraid to mix this with some near slapstick absurdity, particularly from an exceptional Tom Bennett whose over-eager, nervously talkative, endearingly naïve Sir James threatens to steal the whole movie. His introductory monologue on the confusion between “Churchill” and “Church Hill” is a show-stopping laugh riot. It all serves to create a wonderfully arch and funny dive into Austenland.

There is a fantastic self-awareness around the whole film which Stillman manages to wear very lightly. It’s a very faithful immersion in Austen’s style and humour, but also leans on the wall of gentle humour at the conventions of lesser costume dramas. It’s a hugely difficult line to walk, but the film never staggers or slackens. It stays tight, taut and the story grows with a warmth and reality while Stillman continues to almost tease the source material.

The final resolution of events manages to feel both surprising and strangely inevitable. It’s a perfect summation for a film that is simply marvellous, brilliantly performed and frequently laugh-out-loud funny. Lady Susan is in many ways deplorable, but Stillman avoids all temptation to try and redeem her or to make her into some sort of genuine heroine (“Facts are horrid things” she observes after another accurate condemnation). Stillman expands the implications of Austen’s text to more than hint at secrets behind her final marriage.

Love and Friendship is a terrific film, the best Austen adaptation on screen since Emma Thompson’s virtuoso Sense and Sensibility. It also has the best work of her entire career from Kate Beckinsale, giving the kind of performance which makes you re-evaluate all your impressions of her. Every single moment of the film has a rich emotional depth mixed with hilarity. It’s not just a wonderful costume drama, it’s a wonderful film.

Room (2015)

Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay deal with a horrifying entrapment in Room

Director: Lenny Abrahamson

Cast: Brie Larson (‘Ma’/Joy Newsome), Jacob Tremblay (Jack Newsome), Joan Allen (Nancy Newsome), William H. Macy (Robert Newsome), Sean Bridgers (Old Nick), Tom McCamus (Leo)

Several years ago, I read a book on the train while coming back from Manchester. I wasn’t even sure why I had bought it: the cover made the story look fluffy and empty and (horror of horrors) it was narrated by a child. Surely a recipe for a tiresome read. I couldn’t be more wrong: I couldn’t put it down. Room was sensitive, it was heartbreaking, it was life-affirming, it was fantastic. If that’s not a tricky act to follow, I don’t know what is.

Room tells the story of Ma (Brie Larson) and her son Jack (Jacob Tremblay), who live together in a small room, with one skylight and no contact with the outside. Ma has built a whole world of childish adventure and excitement for Jack in this room, and their days are filled with games and laughter. But the audience knows better: at night Jack sleeps in the cupboard, ordered never to come out as Old Nick (Sean Bridgers) comes into the room and sleeps with Ma. Ma (or Joy) is a woman in her early twenties, kidnapped and trapped in this room for seven years.

Room is an extraordinary piece of film-making, which really captures the compelling richness of a fantastic novel. However, one thing I think is very interesting about this film is the varied reactions it receives from people. I watched this film with my wife, and we had quite different reactions to it: she found it bleak (despite having a positive ending), while I found it (like the book) a hopeful and positive film, a life-affirming story about the conquest of innocence over adversity.

Abrahamson has perfectly captured the tone and style of what was already a hypnotic and engaging book. In the book, the entire story is interpreted through the eyes of the child. The reader knows the situation is far more dangerous and sinister, but we see the confined world of the room from the viewpoint of a child who literally knows nothing else. The book requires the reader to tell themselves the “full story” between the lines of the child’s perceptions.

In the film this is much harder to create – we can see everything for ourselves. What Abrahamson and Donoghue (who adapted the script from her own novel) do so well is keeping the child at the centre, and filtering much the film through him – we don’t see or experience anything Jack doesn’t. This means that Abrahamson is able to bring some of the love Jack feels for the room around him into the story – an opening montage of their daily routine, including eating, play and exercise, shows that to a kid, this could be seen as a fun place to live.

It’s also, for Jack, an extraordinarily safe place: he knows every inch of his universe, and never encounters anything that he does not know or has not seen before. The struggle for Jack is not to escape the room, but to grow up – to accept the existence of a wider world around him and leave childhood security behind. It’s a theme in that helps make the film universal, despite its extraordinary circumstances, as a heartfelt coming-of-age story. Abrahamson’s skilful and brilliantly subtle direction threads this concept through the entire story, undercutting its potential bleakness and providing it with warmth and depth.

The fact that this was (for me anyway!) an uplifting film demonstrates with what grace it has been put together. The alternative story that runs underneath Jack’s full understanding is handled with sensitivity but unflinching honesty. Joy may go out of her way to protect Jack from what is really happening to her – imprisoned and routinely raped several times a week – but the viewer understands far more. When Jack says there are days when “Ma just needs to sleep all day” we know the causes of her feeling – and the quiet shot of Joy silent and still under a duvet speaks volumes of the mental strain she is under.

So why is this uplifting? Because for me, this story is about Joy’s struggle to keep her son innocent, to keep him safe and to protect him from the reality of what is going on around him. To make sure that his father never has a piece of him. In this she is completely successful: in fact, her focus is so overwhelmingly on protecting Jack that later in the film, when events remove the need for this, she herself undergoes a terrible mental collapse. But the message throughout is Joy’s overwhelming love for her son and her desire to protect him: and this makes her story, in a strange way, a triumph.

Joy’s story also seems (eventually) positive, due to the power of Brie Larson’s performance. Winner of a well-deserved Oscar, Larson is unflinching in her empathy for Joy’s situation, her dedication to the role apparent in every frame. She never allows Joy to become weak – she may be trapped, she may suffer from depression, but she has an inner strength that has developed from her fixation on the welfare of her son. She is uncompromising though in playing the reality of the emotional burden Joy is carrying both for herself and her son.

Larson also deserves much credit – as does Abrahamson’s direction – for the simply breathtaking work from Jacob Tremblay as Jack. It’s no exaggeration to say that without a child capable of delivering a performance like this, the film could not have existed. Tremblay’s performance is completely natural, totally unforced and deeply affecting. We totally invest in his fate. He has the pressure of carrying huge chunks of the film and does so with complete confidence. He and Larson have a totally natural chemistry between them, a bond that seems unshakeable.

This is a film I found profoundly moving – there are several moments (at least three) where I felt a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes: moments of sadness, but also moments of triumph and moments of simple human warmth. It’s a spoiler to even say that there are other people in this film, but the second half of the film widens the story and subtly changes its nature: it is a survival story from the start, but it’s also one of adjustment and recovery. This later act of the film is as wonderfully told as the first part, rich with empathy and human emotion.

Room is a truly wonderful film, a small scale story about huge and powerful themes that wears its greatness very lightly. Lenny Abrahamson’s direction – both technically and in its control of actors and story – is exceptional, creating a film that balances dozens of tones with aplomb. Like I said, it’s a film that invites you to take many readings from it: it’s a film about a victim, that feels like a triumph story; a film about a confined world that teaches us about the wider world; a film about imprisonment that feels like a celebration of freedom. It’s an extraordinary work, and there isn’t enough praise for Larson and Tremblay. I can’t imagine not being moved again the next time I see this – it’s a film for the ages.

The Winslow Boy (1999)

Nigel Hawthrone will stop at nothing for justice for his son in faithful literary adaptation The Winslow Boy

Director: David Mamet

Cast: Nigel Hawthorne (Arthur Winslow), Rebeccca Pidgeon (Catherine Winslow), Jeremy Northam (Sir Robert Morton), Gemma Jones (Grace Winslow), Guy Edwards (Ronnie Winslow), Matthew Pidgeon (Dickie Winslow), Aden Gillet (John Waterstone), Colin Stinton (Desmond Curry)

David Mamet surprised those who associate him with macho, alpha-male led drama with this sensitive and faithful adaptation of Terence Rattigan’s play. After his young son Ronnie is sent down from naval college for stealing a five shilling postal order, Arthur Winslow (Nigel Hawthorne, terrific) will stop at nothing to clear his name, supported by his suffragette daughter Catherine (Rebecca Pidgeon, excellent in a difficult role). They recruit Sir Robert Morton (an electric Jeremy Northam) to champion Ronnie’s case, as the scandal rocks the nation.

There can’t be many film adaptations of plays that so completely avoid “opening up” the play. The settings and dialogue of Rattigan’s original are kept largely as is. This means that – just as in the play – all the major dramatic events happen off-stage and are reported in dialogue. The campaign to clear Ronnie’s name? Apart from flyers and newspaper prints in Winslow’s home, you’re not seeing that. Morton’s advocacy of the case in the House of Commons? The smallest of scenes. The crowds outside the Winslow home? A faint echo on the soundtrack. The pivotal court case itself? Not a single shot. If ever a production made Rattigan feel more like Chekov, I’m yet to see it.

This theatricality is not necessarily a bad thing. I’ll admit it may create a film a bit too contained and low key for some. But catch this in the right mood and Mamet’s carefully considered staging brings many of its smaller moments and personal interactions into shape. Would a film full of triumphal courtroom scenes have so perfectly captured anti-climax and confusion that can come after an event that has dominated your whole life comes to an end?

This approach also allows the relationships to come front and centre – in particular the growing attraction between Catherine and Morton, treated lightly and subtly but with huge warmth. Catherine here mirrors the main plot. Her suitors are, in turn: an upright military careerist (whom she loves, but we care little for), a gentle non-entity (whom we like but she is bored by) and the imperious Morton – on the surface someone she shares few opinions with but, subconsciously, recognises a deep kinship with. Like the public reaction to the campaign, the attitudes of these people to Catherine represent the wider reactions happening off-camera. The Morton-Catherine story is a beautiful romance in which not a single word of overt, direct affection passes between the two characters, but volumes are increasingly spoken in each glance.

Mamet’s approach also allows plenty of stagy touches to translate really well to film. The film is clearly divided into acts, and each one returns us to the Winslow home, each time in less pomp than before (by the final scene it’s stripped down to bare essentials). Arthur Winslow is less and less sturdy each time we see him, the character shrinking ever closer to old age and infirmity. Each member of the family increasingly pays heavier prices, as their financial security is sacrificed (though Mamet certainly understands the characters’ very British acceptance of these turns in fortune).

The other major benefit is that the acting comes to the fore. I’m not sure Jeremy Northam has been better than he is here: the one downside of not staging the courtroom scenes is that we will never get to see Northam play them! His Morton is a perfectly pitched imperious upper-class professional, whose exterior hides a compassionate and selfless concern for “right”. The film’s most electrifying moment is his hostile examination of Ronnie, a dynamic verbal assault that rips into the film’s quiet austereness, crackling with tension. Northam is so good, at one point I am sure he muffs a line – but he carries it off with such brilliance (the austere man awkwardly burying his feelings) that Mamet keeps it in (take a look around 2:10 here and make up your own mind!). It’s also a beautifully real moment – the man of words, briefly revealed by them. This scene is, by the way, a masterpiece of unspoken emotions and affection (from both actors).

The other main performers are equally strong. Nigel Hawthorne mixes his cuddly avuncular wit with hints of the monomaniacal obsessiveness that leads Winslow to drain his resources, and strength, in pursuit of justice. While the film doesn’t always acknowledge the sometimes self-destructive effects of Winslow’s passion – and only hints at how much Winslow sees the accusation against his son as a personal affront, as if questioning his son’s honesty is questioning his own – Hawthorne keeps the character morally rigid yet sympathetic and understandable.

Rebecca Pidgeon, the director’s wife, is practically an open target for suggestions she only got the part through nepotism. Such views are unjust. While her accent seems a little forced, her performance as the slightly distant, intellectual, prickly and driven Catherine is spot-on. The crusade begins as her father’s obsession, which she shares. Their characters then evolve so naturally that you only realise at the conclusion that she has become the lead character, and the main driver of the crusade, for quite some time.

I’ve seen The Winslow Boy three or four times now. The first time I saw it I was thrown (disappointed) by its staginess, its surface stateliness. However, since then I’ve grown to appreciate its careful, respectful lack of showiness more and more. It’s an intelligent, well-handled adaptation, crammed with wonderful performances. Yes it’s sometimes a little too “Masterpiece Theatre”, but when it can deliver such stirring, and moving, moments as it does – well you could never refuse it a place in your heart. Let Right Be Done.