The Way We Live Now (2001)

Don't Buy This DVD!

The promo's for this DVD are very deceiving! It makes it seem like this movie is so romantic and intriging! It is not!! It was a real frustrating movie to watch. If you know any thing about Anthony Trollope you will stay far away from anything that has been adapted from his novels. They are all downers. The man only writes about disappointments and depressing subject matter. His stuff is not uplifting at all. If that is what you are into than by all means buy, but if you are looking for romance and happy endings don't go in for his stuff.

Unfortunatly the way they advertise his adaptations are really deceiving. This movie was not anything at all what I expected and it was VERY EXPENSIVE! I don't reccomend buying it because you won't watch it a second time because it is not enjoyable to watch period!

Sorry to be such a downer but that's the truth!

Read Anthony Trollope, don't watch it! August 30, 2008

The Cash Nexus

I believe it was Freud who said that the two great motivators in human affairs are money and sex. But the only motivator that is on display in Anthony Trollope's THE WAY WE LIVE NOW is money. Ok, that is not entirely true. There are at least four characters who are motivated by higher things. But, by and large, the message writ loud and clear in this novel and series is that money is what moves people to do what they do and the pursuit of personal fortune is the engine that drives men to build empires.

Perhaps no one is more aware of Freud's observation than Lady Carbury. Though the Carbury's are a noble family, they are also a family that has fallen on hard times. In an attempt to swell the dwindling family fortune Lady Carbury begins writing pulp historical fiction with titles like The Wicked Women of History. Even though she is nobility her literary taste and talent are strictly Grub Street as are her social mores and in order to solicit publisher Mr. Brown's interest in her book she is willing to solicit herself to Mr. Brown. Lady Carbury has two children, Felix and Henrietta (Hetta). Felix is a fop and a wastrel who gambles, whores, and drinks; while Hetta is a pure soul driven only by genuine love. Felix, like his mother, has few scruples and is also driven by the desire to land a fortune using any means necessary. When Felix discovers that the internationally famous financier Melmotte has an unmmarried daughter named Marie, Felix, assured of his own irresistable charms, sets his sites on capturing the Melmotte fortune by marrying Marie.

The (unofficial) Carbury family motto is "virtue ain't the way the world works." Or, at least, this is Lady Carbury and Felix's motto. Hetta is disgusted by the both of them and sets her sites on Mr. Paul Montague, a dashing young engineer just back from California and with big plans to find backers for his next big project, the South Pacific Railway.

In other words, all paths to Melmotte lead.

Melmotte is a larger than life character who also happens to be Jewish, so while nearly all of London needs to court his financial favor, they loathe having to shake his hand. Melmotte is well aware of this, but he doesn't care for he gets a perverse pleasure out of making the proud British lords and ladies grovel at his feet. No dream is too big for Melmotte and the penultimate dream of this Viennese Jew is to become an English lord and sit in Parliament. This character is really more of a caricature but Trollope avoids the charge of antisemitism by using the character not to cast apsersions on any particular ethnicity but to reveal the social hypocrisy of late nineteenth-century Britain.

Melmotte's motto is to make history (by financing world changing projects like the South Pacific Railroad) but make money too. His other motto is that it is your duty to make yourself rich and he delivers this second one during an extravagant dinner in which he views his guests as so many gluttons grabbing all they can get and devouring it. Melmotte in all of his egotistical glory sees himself as the master of the feast. The moment is surreal and is one of those instances when you appreciate how well the BBC revises the classics, even the minor ones.

The only character that trumps Melmotte himself for our attentions is his daughter Marie (played by Shirley Henderson). Every financially strapped English lord in London tries to win her favor in order to access her father's fortune but she is a very strange creature indeed and Henderson obviosuly has a ball with the character while never quite making her into a caricature. Marie is perhaps the most victimized creature in the entire four-part miniseries because all that she wants is to be loved but no one can see her as anything but as a stepping stone to her fathers money. When Felix comes courting and plants a kiss on her she thinks she has finally found happiness, but of course she hasn't, and her reactions are immensely watchable. She's strange, very strange, "like an odd little monkey" as one guest says, but also very interesting.

Needless to say the greedy get their just desserts. This is one of the most enjoyable BBC productions that I have seen in quite a while.

August 26, 2008

Fabulous!

This is an excellent production. The acting by both Matthew McFadden and David Suchet along with a brilliant supporting cast is amazing and a joy to behold. The movie is full of laughs but also a bit unnerving at times by all the greed and malice. It is a true delight to watch. This is one of the best BBC productions to date. June 28, 2008

A well-acted, albeit condensed version of Anthony Trollope's work.

The Way We Live Now is a 2001 BBC production that is an adaptation of Anthony Trollope's novel of the same name. The story has at its center the story of Augustus Melmotte [a magnificent David Suchet], a European financier who comes to London to set up shop, accompanied by a docile wife and daughter, Marie [Shirley Henderson]. Melmotte is actually a swindler, but does such a good job of cloaking his true designs that it is not till much later that his chicanery is exposed.

Though Melmotte's story is the center of the story, there are numerous other sub-plots that keep the story fresh and intriguing - Matthew McFadyen [Mr Darcy of Pride and Prejudice 2005] plays Sir Felix Carbury, an impoverished baronet with a gambling addiction who tries to woo Marie Melmotte to get her inheritance, his sister Hetta Carbury [Paloma Baeza] plays a sensible girl who finds herself rejecting the advances of her cousin in favour of the attentions of a young engineer and railroad builder, Paul Montague [Cillian Murphy], Georgiana Longstaffe [Anne-Marie Duff] a young lady of noble birth who finds herself yearning to be married, yet lacking suitable suitors, and Mrs Hurtle [Miranda Otto] an American who comes to London hoping to rekindle her affair and regain the affections of Paul Montague.

It is indeed hard to compress Anthony Trollope's work into a 6 hour mini-series, and the series doesn't do the book justice in this aspect. But, it is nevertheless an entertaining, well-acted adaptation with a stellar cast that paints a vivid portrayal of London society in the late 19th century - characterised by greed, corruption, ambition, love, and human frailty. The attention to period detail adds a lot to one's enjoyment of the series and truly evokes the atmosphere of the times. Though I felt some of the characters lacked sufficient development -case in point being Marie Melmotte who goes from being a love-struck swooning damsel to a woman of resolve all too quickly, the story is well-told in general.

This is a series worth watching if you are an Anglophile, a fan of period dramas, or just interested in a well-told story. David Suchet's performance as the overly ambitious Melmotte alone makes it a compelling watch. April 27, 2008

See the Film/Read the Book!

These seemingly endless period dramas churned out by the BBC and others are valuable in that they can be viewed as a kind of visual "Cliff's Notes" for us busy folk who can't find the time to read the original novels. Bottom line is this: you should read the book no matter what, especially if it's by Anthony Trollope, one of English literature's most consistently great writers. If you watch the movie first, you MAY be interested enough in the story and characters to read the book later. In fact, I'd say that is good criteria for judging the quality of one of these period movies: if, after viewing the film, you are stimulated enough to rush out and read the book, then the film must be good--providing it's a faithful adaptation.
This one is. It's a six-hour presentation, but even that is not really long enough to accurately deliver the full impact of Trollope's masterpiece. The young couple who end up together are the most likable characters; the rest, with the exception of the spurned Jewish banker, are all vain, pompous, avaricious and spiteful. They are cynical caricatures, if you will, but that was Trollope's intent as a satirist. January 28, 2008

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