There was an unusually strong difference of opinion at this
weeks Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre’s Film Club showing of Effie
Gray (2014). Which included a walk out by a regular film club attendee part
way through the film and following the screening a lively debate about the
pro’s and cons of this divisive movie. I can only give you my personnel opinion
which I think was shared by a number of the audience but not, I must say, by
all those that were present.
This humourless Victorian period drama tells the true story
of Scottish born Euphemia Gray (Dakota Fanning) who married the art critic John
Ruskin (a rather unconvincing Greg Wise) when she was 19 year old and he was 37.
She left her husband without the marriage being consummated and after it was
annulled she married the Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais (Tom
Sturridge) in 1855.
Directed by Richard Laxton, best known for his television
work, it has a screenplay written by Emma Thompson, who also appears in the film
as Elizabeth Lady Eastlake an art critic in her own right and wife of Sir
Charles Eastlake who was the director of London’s National Art Gallery. The
film's release was delayed by lawsuits alleging that the Thomson’s script was
plagiarised from earlier dramatisations of the same story but she won her case
and the movie was eventually released to mixed reviews two years after it was completed.
This is in fact another story about cruelty to women, which
I am sure we are all aware happens in all works of life. Earlier this week I
saw The
Homesman (2014) that dealt with the way women were treated in America’s
mid west farming community. Now we get the same problem but involving the rich
and privileged classes. The difference is wealth and how in the upper echelons
of English society the problem is dealt with in an entirely different way,
approaching people with the right connections, and the money to engage men of
legal standing to “serve papers” – problem solved!!
Something about this painting brings to mind Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue? (http://youtu.be/lDpnjE1LUvE) |
The movie is very much like the John Ruskin portrayed on our
screens, a great lump of cold emotion. A story of a man who is incapable of
giving what his wife what she most desires: love, happiness and respect. But again I’m drawn
to say that there can’t be a less engaging story to make a film about. And like the Scottish locations chosen for the
film it is a stark and emotionless tale of people that are not very likeable - really
that sums up the film for me?
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