The Way We Live Now Truncates Trollope

The Way We Are Now (2001)

Directed by David Yates

BBC Mini Series (4 parts)

★★

Several weeks ago, I heartily endorsed the BCC’s dramatization of Anthony Trollope’s The Barchester Chronicles. Emboldened by such quality I turned to the BBC (British Broadcasting Company) adaptation of Trollope’s 1875 masterpiece, The Way We Are Now. I was especially anxious to see David Suchet in the role of Augustus Melmotte, the film’s anti-hero, as I enjoyed him so much as Agatha Christie’s detective Hercule Poirot on Mystery. Suchet is fine in The Way We Are Now, but the novel runs over 800 pages and four episodes isn’t long enough to do it justice.

The title encapsulates Trollope’s intentions. His is a novel about the clash between tradition and modernity at a time in which the first is only partially degraded and the second is unfettered in problematic ways. The Carbury family represents fading aristocracy. Lady Carbury (Cheryl Campbell) is a widow trying to maintain a façade of family respectability through writing very bad books that are (mostly) gently reviewed. It doesn’t help matters that she dotes on her son, Sir Felix (Mathew Macfayden), a veritable man-child who sponges money from his mother so he can dress like a dandy, drink like a fish, and gamble like a fool. Henrietta (Paloma Baeza) tries to warn her mother but Felix can do no wrong in her eyes. We quickly learn that many old families are in the same boat. They have titles, but no money.

Enter the Melmottes. Augustus is a foreign financier who moves his family and whatever it is he does to London and into a garishly appointed mansion in Grosvenor Square. He represents the nouveau riche who make money in industry, banking, and moving paper securities. He has money, but is oily, uncouth, and unrefined. (Scenes of he and his family eating look like they belong in Tom Jones, not Trollope.) He is also Jewish and Victorian society was decidedly anti-Semitic. The Melmottes are too rich to ignore, yet too crass for polite society. That is, until Melmotte decides to help underwrite a railroad envisioned by construction engineer Paul Montague (Cillian Murphy) that will run from Utah into Mexico.

We watch English nobility line up to invest with Melmotte, who promises them they will grow rich and solve their problems. Felix has another plan: feign his admiration for Melmotte’s daughter Marie (Shirley Henderson), marry her, and tap into the Melmotte fortune. If only he weren’t such an utter ass, he might have pulled it off, as Marie is deeply smitten with him.

There are lots of side stories, all of which by necessity are greatly truncated. The Longestaffes are also strapped for cash, which means their unmarried spoiled brat of a daughter Georgianna (Anne-Marie Duff) goes to live with the Melmottes and is courted by a much older banker Mr. Breghert (Jim Carter), who is also Jewish and thus threatens her place in society. Paul is in love with Henrietta, but she is courted by Paul’s best friend and Hetty’s cousin Roger (Douglas Hodge)–a classic triangle. Or should I say quadrangle? Although Paul is scrupulously honest in his work and smells a rat in Melmotte, he has not been forthcoming about his private life and the hold his former American lover (Miranda Otto) has on him. And, of course, the dissolute Felix has been dallying with Ruby Ruggles (Maxine Peake), a servant girl.

Can Melmotte buy his way into society, including a seat in Parliament, or is his a house of cards? Or is everyone dwelling among cardboard jokers? Transitional times in history are always fraught and Trollope teases out those threads. Alas, the series does not. Shortened though it is, there are 36 credited actors, so nuance has to go. Yates plays up the camp angle and some parts are funny, so much so that the edge is taken off of serious matters. Campbell chews scenery throughout and Mcfaydyen often seems to be playing Oscar Wilde rather than Felix Carbury. Anne-Marie Duff will get on your nerves, but not as much as Shirley Henderson, who may be my least favorite actress of all time. Her little girl voice and lack of articulation drove me up a wall, as did her channeling of a libidinous school girl.

These performances detract from the good: Suchet as an amoral conniver, Otto as an icy and sexy femme fatale, Hodge as a dignified frustrated courter, and Murphy as a man caught in the middle of things he cannot control. Yates and the series producer somehow won BAFTA (the British Emmys) Awards for the series. I can only conclude that 2001 wasn’t a good year for TV in the UK. Read the book.

Rob Weir