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
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