Middlemarch

1994

Seasons & Episodes

  • 1
  • 0
7.5| 0h30m| en| More Info
Released: 10 April 1994 Ended
Producted By: BBC
Country: United Kingdom
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00tckx3
Synopsis

19th century Great Britain. The Industrial Revolution brings both the promise and fear of change. In the provincial town of Middlemarch, the progressive Dorothea Brooke desperately seeks intellectual fulfillment in a male-dominated society and is driven into an unhappy marriage to the elderly scholar Casaubon. No sooner do they embark on their honeymoon than she meets and develops an instant connection with Casaubon's young cousin, Will Ladislaw. When idealistic Doctor Lydgate arrives, his new methods of medicine sweep him into the battle between conservatives and liberals in town. He quickly becomes enamored of the beautiful, privileged Rosamond Vincy, a woman whose troubles seem bound to destroy him.

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Dotsthavesp I wanted to but couldn't!
Dirtylogy It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.
Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.
Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.
Red-125 Middlemarch (1994) was directed by Anthony Page. It was adapted brilliantly by Andrew Davies from George Eliot's novel.We expect great acting from any BBC series, and we're not disappointed here. All of the actors were unknown to me, but one actor--Juliet Aubrey-- truly impressed me with her portrayal of one of the protagonists--Dorothea Brooke. (I wasn't the only one impressed. Aubrey won the 1995 BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for playing this role.) If you know the novel, you'll remember that Dorothea makes one of the worst fictional marriages of all time. She lives to regret it.George Eliot wrote long, leisurely novels with many characters and many plots. This novel was about change coming to a provincial town. It's actually a historical novel. It was written in 1871-72, but is set 40 years earlier. So, when Eliot wrote the novel, she knew what her characters didn't know about the years to come.The status of women and the coming of progress are two of the themes of the novel. Dorothea's marriage is of her own choosing, but that's not often true of Eliot's woman protagonists. Also, Eliot didn't specialize in happy endings. (Well, Silas Marner has a happy ending, but there's plenty of gloom along the way.)This film is definitely worth seeing. Every part of it is done professionally and well. If you love Victorian novels, and especially if you love George Eliot's work, don't miss it. If you're really not into Eliot, you'd better consider carefully. The series is over six hours long!We saw this film on the small screen. It was intended for TV, so that's not a problem.P.S. The series was so popular that thousands of people in England bought the novel. It was the top best seller in England for weeks!
someofusarebrave Some time into this series, I realized this film rubbed me the wrong way in a manner very similar to 'Jane Eyre' and previous versions of 'Pride and Prejudice' had. Thinking more about it, I realized that the reason is because of the clear lack of comprehension exhibited by those in charge of converting these rather dense and equally beloved classics to film. These books are all deeply feminine--they were written by women, about women and for the past hundred years have been read by a primarily female audience, with the exception of reading assigned for school. These conversions have all been equally well-meaning on the surface, but at root something far more evil has been taking place. It is no accident of the industry that male directors and male screenwriters have been solely responsible for crafting these conversions. It is ALSO no accident that they are aimed at the sort of female audience who believes soap operas to be decent entertainment.These stories are about the "female condition" within the social circles occupied by their female authors far more than they are about these characters romantic matches and mismatches. These are women who grow and change and act rather than be acted upon like most so-called "heroines" of today's so-called "great" stories. This is why these stories have appealed to women throughout the ages--they provide us women with both a template for growth and one for happiness.This is something men can never understand. To cover for their own incomprehension, the male directors and writers who have in the past taken over such projects have focused on the men's stories instead.Suddenly the women seem like victims, rather than act-ors in their own lives; they stand still in the center of rooms where men pace and rant.If we want stories that actually reflect our lived experiences of the world, we have to fight to get them made. If we sit back and let whatever happens, happens, we simply wind up with dreck like this.
badajoz-1 Reading the novel as i watched the DVD, it is obvious what Miss Evans wrote cannot be put on the screen without a lot of voice over. It is an extremely analytical, author description novel nearly 800 pages long. Like Bondarchuk's 'War and Peace,' you get a tableau of the best set pieces, with BBC costume drama values fully in evidence. A bit of a pity really, because the novel has its faults, mainly too little of the background of the changes of the time, eg Reform, the Railways (but the previous Eliot novel had been too full of such material, and it had failed at the box office!), and poorly underwritten male characters, eg Will, Fred, and Mr Bulstrode. The TV version does not address these shortcomings, and suffers accordingly. Rufus Sewell barely gets a part as he grimaces away - a lot of his little dialogue has been removed, especially his vitriolic rebuke near the end of Rosamund for flirting with him when Dorothea catches them in flagrante - a terrible sop to female, nay feminist, sympathies! But the main characters are richly drawn - Juliet Aubrey and Douglas Hodge, despite the odd looking into the middle distance to suggest about five pages of the novel's description, act extremely well.However, while Patrick Malahide is left to look rather silly because he seems to turn on his wife for little reason! Read the novel, enjoy the DVD, and see Rosamund get away with almost as much as Becky Sharp - the emptiness of British decorum - because of modern sensibilities! Let's hope the remake does not miss the chance to give the little vampiric minx her just lashing!
Lee-107 'Middlemarch' is one of my favourite novels and the serialization is one of the best that I have seen. All the actors enliven the saga of this, George Eliot's masterpiece with an impressive panache. Juliet Aubrey as Dorothea, the heroine, needs a little bit of getting used to, but she portrays the character convincingly. Rufus Sewell was made for this role He exudes all the charm, the enigma and the romance in Will's personality beautifully..so much so that you really feel for him and his love for Dorothea as you feel for them in the novel. The only thing I'd like to say as a mild warning is that read the novel before you see this adaptation because the serial is made taking that for granted. For any admirer of Eliot this serialization is a must-see. With a beautiful music score, beautiful scenery, this adaptation is sensitively made..and memorable.

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