Movie Review: Elizabeth Gaskell

What do you do when you run out of new Jane Austen movies? When you own all the good Jane Austen films and have watched them over and over? Well, I explore other BBC drama and move on to film adaptations of another author. I have been delighted to view three Elizabeth Gaskell movies recently: North and South; Cranford; and Wives and Daughters.

I embarrassingly embrace at least one popular genre besides animated sitcoms: I can't get over a good 19th-century romance. There's something about the focus on conversation, social subtleties, unstable political and economic environment, and the mesh of reason and romance (sense and sensibility, anyone?) that wins my curiosity. And it doesn't hurt that there are often gorgeous, intellectual men with quiet strength who bear their suffering in such a manly way, and are great dressers to boot.

(Image from Amazon.com)

Move over, Mr. Darcy, there's a new passionate, brooding man on the scene. In North and South, John Thorton is first seen by the heroine, Margaret, when he's beating the tar out of a factory worker who was caught smoking inside the cotton mill. Thorton is a self-made man, a survivor of poverty, and the man on whom all of the hopes of his mother hang (sense some meddling?).

(Image from Amazon.com)

Margaret, on the other hand, is a vicar's daughter from the country and is appalled by the brutishness she sees in city factory life. In essence, this film is about the move from country to city (a huge shift in 19-century England), but it is also about feminine (the country) and masculine (the industrialized city). While I think I will always prefer a Regency ballroom to the Victorian child-labor factory, the romance and intrigue is just fun to watch with these two main characters.

(Image from pbs.org)

Based on only the image above, Kevin began referring to Cranford as my "old biddy movie." And I guess it really is, but this is my favorite of the three. Merged from three stories from Mrs. Gaskell, this series of TV episodes is about a small town on the verge of the arriving railway. It focuses on female characters and their unique moral code. Simon Woods, of P&P fame, plays the new town doctor and love interest for, well, practically the whole town.

Dame Judy Dench was fabulous in this, and the movie is centered in her character's middle class home and follows her friends and acquaintances through the course of a year. I think what I loved about it was enjoying the fleeting moments of a town on the verge of upheaval. We don't see too much of the enormous disruption coming, but we get to see the great intimacy between the town folk that is about to be changed forever.

(Image from pbs.org)

Wives and Daughters was the longest of the three - five hours. Now, I'm the first one to defend the five-hour Pride and Prejudice, but that was Pride and Prejudice. While this story is intriguing, it sometimes gets a tad painful. Especially because the main actress sometimes fell apart in her role.

As the daughter of a widower doctor, Molly Gibson moves more freely through society, socializing with the humble as well as the great lords and ladies. Like Anne Elliot in Persuasion, she bears much with her duty, her integrity, and the seemingly unattainability of the object of her eye.

(Image from pbs.org)

But this man, Richard, redeems the show. He's the misunderstood second son (read: poor son) of a squire. He's a geographer and a naturalist. He's sensitive, calm, and forgiving. He also walks around for a good time with his shirt off and gets dirty while remaining pleasant to look at.