He Knew He Was Right

"He Knew He Was Right" (2004) is a BBC TV mini-series directed by Tom Vaughan. It's an accurate transition to film of a novel by Anthony Trollope.

Louis Trevelyan (Oliver Dimsdale) marries Emily Rowley (Laura Fraser) and takes her to London. They are extraordinarily happy until Colonel Osborne, Emily's godfather, (Bill Nighy) begins daily visits to Emily. Her husband is jealous, which is reasonable enough in the context of the film. However, he makes the serious mistake of forbidding her to see Osborne.

Emily is high-spirited, and refuses this demand, and matters spiral down from there. Scholars have written that the plot is a reflection of Shakespeare's "Othello." Of course, the central theme of "Othello" is jealousy, but, to me, that's where the resemblance ends. Remember that the character Othello is an outsider. Louis Trevelyan is wealthy, and he moves smoothly in London society. I think the closer parallel is to Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale." In "The Winter's Tale," King Leontes has a beautiful, loving, virtuous wife, but he becomes suspicious of her fidelity. There's no Iago to ferment suspicion--it just arises. In both Shakespeare and Trollope, the unfounded suspicion brings about terrible consequences.

The major plot of "He Knew He Was Right" is, indeed, tragic. However, Trollope has brought us four sub-plots, all involving true love that is initially thwarted. (Well, I'm not sure about how true the love is in one of the sub-plots, but there's plenty of thwarting involved.)

As always, the BBC has given us fine production values, and an excellent supporting cast. Oliver Dimsdale does a fine job as Louis Trevelyan. Laura Fraser is brilliant as Emily Trevelyan. The plot depends on her to be loving, virtuous, stubborn, and forgiving, and she manages to portray all these qualities perfectly. The camera loves her, and it's obvious that director Vaughan is aware of this. He has chosen to let her beautiful dark eyes convey to us what she is thinking and feeling. It was a superb casting choice. It's worth seeing "He Knew He Was Right" just to watch a talented actor play the part that's perfect for her.

Because this BBC mini-series was made for TV, it works well on the small screen. Find a way to see it. You'll be glad you did.

P.S. At certain key moments in the movie, characters turn to us and tell us what they are thinking. It's an interesting device at first, but ultimately I found it annoying. Luckily, these moments of direct communication from the character to the audience become less frequent as the film progresses.

He Knew What He Wanted starts out interestingly enough, with varying love stories surrounding interconnected characters. The stories range from melodrama to comedy. The main one is sort of a reverse Othello, as the effects of jealousy take their toll on the main character.

As the stories unfold over four episodes, however, they begin to fall apart. Some scenes are repeated again and again, simply in different settings, until one wonders if the actors even got confused. The interconnections of families is broken almost from the start, so the stories become ever more separate.

This is exacerbated by some very poor directorial and editorial choices. From a slow- moving, deeply "tortured" scene we jump to a brightly lit comedic farce. The jumps are jolting and remove the emotional punch. Some character arcs are never fully explained (one suspects they ended up on the cutting room floor), so some of the characters make choices that don't make much sense.

The casting was excellent and the lavish sets and costumes up to the usual BBC standards. It's unfortunate that a potentially compelling story ends up trivializing itself and ultimately looking silly.

Decent production values. Unlikely scenario: stubbornness to the nth degree. Nicely acted in most parts.

There is a concept of 'the fourth wall' which separates the drama from the viewer. This is smashed regularly for no apparent reason, when one of the characters, suddenly turns to the camera and delivers some form of rationalization. This will add nothing to the exposition, but leaving the viewer, newly disconnected from the world in which he/she was immersed, wondering what on earth the director intended to achieve. Depending on how engrossed you were this is either amusing or infuriating. Really one of the worst (best) examples of why this is not normally a good idea.

Chopped up Trollope is worse than no Trollope at all in my view. There is barely enough exposition for a complex set of characters but there are plenty of climaxes and assorted running gags which are hard to get unless you've read the book. It's basically is a series of punch-lines with no lead-ins.

This isn't even directed on decent soap opera level, which might have satisfied the time constraints. Why oh why must so many of the characters mug as they address the camera. With the exception of Anna Massey, the acting is dreadful, particularly the leading men, who look like they long to be in a rock opera or at least an early Disney Opus. A spoonful of medicine isn't enough for this travesty, I'm afraid.

As usual for Masterpiece Theater, the settings are lovely & the music is very loud.

Once again I find myself sitting in on a Sunday night and what happens, my mum puts on BBC 1 at 9 and i think: "not another period drama...". But actually, this one wasn't so bad...

Not because it had a decent plot or any particularly good character development but because Laura Fraser was in it. I couldn't place her at first but i soon realised it was none other than Kate the blacksmith from A Knights Tale. Not only is she considerably more beautiful than anyone else in the film (especially the french sisters...), but she can act a hell of a lot better than most of them as well. I appreciate that most actors find it difficult to act in the pretentious voices, but why do it then? Is there really a shortage of people who can speak pretentiously? Who knows, point being, Laura stood out around the rest of them.

That piece of sycophancy aside, I think the problem with this period drama, like so many others, is its willingness to include so much plot at the expense of character development. Perhaps if there was only one girl trying to marry each man instead of half a dozen, we might understand better why she wanted to marry him. Or maybe I'm missing the point. It just seems to me that the girls always one day decide they love someone they've never spent any significant amount of time with, and thats it.

Anyway, as I say, its better than most, so if you like this sort of thing, You'll love this one.