ellelldee

Totally gripping, unpredictable, and gorgeously directed and designed. Ben Stiller, I had no idea. Our little Zoolander is all grown up. I had some down time, and I binged all existing seasons basically in 4 days. It's like nothing I've ever seen.

Credit must be given to the total look and feel of the show. Its chilly color palette of white, blue, and grey is set in a perpetually wintry landscape. Its shapes are all square, sharp angles, very few organic forms or colors. It sets the tone from the very beginning, and rarely deviates from it, although when it does, it is to great effect.

I really don't know how to describe the premise without spoilers, but let's just say it's an out there interpretation of the kind of corporate culture that demands absolute commitment above and beyond every other aspect of one's life. On steroids.

Pretty much every single character in this series is smarter than our entire current cabinet put together. (I'm writing this in 2025.)

I grew up in the Foreign Service, although not nearly at the heights the people here inhabit. But I can say that almost everyone in this excellent series is far more intelligent, informed, and capable than most of the FSOs I knew. Not including my own family of course, whose FSO was in fact intelligent, informed, and capable, and at one point was able to make a big difference for a lot of people.

I love Austen, and there have been some stellar adaptations. This is not one of them.

Some very weird directorial decisions were made here, few of them good.

Let's begin with the leading lady. Sally Hawkins is an able actor, I have seen her in other things, but she was poorly directed in this. In the opening scene, she is bustling about Kellynch Hall with a clipboard as they prepare to leave, and her mouth is open the entire time. In fact, her mouth is hanging open for most of the movie, and it got annoying and distracting. Ann Elliott, her character, is genial and accommodating, but this film portrays her as a such a shrinking violet that she seems to be flinching at every moment. She has no personality. The character in the book is spoken of as very capable, which she has to be, as her father and sisters are hopelessly deluded. She is the realistic, intelligent one who gets things done and is able to laugh at herself and her family. But in this version, she is passive, timorous, and humorless.

Through no fault of the actors, all of whom are solid performers with good track records, most of the rest of the characters are equally poorly delineated, very one-dimensional. The humor and verve of the novel are completely lost, so the baronet was not amusingly vain, he is just a peevish fool. Elizabeth was not absurd in her conceit, she was just a b-word. Mary was just a silly snob. None of the wit of their portrayals was present.

There are some very odd camera angles and framing. The close-ups are sometimes uncomfortably close for no reason. Scenes that should have been mid-range group shots were spliced up into individual close-ups that didn't make any sense, and at odd angles, so it was choppy and uncomfortable. There is nothing wrong with odd angles per se, but they should serve a purpose, create a particular mood, highlight an aspect of a situation. These instances did not. They were just weird.

There is one scene in which two of the men are walking along the seawall in Lyme, and they are getting drenched with sea spray and waves breaking over the wall. It was ridiculous. No sane person would be walking along the seawall in those conditions. I felt bad for the actors. They were soaking wet. They must have been freezing. Why? There was no call for this at all. It's not a dramatic scene, it was just a basic walk and talk. If they wanted scenic, there's oodles of scenery where they're not in danger of being dashed into the ocean or contracting pneumonia. I was so distracted by the soaking that I had to rewind to listen to what they were actually saying. More pointless weirdness.

In another scene, Ann is bustling around in mixed company in a state of undress that no lady of the time would ever consider remotely proper, especially one portrayed as so demure. She's in her chemise with her robe falling off her shoulders. It was senseless and conspicuously weird. In that same scene, she also resets someone's broken collarbone! What? When on earth would she have learned to do such a thing?

For some reason the decision was made to alter the ending so that poor Ann is literally running around Bath like a madwoman, breathless and ridiculous.

Odd decisions and poor direction spoiled this for me.