The Wings of the Dove | | Cast : | Helena Bonham Carter, Linus Roache | | Director : | Iain Softley | | Studio : | Miramax Home Entertainment | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Dolby, Widescreen | | Released Date : | November 07, 1997 | | DVD Released Date : | January 04, 2005 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), English (Subtitled), English (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | July 19, 2005 | | Summary | Venetian Interlude | Content
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This film ranks high in using great camera work, directing as well as color. Being filmed in both London & Venice gave it places for great back fround focus.
My favorite person as an actress is in it as well Helena Bonham-Carter. She is very perfect in the role she plays as well as a great actress. I have seen her performances in many excellent films. |
| Rating | | | Date | June 26, 2005 | | Summary | "What Could the Rain Do to Me?" | Content
| Rarely has a film of such extraordinary visual beauty reached the profound emotional depths of this magnificently acted period film from Iain Softley. Based on the novel by Henry James, cinematographer Eduardo Serra sets a table of beauty and elegance while screenwriter Houssein Amini serves up dishes of love, passion and desire, all arranged in their proper order by director Softley, creating an unforgettable dining experience.
Helena Bonham Carter is Kate, a passionate beauty in love with Martin (Linus Roache), a man without money. Charlotte Rampling is her rich aunt, who may force her to marry well, but not for love. Kate has a fire burning beneath her dark beauty, however, and when fate gives her an opportunity to show Martin how she loves, a dangerous journey down winding currents is begun, and neither she nor Martin will be prepared for what awaits them at the river's end.
Alison Elliot is simply marvelous as Millie, her finest role since "The Spitfire Grill." Millie is a charming American girl of great wealth reaching out to touch life before it passes by. She and Kate will become fast and inseparable friends, but Millie's attraction to Martin and a secret discovered by Kate will set in tenuous motion a plan to solve all their problems. When the maneuvering of lives like chess pieces involves both the human heart and someone as special as Millie, however, unforseen complications can arise.
Helena Bonham Carter may have received all the nominations as the beautiful and passionate Kate, but Alison Elliot's portrayel of the sweet and open Millie, rich but lonely, and desparate for love, deserved an Oscar and Golden Globe nomination as well. Italy is beautifully recreated from the period in a film of both depth and beauty.
This film is a true cinematic masterpiece. A gratuitous scene with Carter near the end of this film seems out of place, but can not detract from its beauty. Fine Italian lace is gently lifted back to reveal an emotionally naked look at the human heart. It is substance with beauty and beauty with substance, and is not to be missed. |
| Rating | | | Date | June 09, 2005 | | Summary | A ravishing rewrite of the parlour room drama | Content
| Watching The Wings of the Dove on dvd after years of not seeing it, I felt as though I were watching a completely new movie - the ravishing cinematography of Eduardo Serra makes this a completely new experience from its video transfer that I first saw. The rain-strewn canals of Venice seem to have never looked so vivid, romantic, and - cineastes beware - symmetrical. This becomes so eye-catching because despite amazing Merchant-Ivory productions, the turn-of-the-century class-romance conflict has never been made like it is here. That's because beneath its struggle between desire and social mores is two fully vivid women whose characterizations embody the full depths and aspirations of humanity (not to a mention a deliciously misanthropic turn by Charlotte Rampling as icy Aunt Maude). Alison Elliot never quite got the credit she deserved for matching Milly's rapaciousness towards life with her rapaciousness towards Martin - and Kate. And Helena Bonham Carter gives equal parts sizzle and sympathy to the almost totally sympathy-less Kate, who, at her center, is a fairly vile manipulator. The fact that the movie could have such romantic force despite our very human reservations towards what's going on onscreen is a testament to the full gradations of life Iain Sotley and Hossein Amini bring to Henry James's novel - and it makes this thick British drama a pulsating force. |
| Rating | | | Date | December 14, 2004 | | Summary | These wretched aristocrats can't even heat their houses. | Content
| Helena Bonham Carter is one of those rare actresses in Hollywood that is able to completely involve the audience with her passion, her terror, or her conniving plans with only the flutter of her eyes. She can literally tell an entire story with just her eyes. They are so full of passion and desire throughout the course of this film that you cannot help yourself but keep your own eyes focused on them. When she is on screen, her eyes demand respect, and she finds it. Perhaps this was why this film was her best film to date, being recognized by the Academy and from her fellow peers. I think that the reason this film was different than all the others is because of Carter and several outside factors. While these factors do skyrocket this film in my eyes, there is one element that keeps this film grounded and somewhat ruined.
Let me begin by saying that I hate, absolutely dislike, all period piece films. I can be honest enough to say that I have never seen a period piece film that I simply adored and was taken aback with, until I watched The Wings of a Dove. There was something about this film that just grabbed me and immersed me into the world that director Iain Softley had created. First, it was the characters. As I mentioned before, Helena steals the show with not only her deep character study and development, but also with those passionate eyes. You can see hints of intelligence and stupidity all rolled into one, which really helped develop the rest of this film. To accompany Helena through this journey, you have two other actors that keep up their end of the bargain. Linus Roache compliments Helena perfectly. His honest devotion to this conniving woman and his lack of self-preservation gives us that character that we know little about, but are quietly rooting for. Then there is Alison Elliot, who literally comes in with guns a-blazing. She is the most difficult character of the film due to the amount of layers that she must convey, but in the end she shines and brings upon us a very emotional ending. Throw in the mix a cameo by two great actors, Michael Gambon and Charlotte Rampling, and you have quite possibly the best names to helm this project.
With characters going to their full potential by the strength of some amazing actors, what also compliments this film is the charismatic story that helps lead the actors. Seasoned with a feeling of Dangerous Liaisons, this film takes us to a whole new level of sophistication and lust. When one woman will stop at nothing to ensure that she has the lifestyle that she desires, plus the man that she wants, she will look past friendships and morality. This shines through in not only Henry James' novel, but also in Hossein Amini's screenplay. With the amazing talent of Softley directing, we have scenes like that at the beginning of the film (eerie wordless Strangers on a Train moment) coupled with gorgeous shots of the "City of Love", Venice. We have a multi-faceted story that goes beyond my premature expectations.
While I felt this was an amazing film and Carter should have been recognized more for her role, there was one scene that I felt pushed me into that "brick wall" of cinema. It was as if I was travelling quickly through this film, taking in all the sights and sounds of these complex characters, when suddenly I was hit by a brick wall. The "brick wall" that I speak about is a very pornographic scene in this film with Carter. I felt that it wasn't needed, nor really brought any real relevance to the story, other than a nude actress. This took away from the overall scope of the film, and for me took this powerful drama down a notch.
Overall, I was impressed. It took me away from my consistent dislike of period piece dramas, but that violent sexual scene just turned me in disgust. Don't get me wrong, I am all for nudity if it progresses the plot, but this was not in any coherent context to the film. I just thought that Softley wanted to see Carter naked. Perhaps I am wrong, but it just didn't seem to fit. Outside of that, it was an outstanding film, which is worthy of all the honors it was bestowed during the year that it was released.
Grade: *** out of ***** |
| Rating | | | Date | December 11, 2004 | | Summary | A fascinating "modernization" of the Henry James novel | Content
| I have been seeing previews for "The Wings of the Dove" for years on various DVDs that I have rented and finally got around to watching this adaptation of the Henry James novel. When I finished watching it the thing that struck me was how the attempt to modernize the story worked both for and against what James had written. Now, what makes this a particularly perspective to take on the film is that the adaptation by Hossein Amini moves the time frame of the story up eight years to 1910. That might seem a minor change, one scarcely worthy of note, but in 1902 good old Queen Victoria had not been in her tomb a year and the age that bears her name was still on its last legs (more to the point, James had been working on the novel for years, so it was clearly written during the Victorian Age). When you change the setting to 1910 it is then the end of the Edwardian Age, which makes a big difference, especially from the standpoint of English morality.
Kate Croy (Helena Bonham-Carter) has taken as her lover Merton Densher (Linus Roache), who has neither the position nor the fortune to win her hand. Kate's father (Michael Gambon) is destitute, and they both depend on the good graces of her dour and demanding Aunt Maude (Charlotte Rampling), who forbids the union and has a rich man in mind for Kate who seems willing to marry for love but would like it even more if money was involved. When Kate seeks independence from her aunt she enters the circle of Millie Theale (Alison Elliott), an American girl who is known as "the richest orphan in the world" and who is seeing the world before she dies, and a plan is hatched. Merton will woo Millie, marry her before she dies, and inherit her fortune, at which point he can marry Kate and the life they envision will become reality. I think you see it coming from a mile away that Merton will fall for Millie before she dies, and that there is a price to be paid for such an undertaken.
James makes this story even more interesting because Millie harbors little if any illusions as to what Kate and Merton are up to. Kate tells Merton their plan will succeed because she knows how Millie loves, but she never realizes that the same is true for the American girl. Besides, Millie is touring Europe on her own agenda, which is to drink deeply from the cup of life before it is untimely ripped from her lips. For her, Merton's attentions are something else to be experienced. Perhaps she knows that he will play the part so well that at some point he will stop acting, and perhaps it does not matter to her because when she is dead in grave the difference will not matter a whit.
The shift in period matters because the master plan here runs more against the grain of Victorian morality than it does compared to the looser standards that followed. Within another decade the English would be fighting a war involving machine guns, poisoned gas, bombs dropped from airplanes, and a new array of modern horrors. Move the story forward another eight years and we would expect Kate's character to be urging Merton to murder Millie, which would actually make her more like the Kate in the novel than what we find in this 1997 film.
In the end, the fact that Kate and Millie like each other and that Millie implicitly acknowledges and accepts the deal that is represented by Merton, makes a big difference. The question is not whether the plan will work, but what will Merton and Kate be like when it is over and what will have happened to both their relationship and the plans that they have made. Millie is in love with life, and some of that rubs off on Merton, so that he is not the man Kate sent off into the arms of another women. In his attempt to get what he wants, he comes even closer to something he can never have and in the final scene all that Kate can offer to him seems rather hollow.
The performances in "The Wings of the Dove" are, for the most part, beautifully understated. Bonham-Carter was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, as was Amini's adapted screenplay, Eduardo Serra's cinematography, and Sandy Powell's costume design. Ultimately, I think Amini's decision to move the story forward from the end of one age to another, is on the mark and the changes that required in James' novel work if for no other reason than having Kate know how much she is risking in sending Merton to Millie's side from the very start makes the human drama much richer. |
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