Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Well played and underrated, August 20, 2002
By A Customer
This movie seems to get a bad rap for strange reasons. I had no problem whatsoever with the accents, nor did I think Cate Blanchett's wardrobe was overly nice for wartime. (It was the FORTIES, and anyway, she's in muddy clothes for most of the film.) My one and only complaint is that we get a clearer sense of Charlotte as Dominique than of Charlotte as Charlotte. Things seem to progress a little too quickly early in the film, so that we don't know enough about who this girl was before she fell in love and started diving out of planes and blowing up Nazis. (This would help make the ending a tad more powerful.) Other than that--well played by all, very enjoyable, visually stunning, and as for the raging debate on accents, I'd like to say this: as Gillian Armstrong points out in the commentary, it's better to have British people with shallow accents than French people with accents so thick you can't understand them; Cate Blanchett was willing to do two-thirds of the film in French, but Armstrong feared criticism that her French wouldn't be perfect; and, as for those German-speaking Germans, they're foreigners taking over a foreign land. The fact that they're not speaking the language of the audience or the language of the townspeople makes them seem more alien and menacing. Do we desperately need to know exactly what they're saying? No, because you can figure out that they're not saying much beyond, "Get zem into ze truck" or "Stop making out on ze floor, Frenchies!" So sit back and enjoy.
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Simply Amazing!, June 8, 2002
"Charlotte Gray" is a film which has left me stunned, amazed and grateful at the chance for being able to see such brilliance. The movie consists of a simply thrilling storyline, beautiful scenery and wonderous acting on the parts of every character. It is a film for those who are willing to believe anything is possible - that "there must be something to set against all this".Charlotte Gray is a young Scottish woman who falls in love with a soldier who goes off to WW2. His plane crashes, and so, she becomes a spy to go to Occupied France to rescue him. Upon arriving in the Vichey France; she meets a team of revolutionaries and a new, and tangled storyline emerges from there. Many criticise both book and film for shirking on the WW2 accuracy, but I feel that it *concentrates* on ceratin aspects of the War, instead of skimming over about twenty different circumstances. Cate Blanchett is unbelievably good as Charlotte - she performs excellently and you can see how her character changes and grows throughout the film. Her stirring speech at the near the end of the movie is simply amazing - she delivers it with feeling and emotion. Billy Crudup took my breath away. He was more than fantastic in his role! He breathed life into the character of Julien, and captured my imagination with his performance. Truly excellent! Notable mentions go to all the other actors, but Billy and Cate stole the show, in my opinion. If you are looking for a fantstic movie that will take you to another time and place, make you think, and allow you to both remember the pain and tragedy that WW2 brought; and the hope for humanity that was displayed by the brave people who fought for good - Charlotte Gray is the movie for you. 10/10 - Simply Amazing!!
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
swoon!, July 20, 2002
I LOVED this movie. From the second it started, with its gorgeous shots of French lilacs or lavender or whatever beautiful purple flower they are, & its sublime musical score by Stephen Warbeck, I was hooked. Cate Blanchett is always dependably good, but she really shines here. Her role is that rare thing- a woman who is not a doormat, a girlfriend, a hooker, or a nun, and she never gets naked. How refreshing! Plus, it's directed by a woman- too cool! I found the love story between the characters of Charlotte Gray & Peter Gregory very believable & terribly romantic, and, as it should, it drives the film to its logical conclusion- a heartbreaking one. Indeed several scenes in this film made my eyes well up with tears. I also appreciated how Charlotte's experiences with loss weren't just glossed over, as in most movies I've seen where someone loses a loved one and by the next scene they're back to normal. Ms. Blanchett is to be commended for bringing that bit of true humanity to her character. It's just an all around beautifully made film, and I admire everyone involved in the making of it. The director's commentary is also very good and worth listening to, however she gives A LOT away, including parts of the book that weren't included in the film. She does a good job of answering her critics during her commentary, particularly speaking about her reasons for having the characters speak English, which originally struck me as a bit odd, but her reasons are legitimate, and, after all "Chocolat" & "Schindler's List," to name just two, are in English & nobody complained about that. One minor thing that I found annoying, though, was the quality of the disc's supplemental materials- they misspelled...both Cate Blanchett's & novelist Sebastian Faulks' names- shame on them!
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