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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
84 of 85 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant adaptation,
By
This review is from: A Dance to the Music of Time (DVD)
A Dance to the Music of Time is a series of twelve novels by the English author Anthony Powell, a fictionalized version of his own life that invites comparisons to Proust's In Search of Lost Time. The running time of seven hours for the adaptation, therefore, is not surprising given the enormous scope of the project, which charts the life of its semi-autobiographical protagonist, Nick Jenkins, from his schoolboy days through to his old age in the burgeoning cultural revolution of the 1960s. This series was first shown on TV in 1997 when I was living in Australia, and so I have had the opportunity to watch it three times already. I can therefore say with some authority that this is perhaps the best literary adaptation that I have ever seen. The first episode can be a little off-putting, as characters seem to keep bumping into each other at random, but you soon realize that this is not a silly device on the part of the novelist, but an accurate reflection of the incestuous nature of the upper class in England at this time (or really, any time). The production is sumptuous, and the acting is universally good. Stand out performances include Simon Russell Beale, the victim/villain of the piece (he will be fixed in my mind forever as the definite image of Widmerpoole) and, coming later in the series, Miranda Richardson in brilliant form as Pamela Flitton, a twisted maneater. Richardson, who too often gets cast in shrill, nasty roles, is in top form here, chewing up the scenery with seductive viciousness. You don't really need to read the novels to follow what is going on (although I recommend them highly), and the first episode, simply because it has to set everything up, demands a certain level of attention. But overall I love this adaptation, and I'm glad that I can finally own it on DVD.
30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Flashdance,
By
This review is from: A Dance to the Music of Time (DVD)
A valiant effort, but a forlorn hope: Anthony Powell's wonderful 12-volume series "A Dance to the Music of Time" simply cannot be told, nor its essence captured, in eight hours: briskness is antithetical to Powell's purpose. The plot is consistently interesting throughout the books, but the atmosphere, personality and social history conveyed in them are really what make the books worth reading: they are very nearly everything. These things take time to make themselves be felt, yet this production scurries through the story like a blinkered Atalanta, never stopping to pick up the golden apples strewn at her feet. Inevitable comparisons have been made to "Brideshead Revisited," whose author was a great fan of Powell's work (hardly surprising, since Powell's prose is often reminiscent of Waugh's), but whereas the "Brideshead" series spent nearly eleven hours to dramatize a single 350-page book (which works out to a leisurely 32 pages per hour), this newer series attempts to dramatize twelve 300-page books in a scant eight hours -- that's approximately 450 pages an hour, a pace that would cross the eyes of the world's fastest speed reader. While Powell's tone and concerns are closely related to those of "Brideshead"'s, this series has more in common with Evelyn Wood than Evelyn Waugh. It is hard to imagine trying to follow the plot of this series without having first read the books . . . more than once.
Still, the production is often quite beautiful (though there are a few scenes that look as if they were shot on the cheap); the acting is generally excellent, with a few really wonderful performances -- Sir John Gielgud zips through his role amusingly; so does Edward Fox, who pops up several times in the first few hours; as Charles Stringham in the war years, Paul Rhys is particularly memorable and has what is probably the best scene in the entire series. The author's alter-ego, Nicholas Jenkins, is played by three utterly dissimilar actors; he somehow manages to grow several inches shorter upon leaving school and then abruptly ages 30 to 35 years about six and a half hours into it. As the odious, ubiquitous Widmerpool, Simon Russell Beale is the only main character to play his role from beginning to end. It's a lovely, funny performance. It must be noted, however, that he is hardly believable as a 17 year old and looks even more bizarre in the final hour, as he capers about in an obvious rubber baldpate, but these errors cannot reasonably be scored against him. The greatest shame, I suppose, is that after this expensive, lengthy (but not lengthy enough) and unsatisfactory dud, there is probably no longer any chance that these books will ever be given a proper dramatization.
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
OUTSTANDING once you get through Disc One!,
By
This review is from: A Dance to the Music of Time (DVD)
This is perhaps my favorite set of novels. Given that, I was very skeptical as to the dramatization of Powell's 12 book "cycle." It is brilliant! HOWEVER: since there are at least 20 personae to keep up with, Disc One is almost entirely squib outlines. Think of these as random memories from Nick Jenkin's youth that are robustly completed in the series' remaining five and a half hours. For an additional bonus, read the books afterward - they are perhaps the best use of the written English vocabulary. Pullulate and palimpsest - what great words!
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