Product Details

• Actors: Willem Dafoe, Miranda Richardson, Rosemary Harris, Tim Dutton, Nickolas Grace
• Directors: Brian Gilbert
• Writers: Adrian Hodges, Michael Hastings
• Producers: Harvey Kass, John Kay, Marc Samuelson, Miles A. Copeland III, Paul Colichman
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, NTSC
• Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Miramax
• VHS Release Date: September 11, 1996
• Run Time: 115 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6303549004
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #136,585 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Tom is T.S. Eliot (Willem Dafoe), the St. Louis-born poet who tried to turn himself into an Englishman. Viv is his wife, Vivienne Haigh-Wood (Miranda Richardson). She's got money, which allows him to give up his job and focus on poetry. She urges him on, promotes him to the Bloomsbury group (which adopts him but looks down its nose at her), and begins to go slightly crazy. Is it Eliot's chilly demeanor (in a terrific repressed performance by Dafoe) that's driving her nuts, or something else? In fact, she suffers from misdiagnosed physical ailments, and a combination of drugs and alcohol send her around the bend. It's hard to get emotionally involved in Dafoe's Eliot or to really plug into this story, though Richardson's passion nearly pulls you in. --Marshall Fine

From The New Yorker

The unhappy saga of T. S. Eliot's first marriage, transformed into a cautionary tale with a clear moral: stay away from poets. Willem Dafoe plays the young Eliot with a curious Boer accent and a look on his face that suggests he would be happier back in the jungles of "Platoon." As Vivienne, Eliot's distressed wife, Miranda Richardson gives such an overloaded performance that the simple drinking of a cup of tea becomes unwatchable. (If Vivienne really did behave like this, no wonder Eliot was in despair.) The movie regards the poet as a chilly repressive who locked away first his feelings and then-by extension-his wife. This view is, to put it mildly, open to argument, but the movie-sour, slow, and far more disdainful than the man it aims to expose-simply isn't good enough to sponsor useful debate. Brian Gilbert directs, heavily; the screenplay is by Michael Hastings (who wrote the original play) and Adrian Hodges. Those who think that poetry is a waste product of neurosis will have a lovely time. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "I can make you happy my darling", June 23, 2004

By 

M. J Leonard "MikeonAlpha" (Silver Lake, Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Tom & Viv (DVD)

Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in Missouri on September 26, 1888. He lived in St. Louis during the first eighteen years of his life and attended Harvard University. In 1910, he left the United States for the Sorbonne, having earned both undergraduate and masters degrees. After a year in Paris, he returned to Harvard to pursue a doctorate in philosophy, but returned to Europe and settled in England in 1914. The following year, he married Vivienne Haigh-Wood and began working in London, first as a teacher, and later for Lloyd's Bank.

Variously diagnosed with "moral insanity," anorexia and hysteria, Vivienne Haigh-Wood suffered from severe menstrual symptoms most of her life, as well as an inherited tendency for manic depression. Having collided in their desperation to escape their mothers, she and Tom married in 1915, to their families' disapproval and to Tom's quickly encroaching disgust. By the time Vivienne was committed to an asylum in 1938, five years after T. S. Eliot deserted her, she was a lonely, occasionally demented figure. Shunned by literary London, she was the neurotic wife whom Eliot had left behind.

Tom and Viv, a gorgeously produced, but terribly sad movie, begins after Tom and Vivienne have met and focuses on their troubled the marriage. The opening scenes show Vivienne fraught with headaches, sudden violent mood swings, irregular periods and showing her finding a type of solace and security in her relationship with Tom. Told from the point of view of both Tom and Vivienne, the movie is judiciously divided into four parts: 1915 - when Tom and Viv are courting, and when Vivienne shows signs of mental illness: 1919, straight after the war, when Tom is beginning to achieve notoriety as a poet; 1932, when Vivienne's illness is beginning to cause public embarrassment to her family, and 1944, after she has been finally committed to the Northumberland House sanitarium.

At first, her family is extremely hesitant to allow the marriage between Tom and Vivienne to take place. Her brother Maurice - stylishly played by Tim Dutton - neglects to tell Tom about her "troubles," and Vivienne's father accuses Tom of being after the family money. Tom, at the time, is a struggling poet, living in an attic in the City with Bertrand Russell who is considered "the most hated man in all of London." Tom feels that poetry is a "mugs game" but he tries to appeal to the good judgment of Vivienne's mother - played with remarkable grace by Rosemary Harris - to let him into the family. Vivienne desperately wants to make Tom happy, and it is to Miranda Richardson's credit that the viewer really gets a sense of Vivienne's quiet desperation. Vivienne is also very supportive of Tom - she reads for him and assists in getting his poetry published; he relies on her completely - she's his "first audience."

Willem Defoe brings a quiet and understated elegance to the role, and he expertly conveys Elliot's obvious love for Vivienne, while at the same time expressing a silent frustration over their relationship. As Vivienne steadily spins out of control, becoming more emotionally erratic, Tom realizes that he's married to a woman "that he loves, but everything that he does with her falls apart." Although he eventually contributed to Vivienne's institutionalization, she remains an honest person, who sticks by Tom, and his beliefs and she spiritually never really leaves him.

With a fine sense of period detail, the film gracefully and elegantly portrays life during the Edwardian era - the stuffy but gorgeous drawing rooms, the hats, the frocks and the newly invented motorcars. Tom and Viv is a fine-looking period piece that is emotionally quite heart wrenching, and the movie contains some of the best performances from some of the finest actors in the business. Mike Leonard June 04.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Sliced Version, July 16, 2003

By 

Dr.K "Happy" (The City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tom & Viv (DVD)

Careful: This DVD release of TOM AND VIV cuts my favorite scene contained in the original VHS edition--the one in which Viv dresses in disguise and goes to a public reading and book signing given by Tom, who graciously signs her book and pretends not to know her. If anyone else noticed this and has an explanation, please post!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent movie!, October 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Tom & Viv [VHS] (VHS Tape)

"Tom and Viv" was an excellent examination of the human condition. The way in which the relationship between the title characters is both explicit and implicit is true genius. This movie will draw no lines for you. You are forced to come away with your own conclusions. I have heard people say that they had no investment in either character. I feel that was the point. The viewer is forced to disect the relaionship. It examines love in true deconstructionist style. If you are looking for a movie about the pain and confusion that is any relationship, this is for you I will finish by saying this: I was not the same after watching this movie.