Product Details

• Actors: Jeremy Irons, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Winona Ryder, Antonio Banderas
• Directors: Bille August
• Writers: Bille August, Isabel Allende
• Producers: Bernd Eichinger, Dieter Meyer, Edwin Leicht, Mark Rosenberg, Martin Moszkowicz
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Studio: Live / Artisan
• DVD Release Date: August 14, 2001
• Run Time: 140 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00005QCVW
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #43,714 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
The House of the Spirits is a generational tale of life among the ruling class in a South American country, as adapted from the Isabel Allende novel, but the political realities coexist very uneasily with the magical realism in this Bille August film. The star power alone (Jeremy Irons, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Winona Ryder, Antonio Banderas, Vanessa Redgrave, and Armin Mueller-Stahl) should have cranked it up a few notches, but that's not the case. Irons is appropriately cruel as the ambitious man who achieves wealth and makes everyone around him miserable and Streep is luminous, but it's slow and ponderous all the way. --Marshall Fine

From The New Yorker
Adapted from the novel by Isabel Allende, and directed by Bille August, this is really quite an achievement. It brings together Jeremy Irons, Meryl Streep, Winona Ryder, Antonio Banderas, and Vanessa Redgrave and insures that, without exception, they all give their worst performances ever. It all starts in Latin America in the nineteen-twenties, with Irons as Esteban Trueba, a devilish patriarch with a wife (Streep) who is clairvoyant, though strangely unable to see how terrible this movie is going to be. Then there's his creepy sister, played by Glenn Close-the only performer to emerge with a scrap of dignity. One generation down, his errant daughter (Ryder) is torn between thoughtful voice-overs ("Our memory is fragile") and soupy talk with Antonio Banderas: "I love you and you love me, and that's what matters. I hear you've started to make political speeches." And so on, for decades. It's hard to name the low point of this stinker, but in the end it has to be Irons' accent. If you thought Clint Eastwood doing John Huston in "White Hunter, Black Heart" sounded silly, get a load of Jeremy Irons: he sounds like John Huston doing Clint Eastwood doing James Stewart doing Anthony Quinn. A baffling blend of the earnest and the sloppy, "House of the Spirits" turns into the funniest Hollywood movie of the nineties without ever being any fun. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars AN OUTSTANDING MULTI-GENERATIONAL FAMILY SAGA..., August 5, 2001

By	Lawyeraau (Balmoral Castle) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

This review is from: The House of the Spirits (DVD)

I love this movie! It has a stellar cast, who give top notch performances. How can you go wrong with Jeremy Irons, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Antonio Banderas, Winona Ryder, Vanessa Redgrave, and Armin Muehler-Stahl? The answer is that you can't. It is a riveting piece of film making, based loosely upon Isabelle Allende's wonderful book of the same name.

The film delicately captures the mysticism of the book, rendering those scenes in which such is the focal point highly believable. This is no mean feat given the subject matter. The story takes place in South America. The saga begins in the nineteen thirties.

Vanessa Redgrave and Armin Muehler-Stahl play the wealthy and liberal parents of two daughters, Rosa and Clara Del Valle. Rosa is the beautiful, older daughter. Clara, played by Meryl Streep's real life daughter, is a lovely child with exceptional, psychic gifts. Jeremy Irons plays the part of Esteban Trueba, an impoverished young man in love with Rosa. Vowing to make his fortune in order to marry her and provide her with the comforts to which she is accustomed, he succeeds in making his fortune. He loses Rosa, however, before being able to marry her, when she drinks poisoned wine intended for her liberal party father.

Esteban, broken hearted, leaves with his fortune and buys an estancia, where he sternly rules with an iron fist over the peasants who work the land for him. They obsequiously refer to him as "Patron". He takes what he wants, even the women, with the expected result. He has a bastard son whom he does not acknowledge.

Esteban has a spinster sister, Ferla, well acted by Glenn Close, who, for the past twenty years, has lived a grim existence in the city with their ailing mother, whom she has taken care of. When their mother dies, Esteban, now a bitter and lonely man, returns to the city from his estancia to attend his mother's funeral. In doing so, he spots Clara, who is now all grown up and ethereally portrayed by the very talented Meryl Streep. Not wasting a moment, he goes to her home. She, luminous, and mystical, already knows that he is there to ask for her hand in marriage and happily accepts. After all, she has loved him ever since she first saw him all those years ago.

Clara lovingly embraces his sister, Ferla, into the bosom of her househould, when they move to her Esteban's estancia. Ferla blossoms from a bitter old maid into a companionable and pleasant woman, under Clara's warmth. Esteban and Clara eventually have a child, Blanca, who grows up playing with Pedro, the son of the estancia's indigenous indian foreperson. When Esteban discovers this, he sends Blanca away to boarding school. He does not want his daughter fraternizing with the peasants.

Clara, loving and pure of heart, is his exact opposite. When their daughter finally grows up and returns home from school, she knows that the independent Blanca, well played by Winona Ryder, has fallen in love with her childhood playmate, Pedro, passionately portrayed by Antonio Banderas. Esteban hates Pedro, as Pedro is a liberal inciting the peasants to unionize and demand their rights, whipping them into a frenzy against the "Patron", or so Esteban sees it. He drives Pedro off his land. He also drives Ferla off, as he believes her to have unatural feelings for his wife, Clara. Possessive to a fault, he is consumed by jealousy. Clara and Esteban have a fight over his cruelties, and she finally leaves him, taking Blanca with her to the Del Valle family home in the city.

Meanwhile, life goes on. Blanca, pregnant by Pedro, has his child, believing that Pedro has been killed by her father. Esteban, representing the wealthy, becomes senator. He reigns for years, until the liberals win power. When they do, however, their tenure is short lived, as a militairy coup sets up a reign of terror and his old sins come home to roost. Meanwhile, Blanca discovers that Pedro is alive, and they joyously hook up again. When Blanca is picked up as a political dissident and tortured for her political views, Esteban, old and broken, is now just a bit player in a larger arena. Too late, he tries to right some wrongs. Some of the wrongs, however, can never be righted.

This is a magnificent, multi-generational family epic, that holds the viewer in its thrall. While it only loosely follows Isabelle Allende's wonderful book of the same name, it is a winner in its own right. It has something for everyone, as it deals with human nature, as well as the complex emotions, forces, and events that shape one. The film is about a family struggling to find its place in our ever changing world, and the relationships that each member of that family forges. It is a rich and vibrant tapestry, which succeeds in capturing the viewer.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A heart-warming story presented by an excellent cast., February 12, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The House of the Spirits [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This movie has a lot of "reading points" and has achieved something very difficult. Bring together top-rank cast usually does not produce good results. But, "House of the Spirits" proves that it can work fine. Inner-family problems and lack of communication as well as greed in a class-oriented society couldn't be told better. The movie has so many universal themes, finely blended. U.S. version unfortunately is not in its entirety. I say, don't miss if you see the European (longer version) by any chance.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The DVD version has been edited and is shorter than the VHS., April 15, 2004

By	Anton Karidian (Toronto) - See all my reviews

I've saw this movie on VHS a long time ago. I saw it again on DVD recently and I have noticed that it has been re-edited and shortened. In the longer version, the Jeremy Irons character at the beginning of the film is in his old age. He visits his old farmhouse with his daughter and remembers the years gone past. The movie then goes into a flashback and tells the story from his youth.

In the DVD version, the entire opening scene is omitted and the story is told from the beginning. Therefore there is NO suggestion of a flashback. The edited out opening scene is quite poignant and gives more insight into the Jeremy Irons character.

Decent and interesting film none the less. Hopefully the studio will release it in it's original unedited version with extras.