Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2077 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-03-13
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English, Portuguese
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 159 minutes

Synopsis
It's Victorian England, 1848. Helen Graham becomes the new tenant at Wildfell Hall. Her unconventional life hides a hidden past. A period drama based on the novel by Anne Bronte.

Customer Reviews

Too short to do justice
I had just read the book prior to watching the film and couldn't help thinking at various scenes how distorted the characters were. The film failed to show how the main characters Mr Markham and Mrs Huntingdon started out with relatively benign lives and how these lives slowly deteriorated over time. It failed to show how agreeable Mr Huntingdon was initially to Helen's eyes that blinded her into committing to a life of suffering. All we saw in the film was this brute of a character and why on earth she went for him, no one can tell.

Poor Mr Markham was a simple pleasant farmer whose temperament deteriorated slower than it did in the film, making him quite a disagreeable fellow on the whole. Mr Lawrence suffered the same fate. His intense dislike for Mr Markham changed the nature of their relationship and diminished his role in unintentionally keeping the candle burning between the two lovers.

Perhaps it should have been made in 4 parts. I felt it was too rushed to do justice to Ms Bronte's novel.

good but not as good as it could have been
----spoilers---

The acting was excellent and the sets and everything except the script at the end. Did they run out of money as they reached the end? The final couple of scenes were so different to the rest of this play - so rushed and shortened it was ridiculous and I got annoyed as hero and heroine had hardly any chance to establish their happiness at long last after all that misery and separation, and give us a decent embrace before the credits came rushing up. I simply couldn't believe how badly this finale was botched. So what was up till then an excellent production suddenly became bathotic. Full marks to handsome hero Toby Stephens and plucky heroine Tara Fitzgerald trying their level best to put over what they could in a few seconds of coming together at the end but frankly, the scriptwriter or the director or the editor, whoever was responsible for this dreadfully bad last scene, should have been forced to do it again and get it right.

What an infuriatingly clever tale this is - with poor heroine feeling forced due to the customs of the time to stick by her utterly vile, demented and violent husband. A real lesson to us women to be grateful we didn't live then under those awful, restrictive rules. There are limits to what any woman should have to take from a bad husband but then it was indeed for better for worse and worse worse worse for this heroine.

Worth having for a great story and fine acting from everyone including of course Rupert Graves as the wicked husband we all love to hate.

suprisingly good
Now I loathed the novel when I read it years ago. Too much Bronte smugness for me and not a patch on the Byronic heroes of Rochester and Heathcliff. This drama has changed my mind about it. Tara Fitzgerald appears as the abrasive uppity tenant to start with but you soon get the hang of her world. Let's face it this is poor little Anne Bronte's attempt to do Trisha- "My brother-is-an-over-indulged-drunken-lout". You get her total horror as the new neighbours try to get her small son tiddly and then get huffy about it. There is one glorious moment of camera work as the lens spins around Tara's head as her life disintegrates. Rupert G has fun being the irritating husband and the Bit of Rough, Toby Stephens beats up his love rivals with enthusiasm (I was trying to work out who he was and found he played Orsino in Nunn's Twelfth Night- totally unrecognisable!)
Frankly although I'm normally a purist I'm not going to reread the novel to spot the differences. This is fairly good cossie drama entertainment and is worth approaching as such.