The Magnificent Ambersons | Madeleine Stowe, Bruce Greenwood

The Magnificent Ambersons | Madeleine Stowe, Bruce Greenwood | A couple of minor additions

DVDs:

The Magnificent Am...

	The Magnificent Ambersons Madeleine Stowe, Bruce Greenwood A&E Home Video, 2002 average customer review:based on 27 reviews view larger image
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Alfonso Arau's handsome The Magnificent Ambersons, based on Orson Welles's original screenplay, is a brave attempt to restore the dramatic scenes lost when RKO radically recut Welles's magnificent 1941 masterpiece, but it's less a remake than a new take on the material. Bruce Greenwood makes a gracious and sincere Eugene Morgan, the inventor who woos heiress Isabel Amberson (a vibrant Madeleine Stowe) and finds his rival is her spoiled, arrogant son, George (played with sneering, bug-eyed intensity by Jonathan Rhys Meyers). It hits a few sour notes (notably Meyers and a terribly miscast Jennifer Tilly as the jealous Aunt Fanny), but the "new" scenes explore the sprawl of the city, the falling fortunes of the Amberson dynasty, and the almost incestuous intimacy between mother and son only hinted at in Welles's compromised version. It may lack the grand design and cinematic grace of Welles, but it creates its own gentle take on Booth Tarkington's turbulent novel. --Sean Axmaker

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Rise and fall of wealth and influence

As someone who has never seen previous version of this work either in theatre or other movie versions, I will confine this review to this particular movie. Set in late 1880s, film is full of sensuality and beautiful costumes peppered by restrained mannerisms of the period. Main story is about Amberson family who has made their money in real estate. They are old money and they know it. Isabel Amberson is a beautiful woman who chooses "safe" husband. Reliable and dull he is her safety net in the world she is so accustomed to. Their only son George is her one and only passion in her life. The two are inseparable and their co-dependency leads to almost incestuous relationship between overprotective mother and spoiled and jealous son. Death of Isabel's husband makes their relationship even more complicated. In order to restrain potential suitors from taking his beloved mother away from him, her son takes her on the indefinitely long trip around the world - until, too late, he discovers that his mother is gravely ill. Surrounding characters: Isabel's own brother and father, her sister-in-law Fanny and her flame from her youth Eugene Morgan all make interesting characters, but are all incapable of ensuring some distance between mother and her son. As family shrinks due to death and fortunes disappear due to Amberson family's inability to adjust to the new times, we see young George Amberson - spoiled, arrogant, jealous and overbearing grow to learn to be kind and caring, responsible and strong since his world of protection and privilege disappears right before his eyes. This is one of those great family sagas, deep psychological exploration of human relationships at times when world to women was a closed one - when they were vitual property of their sons and husbands, where class determined one's future in terms of their profession, marriage prospectsability to prosepr thru strong social connections. I loved the costumes and jewelry in the movie. Most actors were good, except that Jennifer Tilly acts more as a spiteful child than a sinister spinster aunt.

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A couple of minor additions

The review at the top, Not Quite Magnificent, captures my attitude perfectly. While some things work, and the backstory of the declining family is more interesting than the self-absorbed creeps who are front and center, this thing flops around gasping for air for a painfully long time. Why, I kept asking myself.

I have seen many of these actors in other films, and they are all competent or good. But here, every note, every speech, every aside feels forced and contrived. They even walk woodenly. Jonathan Rhys Meyers, a new one for me, is just awful, a tedious and exasperating automaton who is without a trace of humanity. OK, maybe that's the character, but why does he talk like that? And I learn he is Irish. So why, in a huge sprawling film like this, do they use an Irish actor to create a Midwestern voice? It is all wrong, never once sounding like a person. Emblematic of much more.

Masterpiece Theater uses skilled actors who capture the nuances of their characters and make them spring alive. This was the most stagnant production I've ever endured. The actors are usually standing stiffly or glaring. Even the dancing was stolid. Four turgid hours of clumsiness. So if everyone is awful, the pacing is comatose, and the whole thing is chilly and cold, it must be the director. Never have I been so aware of good intentions gone awry. One wonders what Welles would have produced wtih a similar budget and length, but certianly not this mess.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

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