Redrave and Reeve fall for empty vessel

efitness

I just finished reading Henry James' "The Bostonians," and though I found the book to be a fine read and rather effective in capturing the many waves of emotion that flow through its often unappealing characters, I can't say I was taken much with its mean-spirited and narrow satire. This three-sided love story involving a feminist spinster, her rather dim protégée and a Southern knucklehead (I'm simplifying wildly here) involved me more than it should have, yet it left a bad the taste in my mouth. What is one to make of a tale in which two of the most vulnerable characters are left wounded by the "hero" (Olive Chancellor in the present, Verena Tarrant in the future) and noble ideals are trounced by bigotry, brutism and misogyny? The author's phobic attitude toward the "Boston Marriage" of the two heroines seems to mirror that of the southern chauvinist Basil Ransom (which is offputting) and the book never quite recovers from thoroughly humanizing the doomed females while setting them up to be trounced by the Great White Male.

Given that I found the book to have such objectionable themes, I probably should have stayed away from the film, but since movies have a long history of "free adaptations" of novels, I though that perhaps the film version of "The Bostonians" might give some form and direction to James' sometimes overwritten, anti-feminist jeremiad.

Well, I should have left well enough alone. The film is slavishly faithful to the book in all the wrong ways – LOTS of talking, VERY leisurely –and never manages to improve upon its flaws. Vanessa Redgrave is rather remarkable, as is Linda Hunt, but everybody else comes off sorely lacking, especially poor Christopher Reeve who tries to be dashing but makes Ransom even more odious than in the book (which I didn't think possible).

Scenes start and end with so little dramatic flow -or sense- that I really wonder what I would have made of the film had I not read the book (I don't think any of the behaviors of the characters would have made the least bit of sense). Though a weak attempt is made to make the ending less sexist than in the book, it's a case of too little, too late. "The Bostonians" still remains a politically offensive minor effort easily overlooked because it also commits the crime of being dull.

score 3/10

efitness 21 November 2006

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1526542/