Duchess, The (Blu-ray)
APPROX. 109 MINS. - PROD. YEAR: 2008 - MPA RATING: PG-13
" Just as the characters themselves seem indifferent to one another, so do we as an audience feel indifferent toward them.
Connect to Facebook/Twitter, recommend via email and much more.
The film industry doesn't make too many big, serious, period costume dramas. They're expensive, obviously, and most of them don't do well at the box office. "Amadeus" was an exception, but who could resist the music of Mozart? So, in 2008 Paramount came out with "The Duchess," the real-life tale of an eighteenth-century woman, Georgiana Spencer, who as the Duchess of Devonshire became one of the most influential women of her generation. If moviegoers around the world were like the ones in my neighborhood, they stayed away in droves, a condition, I'm afraid, that not even its Blu-ray treatment may ameliorate.
The movie's publicity department made quite an issue of comparing the Duchess of Devonshire to Princess Diana in terms of the Duchess's adoring public and her influence on dress styles, hairdos, even politics. I dunno. It makes me wonder why people idolize and follow celebrities as much as they do, but apparently it's an age-old tradition. Human nature never changes.
The movie begins in 1774 with the marriage of Georgiana Spencer (Keira Knightley), a young woman from a wealthy family, to the Duke of Devonshire (Ralph Fiennes), one of the most powerful men in England. Georgiana goes from living in a splendid country manor house to a London palace. Poor child. At the age of seventeen, Georgiana willingly married a man close to ten years her elder (something of a stretch for Fiennes, in reality about twenty-three years older than Knightley), who admits that his only interest in her is the production of a male heir.
According to what we see in the movie, the marriage was one of convenience for both parties. The Duchess and her social-climbing mother (Charlotte Rampling) wanted only a marriage to an important and influential man. The Duke, for his part, is an empty suit, with no feeling for anyone but himself and his legacy. How can the filmmakers hope that we will care about either of them?
In the first six years of their union, Georgiana gives birth only to girls, which outrages the Duke, who feels the woman has cheated him. Meanwhile, he expects his wife to ignore his own sexual peculiarities and extramarital escapades.
Everyone we meet in the film is a hollow shell. When the Duke cannot get the son he so desires, he takes on a mistress (Hayley Atwell) and brings her into the palace to live with him and his wife. In retaliation, Georgiana takes up with a young man (Dominic Cooper) who will eventually become the country's Prime Minister. As a background to this loveless, lifeless marriage, we see a vague swirl of politics and social encounters, parties, gambling, and further affairs. Yet the movie resolutely concentrates on the estrangement of the husband and wife, a drab and depressing relationship that never draws fire.
"The Duchess" plays like a "Masterpiece Theater" adaptation of an eighteen-century soap opera. Mostly, the movie tells us things rather than showing them to us. It tells us, for instance, that the British people loved Georgiana, yet we never see it or understand why. The movie tells us that Georgiana was an arbiter of culture and clothing, hats and wigs, the country's style leader, the "Empress of Fashion," yet we never see it except in a couple of scenes where in passing she's wearing elaborate gowns and headpieces. The movie never goes beneath the surface, never illuminates the characters, never makes us feel good or bad about them. Just as the characters themselves seem indifferent to one another, so do we as an audience feel indifferent toward them.
The story does make a few stabs at thematic material like feminism, women's rights, and the limitations of a male-dominated society, but it's halfhearted and lasts maybe two minutes total. The film also attempts to wow us with glorious location shots, stately manor houses, real-life palaces, beautiful countrysides, idyllic, pastoral settings, and busy cityscapes. Yet for all its attempts at verisimilitude, it never persuades us to believe that it's anything but a group of impersonal actors putting on a show.
