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One of my all time favorites.

Memorable, crazy movie

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

I fell across the DVD of this purely accidentally when I was perusing the shelves in our little country library. What a masterpiece! Love Trollope, but haven't read this one yet, so that is a joy in store. I was glued to this - hardly found the energy to go to my day job - and was very rude to anyone who tried to interrupt me. David Suchet is a wonderful actor, as are many of the cast. So nice to see so many of the quality British actors who don't appear in every UK movie to emerge. The mangled accent of Mrs Hertle have been abused enough, let's just say she didn't quite make it. And the Miller won his lass! It was fascinating to see the issues and prejudices of the era handled and brought out into the open, and the ravings of the desperate Melmutte at the end could almost make you sorry for the monster that he was. Ably executed, horribly addictive, and a total pleasure.Since this review, I have read the book. What a disappointment the DVD is by comparison - obviously the book is nearly 800 pages, so one was expecting cuts, less characters etc, but why was Paul Montague sent to Mexico when he never went in the book, and Ruby Ruggles!! She never did THAT in the book either - and was living with her grandfather, not her father. I understand certain changes, but my argument with major changes is why use the book at all if you wish to write your own story? A great pity, because this is an excellent production which must have been aimed that those who would never read Trollope.

Warning - I hated it.The entire time I was watching this, I kept feeling sorry for the poor set-construction crew. After each day's shooting ended, they only had around 12 hours to repair all of the serious damage caused by the actors chewing the scenery so hard; there must have been tooth-marks all over everything, and some of it was probably bitten right through. Perhaps they also had to keep a dental-hygenist on-set to assist with removing splinters from the actors teeth.The acting was generally atrocious, and I found Suchet's histrionics ghastly - it made me think of Jim Carrey going completely out of control, or Elizabeth Taylor's hysterics in "Suddenly Last Summer" - which people often mistake for serious acting. But I'd say that the primary responsibility for this shambles lies directly at the feet of a seriously incompetent and green director, and a surprisingly poor adaptation from Davies. I found it to be a horrible mess, and Trollope must be spinning in his grave.

I found two elements of this miniseries jarring.First, Melmotte's opponent in the parliamentary election uses the phrase "pie in the sky". This is a 20th Americanism (appearing first in Joe Hill's "The Preacher and the Slave" in a 1911 IWW songbook), not something found in England circa 1870.Second, Davies has Melmotte speak out in parliament against protectionism. Why did Davies feel the need to hang the albatross of Melmotte around the neck of free trade?

Another fine Sunday night filler from Andrew Davies and the BBC. Based on one of Anthony Trollope's later and less well known novels, this six -part story (300 minutes) covers the short but spectacular career in London of Augustus Melmott, financial fraudster extraordinaire. Melmott is a Victorian Robert Maxwell (the bouncing Czech), a promoter of huge ambitious business ventures with a flamboyant style that proves irresisitable even to the hard-nosed. Like Maxwell, he has a seat in the House of Commons. Some of the hard-nosed have their suspicions but go along for the ride anyway no doubt hoping to get something for themselves along the way.Trollope weaves the strands of the plot adroitly using the Carbury family as the central characters. Lady Carbury (Cheryl Campbell) is the widow of a baronet (minor aristocracy) and without the means to live in the appropriate style. Her son Felix (Matthew McFadyen) is a total waster, putting any money he gets on the card table, and losing it. Lady C is trying to palm her rather priggish daughter Hetta (Paloma Baeza) off onto her nephew Roger (Douglas Hogg), also a prig, who has inherited the family estates. Roger is interested but Hetta is not, as she fancies Paul Montague (Cillian Murphy), a railway engineer and friend of Roger's. Murphy works for Melmott's company (the board is stacked with peers and baronets, including Felix). The Central American railway is supposed to be building a railroad from the central west of the US to Mexico. The railroad route has been surveyed, but funnily enough construction keeps on being delayed even though enough money has been raised to at least start it. Where's the money Melmott? Some is syphoned into his daughter Marie's trust fund. Marie (Shirley Henderson) is courted by Felix, who is very interested in the money, though not so interested in Marie.To say more would spoil the story. The casting is splendid, except for Cillian Murphy as Paul whose pretty-boy looks are more appropriate for a Romeo than some who has been a civil engineer for some years and spent a lot of that time in the merciless Mexican sun. As his American mistress Mrs Hurtle, Miranda Otto, otherwise a capable actress, can't do the Deep South accent. It would have been better to re-write the part for an Australian. If it's any consolation, Meryl Streep can't do an Australian accent either – it comes out as cockney, as we saw in 'Evil Angels'.The star performance is without a doubt David Suchet's as Melmott. Though a small man, he dominates every scene he is in, with his deep loud voice and grand manner. Critics are silenced by a mixture of flattery, bluff and sometimes threat. In the finish we almost like him, despite the chaos he causes. It is truly the role David Suchet was born to play, one utterly different from his small fussy Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. Shirley Henderson as Marie also stands out in this company of very accomplished acting. I haven't checked the novel, but there are one or two quite modern touches for which Trollope may have been responsible, such as Marie's (or was it Hetta's?) feminist speech towards the end. He may have got that from his mum, who had to support her family by novel-writing after her husband died, and did so quite successfully. In the 1870s we had railways, in the 2000s we had dot coms. The vehicles change but we still have fear and greed as dominant players in the markets. The title 'The Way We Live Now' is just as apt today, as we see the Enron, Arthur Andersen, Worldcom crashes in the US, and HIH, FAI and One-tel in Australia. It is interesting that this 1875 novel, with no high literary pretensions, pulp fiction in fact, should be so relevant today. A engrossing film adaption from the Eng Lit specialists.