Bleak House

Oh, we were doing so well.  But this final installment nearly brought on an appropriately Victorian attack of apoplexy.

First, the positives.  With Tulkinghorn out of the way, a large chunk of tonight's viewing was devoted to Alun Armstrong's simultaneously charming and unsettling Inspector Bucket.  I particularly enjoyed Bucket's cheerful habit of interviewing people while Tulkinghorn lay defunct on the floor.  (As Mr. Smallweed noted, Tulkinghorn didn't look at all well.)  Lady Dedlock suffered nobly and died sadly, Ada Clare gained some (rather out of character) backbone, and Mr. Jarndyce relinquished Esther with considerable elan.  Even Lady Jane put in yet another appearance, sitting (with characteristic feline aplomb) on John Jarndyce's last will and testament. 

Nevertheless, I spent most of the two hours sputtering incoherently at the screen.  To begin with, I had the oddest sensation: I felt like I was watching LoTR: Return of the King.  No, not because Gollum chewed off Esther's finger, but because the episode had at least four endings.   #1: Hortense is arrested.  #2: Lady Dedlock dies.  #3: Richard dies.  #4: Esther marries Woodcourt (a.k.a. the actual conclusion).  The multiple climaxes--some of them probably an artifact of the original episode divisions--both disrupted the narrative's pacing and wrapped up some of the plot elements far too early.   Hortense, for example, was dispatched with startling speed (and without, I fear, the doughty Mrs. Bucket's assistance).  Even worse, Lady Dedlock's flight was utterly botched; we got the beginning of her deliberate, symbolic de-classing (the abandoned jewels), but not the end (the dress), and very little of Esther's long journey with Inspector Bucket. 

Other little, yet significant, details prompted me to further exasperated mutterings.  I shook my fist at the screen after Woodcourt responded rather, er, inappropriately to the news that Esther was engaged to Jarndyce.  I battered my head against the wall when Esther described Ada's and Richard's lodgings as a "damn poky little place."  Language, Esther, language!  I winced when Jarndyce was, once again, too obviously jealous of Woodcourt.  And I cringed when Ada showed up at Esther's wedding plus child but minus mourning dress.  All of these things are insensitive readings of the original text, and quite frustrating to pedants like, well, myself. 

Comments

[Joe Mealyus]

Oddly, I was making a connection last night to the Lord of the Rings movies, but for a very different reason.

One reason the LOTR films are so bad is the seemingly endless number of minor alterations - little fiddlings with the plot and characters - that serve to constantly replace something that in Tolkien is strange and different with something that is .... well, not strange and different. Something we've seen a million times before. (Perhaps the most insipid example is the trick Merry and Pippin play on Treebeard, I mean Disneybeard, to get him riled up).

And of course this is what happens in the last part of BH. Endlessly, all of the strangeness is sucked out and replaced with banality. Bucket in the book is all-knowing, all-seeing - he continually sets the scene (yet with a certain modestness of scope or at least affability). The scene in the book where Bucket presents the visiting Smallweed (and the various now-eliminated others) to Sir Leicester was so much better than the cliche (the "trap" for Hortense) it gets replaced with.

There's so many examples of this. Of course I guess once you junk the "Esther's narrative" idea you can't use/show things like Esther figuring things out by seeing them in people's faces (like how Woodcourt feels about her), or Esther's feelings toward Ada. And of course they reduced the gothicity.

But how could they not do the Esther/Bucket chase at the end? That's the best thing in the book. (Not that I'm any sort of real expert).

"Nevertheless, I spent most of the two hours sputtering incoherently at the screen" is apt.

[Ophelia Benson]

I commented on this (and other solecisms it reminded me of) at B&W, and Mick Hartley didn't hear 'damn poky house.' He thinks she must have said 'damp poky house.' That does sound a good deal more plausible! (Silly screenwriter and/or director should have seen that and changed it to poky damp house then.) Pretty funny if so!