Comment

Aug 18, 2019bakeswell rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
I'm reading the book, impressed by Brontë's sprightly rhetoric and flinty spirit. The novel's flaw is not its epistolary format so much as its being a journal wrapped in a series of letters: only the journal is shown in the film. The story itself is an antidote to all the lies told about married life, before and since. Anne never married, neither did Emily, they both died young, and when Charlotte succombed to marriage, it quickly killed her as a consequence of pregnancy. The three Brontë sisters were upright, passionate, and overweeningly virginal Romantics. Unlike her literary predecessor, the marriage-promoting Jane Austen (1775-1817), Anne Brontë (1820-49) has written a proto-feminist take-down of male privilege, alcoholism, and domestic abuse. The mysterious Helen Graham (Tara Fitzgerald) seems to have a chip on her shoulder when she arrives in her rock and sheep-strewn moorland hideaway. Is Gilbert Markham (Toby Stephens) man enough to trust his love object long enough to learn the secrets of her painful past? Or will the gossiping locals drive Helen, the overprotective widowed mum of a small boy, away before Markham's incessant pursuit can yield a romantic promise? That's how far we get in Part One. Beautifully coiffed and costumed, with evocative views of stone village houses and moors, this 1996 BBC adaptation is marred by a lack of confidence in its source material. The tortured screenplay wallows in inarticulate, fleshy nonverbalism, a betrayal of the novel's inspirational eloquence. Toby Stephens is too smug to play the yoeman farmer suitor. Rupert Graves is spot-on as the petulant boyish aristo who seduces Helen (in flashback, Part Two). Tara Fitzgerald lacks veneer, but her edge is refreshing. Part Three devolves into a mangle of flashback, but finishes strong. I'd give the book 5, but can only give this disappointing version 3.