The Duchess

The Duchess

I watched this film around the time the DVD arrived on shelves, on the same day that I saw The Reader. (Please see my next post for a review of that film.) When I asked MX which film I ought to see first, her response was the following:

Her: Do you want happy or sad?
me: um... are either of them happy?
Her: Well, I'm guessing a failed relationship is happier than a failed relationship and Nazis

And this proved to be both true and untrue. Firstly, although Ralph Fiennes was in both movies, the other cast members were, of course, quite different. I usually find Keira Knightley, who plays the title role in the first movie of our double feature, quite charming. However, with all the costumes and makeup that gave The Duchess its feeling of grandeur, I kept getting distracted by the image of the normally beautiful Ms Knightley looking aged well beyond her years, and not because she was supposed to be aging either. (They didn't actually feel the need to age her during the 10+ years in the story, but that's the least of this film's problems.)

And I suppose the fact that the story was based upon the real life of Georgiana Spencer Cavendish should make it interesting, but it doesn't really work somehow. Not even for me, great lover of costume dramas and period pieces. So the trailer makes a big deal about her wish to be free, and you implicitly understand how she is bound to her obligations, but nowhere in the film does she really appear to be striving for her freedom. And then, the ending was so grossly unsatisfying, I had to watch another movie just to get over it. It's almost as if whoever was in the editing room suddenly decided the film was getting too long and just cut randomly and added some epilogue. Did I mention how epilogues are a lazy method of storytelling?

The costumes and scenery are, however, absolutely beautiful, and it should come as no surprise that this film took home the Oscar for Costume Design. The plush surroundings almost make you wish you could have lived the life of a landed English aristocrat in the 18th century. Maybe if we could just put the entire movie up as a screensaver on our computers, and gloss over the sad plight of women 300 years ago, our minds would be less tortured.