Three stars. Rating: R, and quite ludicrously, for mild sexual content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.17.14
Consider the irony:
Actor/director Ralph Fiennes’ new film about Charles Dickens, a storytelling
craftsman, is undone by a maddeningly clumsy script.
However authentic the 19th
century setting, however lavish the costumes, however fascinating that so many
of the English estates and countryside settings seem not to have changed, it
remains impossible to become involved with this narrative. Abi Morgan’s
screenplay is slow, difficult to follow, and needlessly enigmatic. Essential
details are glossed over or rendered so subtly as to be overlooked.
Morgan already has demonstrated
an unconventional approach to biographical material; her screenplay for The Iron Lady was less about Margaret Thatcher, and more about the nature of
grief, and the cruelty of old age. Viewers wanting to learn something about the
career that shaped and defined Thatcher walked away disappointed; folks are
likely to do the same after enduring Fiennes’ The Invisible Woman.
The title refers to Ellen (Nelly)
Ternan, who in 1857, at the age of 18, came to the attention of Dickens during
a Manchester performance of The Frozen Deep, a play that he had co-written
with his good friend Wilkie Collins. Nelly and her two older sisters, Maria and
Fanny, were at that time following in the acting footsteps of their mother,
Frances Ternan, who had achieved modest fame on the London stage.
Dickens, then 45, was married and
the father of nine children. He nonetheless fell in love with Nelly, an
arrangement that her mother likely “tolerated” both because of the celebrated
author’s stature, and because her youngest daughter had scant acting talent.
Besides which, Victorian-era actresses generally were regarded as only one
short step above prostitutes ... so it could be argued that Nelly didn’t have
much of a reputation to protect.
But Dickens did. Despite the very
public manner in which he disavowed his wife and mother of their many children
— publishing a letter in his own magazine, Household Words, which blamed her
for their estrangement — he nonetheless managed to keep his relationship with
Nelly below public (and press) radar.
Dickens and Nelly remained lovers
and companions until the author’s death in 1870, at which point — and here’s
the fascinating part — the 31-year-old Nelly, still looking quite youthful,
“re-invented” herself as a much younger woman. While staying with her sister
Maria in Oxford, she caught the eye of an undergraduate named George Wharton.
They eventually married — he was 24, she a clandestine 36 — and settled in
Margate, where they had two children and ran a boys’ school.
When anybody asked about her
unusually extensive library of Dickens’ works, she’d claim that the author had
been a family friend when she was a little girl.
(One assumes that Nelly
eventually confessed at least part of the truth to her husband, when her
advancing age became more obvious, and at a point when their relationship could
have withstood the revelation.)
Armed with this background,
you’ll be in a better position to follow the often jarring time-shifts in
Fiennes’ film, which opens in Margate in 1885. We meet Nelly (Felicity Jones)
as she readies a play put on by the students at the school she runs with her
husband (Tom Burke). She’s a troubled woman, prone to long walks along the
nearby seashore: a moodiness observed by the Rev. William Benham (John
Kavanagh), apparently a close family friend.
The source of Nelly’s torment is
the play itself: No Thoroughfare: A Drama in Five Acts, another of the
collaborative works by Dickens and Collins.
At which point, Fiennes and
Morgan roll back the clock to 1857, and the circumstances that bring Nelly and
Dickens (played by Fiennes) together.
But not immediately, despite the
obvious spark that flickers between them. Morgan’s focus is less on the
relationship itself, and more on the delicate social maneuvering necessary even
to acknowledge the attraction, on both sides, let alone act upon it. The film’s
entire first hour thus is spent on this awkward courtship dance, which allows
Morgan plenty of time for judgmental commentary arising from intimate
conversations and the gender decorum dictated by the era.
Perhaps too much time; the
critical tone becomes rather heavy-handed at times. Yes, Victorian-era men were
expected to indulge in affairs, as long as they kept the details out of public
view; yes, Victorian-era wives had little recourse but to tolerate such
behavior, while unmarried women had few options beyond becoming mistresses,
tolerant wives or spinsters.
Jones plays Nelly as the
worldly-wise young woman we’d expect, given the life she and her sisters would
have experienced with their mother (Kristin Scott Thomas, quietly regal as
always). Nelly is passionate about the arts and devoted to Dickens’ books, even
before they meet; acquiring the personal interest of her favorite author is
intoxicating, and Jones deftly conveys the blend of worshipful delight and
wariness that would have been expected from a “proper” young woman.
I’m less certain about a few of
her more spiteful objections to Dickens’ deeper feelings, once revealed;
despite Jones’ best efforts, her words have a decidedly 21st century feminist
ring. I had a similar objection to some of Morgan’s dialogue in The Iron
Lady, which sounded tin-eared and rang false.
The same is true of Nelly’s
reaction upon meeting Caroline Graves (Michelle Fairley, immediately recognized
as Catelyn Stark from Game of Thrones), mistress to Wilkie Collins (Tom
Hollander). Even allowing for this scene’s function as a narrative catalyst —
Nelly being confronted by her own likely future — her dismissive, rude behavior
toward Caroline seems wholly out of character. Fiennes, as director, obviously
couldn’t get Jones to sell the moment.
Indeed, Fiennes too frequently
settles for superficial performances, counting on the script’s gravitas to do
the heavy dramatic lifting. We get barely a hint of the bond between Nelly and
her sisters — Maria (Perdita Weeks) and Fanny (Amanda Hale) — who remain
ciphers throughout this film. Worse yet, they and their mother disappear
entirely, once Dickens and Nelly begin their affair ... which both leaves a
rather large hole in the various character dynamics, and also is counter to
real-world history, since Nelly remained very close to her family during these
13 years.
Nelly and Dickens were, in fact,
returning from France with her mother when all three were involved in the
Staplehurst rail crash of June 9, 1865, which killed 10 people and injured 40.
Dickens, Nelly and her mother all survived, but Mrs. Ternan has been written out
of the incident in this film ... although the event accurately depicts Dickens’
behavior in the aftermath, when he took great pains to insist that he was
traveling alone.
All of which brings us to
Fiennes’ performance. He’s every inch the passionate, energetic and ambitious
author and playwright whose public readings electrified audiences. Fiennes
often seems ready to burst from repressed enthusiasm, and he superbly conveys
the impact this famed author had in public; a scene at the racetrack, when the
punters recognize the celebrity in their midst, is quite unsettling (one of the
film’s strongest moments, actually).
Fiennes also delivers the
arrogance that would have come with such acclaim; his Dickens embarks on this
affair with Nelly, frankly and bluntly, because he wants to. And because he
can. His subsequent public dismissal of his wife, Catherine (Joanna Scanlan),
is cruel in the extreme; far worse is his insistence that she deliver a gold
bracelet to Nelly, which a London jeweler mistakenly sent to the Dickens
household.
This is by far the film’s most
emotionally intense scene, with Scanlan radiating misery as the humiliated
Catherine, and Jones trembling with her own volatile mixture of emotions, as
the stunned Nelly.
It’s a far better scene than the
wordless, protracted moment of truth that soon follows between Dickens and
Nelly, when she finally surrenders her virtue. I can’t imagine what Fiennes had
in mind, because this scene doesn’t work at all; the lighting is too dim, and
cinematographer Rob Hardy’s close-up too intense, to make out either
performer’s expression. And the absence of dialogue, once again, feels totally
wrong.
Despite his excellent strengths
as an actor, Fiennes is less successful in his efforts to project a duality on
Dickens’ part: a suggestion that the author was torn by his divided emotional
attentions, and felt anguish over the way he treated his wife. That, too, feels
false; both history and this film depict Dickens as a man who cared only about
his public image, and would have taken whatever he desired without giving a
second thought to collateral damage. Talent notwithstanding, he’s rather a heel,
and Fiennes’ efforts to evoke sympathy are, well, rather insulting.
Then, after all this time spent
on the build-up — pointlessly trying to generate false suspense regarding
Nelly’s eventual decision (Will she? Won’t she?) — the film’s third act becomes
vague and sloppy. Fiennes and Morgan essentially abandon the Dickens/Nelly
relationship, just as they dismiss Frances, Fanny and Maria Ternan. We get no
glimpse at all of Dickens’ final years, or what Nelly does next, or how she
pulls off the best performance of her career, when she establishes a whole new
persona. (Obviously, Ellen Ternan was a good actress.)
Instead, we return once again, as
many times before — too many times — to Nelly striding purposely along the
pounding ocean surf in 1885, eventually succumbing to Rev. Benham’s offer of
spiritual succor.
Benham figures in Claire
Tomalin’s 1990 biography of Ellen Ternan, on which Morgan’s script is based.
Sort of. (Tomalin also has written biographies of Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy,
Mary Wollstonecraft and numerous other individuals.)
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