"I can't say enough good things about the casting of this landmark production ..."
Barbara Peters
The Poisoned Pen
Scottsdale and Phoenix
"Often considered Dickens' finest work if not his most popular." I've heard that quote more than once, but never gave much consideration as to the whys and wherefores until the warmly heralded Masterpiece Theater presentation came my way.
Now I get it.
The novel, Dickens' 9th and illustrated by Phiz (his major illustrator throughout most of his publishing career), was published serially, that is in installments—typical of the 19th Century when periodicals paid authors by the word for their work, which goes a long way to explain why so much Victorian fiction is so long—from March, 1852 to September, 1853. You will thus deduce Bleak House is a very long, very complex work with numerous plot strands and immense cast.
I can't say enough good things about the casting of this landmark production, "a creative triumph for adapter Andrew Davies, his production team, and the extraordinary cast" [The Guardian]. I never watched The X-Files but Gillian Anderson was already a hit with my children, who did, and find her superb as Lady Dedlock, the aristocratic, highly anxious wife of arch conservative Sir Leicester Dedlock (Timothy West) whose character is such that we suppose throughout the story that the revelation of Lady Dedlock's hidden past will lead him to revile her and everyone to shame them. His ancient family and his honor is the cloak under which Sir Leicester's family solicitor, Tulkinghorn, hounds her, but in the skillful hands of Charles Dance (The Jewel in the Crown; Gosford Park), what we see at work is Tulkinghorn's consuming lust for exercising power. He wants to control her and will ruin anyone he can, "because he can." Brrrr. Dance makes Tulkinghorn absolutely riveting. And when Anderson allows Lady Dedlock to unclamp her feelings just twice, the force of the words and tears that gush forth grabs you.
The fact that it's hard to believe that her sin, falling for a soldier and bearing a child out of wedlock, a child she believes had died, would completely ruin her is beside the point. I actually suspected a completely different story line would emerge—that she had wed the soldier and thus was bigamously married to Sir Leicester—which would have made her (and his) ruin plausible. Sorry, there's the mystery novel editor in me: a need for a compelling motive. This whole plot strand is unintentionally ironic given the fact that Dickens, a married man with ten children who claimed he had never felt "close to his wife" and found her an unequal intellectual partner, separated from Catherine Dickens in 1858 to live openly with the actress Ellen Ternan until his death in 1870. His own will, available on line, lists Ternan's legacy first and makes his sister-in-law and his friend and literary executor John Forster his trustees for his children. But he did spell it out so the Chancery High Court couldn't step in.
Mr. John Jarndyce is the owner of Bleak House, a manor, and party in the Chancery suit of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce which turns on the testamentary dispositions of a very rich Jarndyce who muddled up his intentions, thus casting his estate into the chancery courts. Mr. John Jarndyce, with money of his own, has renounced his interest in the outcome and adopts his two orphaned, much younger cousins who remain in the running as heirs. He also adopts Esther Summerson, an orphan raised by her unloving aunt, who, slightly older, becomes a companion to Ada and Richard.
One can hardly believe Mr. Jarndyce is a good as he looks as played with consummate skill and compassion by Denis Lawson; I won't spoil it by saying whether in fact he is. Ada (Carey Mulligan), very pretty, not surprisingly falls in love with Richard (Patrick Kennedy), a weaker character who becomes consumed with the potential for great wealth that may be his and cannot settle to a profession. Esther, the tale's real lead, understands the nuances of her situation, remains right-thinking and modest, stalwart when blighted by smallpox, yet warmly human, all triumphantly portrayed by Anna Maxwell Martin, a most unusual looking actress with remarkable eyes.
As is so blessedly true with British productions, the settings are first rate from stately home to more modest manor to Lincolns Inn and the law courts to city slums, and the costumes and coiffures match along with countless details faithful to the scene.
The enormous cast is faultlessly cast, from the loathsome moneylender Smallweed to the housekeeper whose children prove crucial players, to Mr. Guppy, the ambitious young clerk who proves flawed and George, the former soldier forced to re-examine honor. And I can't omit Inspector Bucket (Alun Armstrong), a policeman both good and bad, a man balancing reality v. justice, harsh but not without compassion.
The only two I thought vastly overplayed their roles were Mr. Guppy's mother, who surely couldn't not have been so inane, and Nathaniel Parker (aka Supt. Thomas Lynley of the Elizabeth George dramas) as Horace Skimpole. I acquit him of bad acting; the character is impossible to believe by today's standards, a hanger-on cadging house room and funds where and however he can, brushing aside criticism by claiming he is a merely child who understands nothing of money. One cannot imagine why John Jarndyce cannot see through him, or if he does, plays along. Dickens is said to have modeled the character after Leigh Hunt, a liberal poet and essayist, which caused Dickens no end of trouble.
Because of the enormous range of storylines and characters, an adaptation for television necessarily has to telescope or omit, so the viewer comes away with unanswered questions: who, for instance, supported Miss Flite after she was evicted from her quarters by the heartless Smallweed (enraging as played by Phil Davis, a striking role)? Why did Lady Dedlock develop such a fondness for her maid Ada and fire the earlier servant? There's more space than needed given to tearful death scenes (at least three) that might have been better expended. And you just have to wonder why no one ever really talked to Sir Leicester although I think in the context of the Victorian Age it would have been crystal clear.
I add that trying to introduce so much material makes the first episode more like a kaleidoscope than a drama, but stick with it.
However, what flaws exist are really down to Dickens. As with any author who has an agenda—illustrating the evils of the if not corrupt then inept Chancery High Court where the only winners were the lawyers—the story bends to the message. And to show how the prospect of riches corrupts others adds to the weight. I feel the resolution(s) delivered is(are) often disappointing—you keep hoping Dickens won't do the obvious, or that the obvious is more in tune with his other, more hopeful stories, and yet he does. I can see why it's not his most popular novel.
Dickens, whose financial fortunes from childhood went up and down, much loved his home Gad's Hill Place, built in 1780 for a former mayor of Rochester, a city on the Medway in Kent. It is a private school. I highly recommend a visit to Rochester; you can climb the ruins of the castle and get great views of the water, visit the cathedral (that's what makes Rochester a "city"); enjoy the upscale antique and prints shops, and do Dickens at the Dickens Center. It's no surprise that he'd choose to call his novel Bleak House, after Mr. Jarndyce's beloved home and the orphans' refuge, rather than "Jarndyce v. Jarndyce" or something more impersonal.
Masterpiece Theatre "Bleak House " airs Sundays at 9 p.m.,
beginning April 22, 2007 on Eight/KAET.
