jattewel It is extremely difficult to condense such a lengthy and complex novel into the time available in a film (it's a great shame the BBC have not created a TV series in order to do the story justice). Clearly difficult decisions have to be made about what to include, what to leave out and how much "backstory" to explain. However if I had not read the book I would probably not have understood some important elements of the story. It is also difficult to understand, or excuse, some of the changes made regarding characters. It's obvious why Roland is American rather than British, i.e. to appeal to US viewers, but why is the excellent American female character Lenora completely missing? which means also missing out the story line of Lenora and Blackadder following Maud and Roland to France. Sadly several other really interesting female characters are missing including Val (Roland's unhappy girlfriend), Beatrice Nest (the middle aged academic who guards Ellen Ash's diaries and warns Roland of Croppers planned crime) and Sabine (Christabel's French niece who's diaries tell can important chunk of the story of Ash and Christabel). Despite some good efforts on the part of the actors involved the portrayals of characters that are included are all rather superficial. This makes it difficult for the viewer to feel any empathy or to be moved by their fate e.g. when Blanche commits suicide we don't really care because we don't really know who she is. Similarly the plot is so briefly sketched it doesn't engage the audience well e.g. as we only just about realise that Christabel is pregnant we don't particularly wonder what happened to the child. Some of the photography and scenery is beautiful but very obvious. Not including the great storm of 1987 in the graveyard scene as A S Byatt did is inexplicable! Its as if the director was determined to remove anything interesting or dramatic.

The_late_Buddy_Ryan I never would have figured Neil LaBute for an A.S. Byatt fan, but he seems to have been the one that saved this project from development limbo. I thought Gwyneth and Aaron Eckhart did just fine as the modern lovers—they're like one of those Hitchcock couples that get handcuffed together and then fall in love. It might have been better if we'd seen more of Ash and LaMotte, the Victorian poets (especially as embodied by the radiant Jennifer Ehle), but this standoffish, screwed-up, commitment-shy pair are clearly LaBute's kind of people. The script gets a little goofy at about the halfway mark, but that's really Byatt's fault, IMHO. On the very first page, she warns the reader, via an epigraph from Hawthorne, that the writer of a "romance" can get away with stuff (paraphrasing here) that a regular novelist can't. After the trail goes cold, she summons up two huge honking coincidences to keep our young scholars on the case. In the novel a goddess ex machina—specifically an American lesbian cultural-studies prof—turns up with a crucial journal, and in the film you have to be paying pretty close attention to figure out why they're in France all of a sudden; later on, Eckhart's character just happens to overhear the baddies plotting their next move. Despite a few rough patches like this, I'd still recommend the film to fans of the novel; not sure what others will make of it. Great care was obviously taken with every aspect of the production; nice to see a younger, brunette Lena Headey, of "Game of Thrones" fame, as LaMotte's other lover.

klinikpsikolog As a student of English Literature A. S. Byatt is one of my favourite writers and I read the book with curiosity. I never watch a movie which is based on a novel before reading the novel itself and this was like this also.It's a very very long and condensed book. After the book I watched the movie and at some point, like towards the end I thought that I read the book wrong. The scenario is awful that it is not about the book. It is kind of an independent screenplay.This is not fair for such an awesome book!!! The movie killed the book!!!

evanston_dad The supremely literary and ambitious novel by A.S. Byatt has been streamlined into a more conventional love story for two beautiful Hollywood actors in this screen adaptation directed by (of all people!) Neil LaBute.Aaron Eckhart and Gwyneth Paltrow play scholars of a Victorian poet and poetess, respectively, who discover that their two subjects were romantically involved and find themselves in a race with rival scholars to prove it and change the face of scholarship forever. The film intercuts modern-day scenes of Eckhart and Paltrow falling cautiously in love with flashbacks to the two poets, played by Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle. I found this literal and conventional approach to be the film's biggest failing, and couldn't help but think how much more interesting the film might have been if we had never seen actual reconstructions of the past and were left to visualize it along with the two scholars. However, to be fair, I don't know how that could have been done cinematically, so it seems churlish to hold the writer and director of the film to task for not doing it.Lovers of the book will undoubtedly find much to criticize in the film, as it leaves much plot and several characters out entirely, and is more interested in intrigues romantic than literary, but I thought it was decent. Eckhart is an extremely likable actor, and Paltrow is well cast, if a bit too conventionally beautiful for the role, and the two have quite a bit of chemistry. If one insists on holding the film to the same standards as the novel, it's bound to pale in comparison, but taken on its own terms, the movie is quite enjoyable.Grade: B+