The Way We Live Now
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DVD details
Actor: David SuchetBrand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 300 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-04-30
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Model: E1620
Studio: BBC Video
DVD Reviews of The Way We Live Now
DVD Review: The Cash Nexus
Summary: 5 Stars
I believe it was Freud who said that the two great motivators in human affairs are money and sex. But the only motivator that is on display in Anthony Trollope's THE WAY WE LIVE NOW is money. Ok, that is not entirely true. There are at least four characters who are motivated by higher things. But, by and large, the message writ loud and clear in this novel and series is that money is what moves people to do what they do and the pursuit of personal fortune is the engine that drives men to build empires.
Perhaps no one is more aware of Freud's observation than Lady Carbury. Though the Carbury's are a noble family, they are also a family that has fallen on hard times. In an attempt to swell the dwindling family fortune Lady Carbury begins writing pulp historical fiction with titles like The Wicked Women of History. Even though she is nobility her literary taste and talent are strictly Grub Street as are her social mores and in order to solicit publisher Mr. Brown's interest in her book she is willing to solicit herself to Mr. Brown. Lady Carbury has two children, Felix and Henrietta (Hetta). Felix is a fop and a wastrel who gambles, whores, and drinks; while Hetta is a pure soul driven only by genuine love. Felix, like his mother, has few scruples and is also driven by the desire to land a fortune using any means necessary. When Felix discovers that the internationally famous financier Melmotte has an unmmarried daughter named Marie, Felix, assured of his own irresistable charms, sets his sites on capturing the Melmotte fortune by marrying Marie.
The (unofficial) Carbury family motto is "virtue ain't the way the world works." Or, at least, this is Lady Carbury and Felix's motto. Hetta is disgusted by the both of them and sets her sites on Mr. Paul Montague, a dashing young engineer just back from California and with big plans to find backers for his next big project, the South Pacific Railway.
In other words, all paths to Melmotte lead.
Melmotte is a larger than life character who also happens to be Jewish, so while nearly all of London needs to court his financial favor, they loathe having to shake his hand. Melmotte is well aware of this, but he doesn't care for he gets a perverse pleasure out of making the proud British lords and ladies grovel at his feet. No dream is too big for Melmotte and the penultimate dream of this Viennese Jew is to become an English lord and sit in Parliament. This character is really more of a caricature but Trollope avoids the charge of antisemitism by using the character not to cast apsersions on any particular ethnicity but to reveal the social hypocrisy of late nineteenth-century Britain.
Melmotte's motto is to make history (by financing world changing projects like the South Pacific Railroad) but make money too. His other motto is that it is your duty to make yourself rich and he delivers this second one during an extravagant dinner in which he views his guests as so many gluttons grabbing all they can get and devouring it. Melmotte in all of his egotistical glory sees himself as the master of the feast. The moment is surreal and is one of those instances when you appreciate how well the BBC revises the classics, even the minor ones.
The only character that trumps Melmotte himself for our attentions is his daughter Marie (played by Shirley Henderson). Every financially strapped English lord in London tries to win her favor in order to access her father's fortune but she is a very strange creature indeed and Henderson obviosuly has a ball with the character while never quite making her into a caricature. Marie is perhaps the most victimized creature in the entire four-part miniseries because all that she wants is to be loved but no one can see her as anything but as a stepping stone to her fathers money. When Felix comes courting and plants a kiss on her she thinks she has finally found happiness, but of course she hasn't, and her reactions are immensely watchable. She's strange, very strange, "like an odd little monkey" as one guest says, but also very interesting.
Needless to say the greedy get their just desserts. This is one of the most enjoyable BBC productions that I have seen in quite a while.
Description of The Way We Live Now
The Way We Live Now captures the turmoil as the old order is swept aside by the brash new forces of business and finance. Based on the novel by Anthony Trollope, this satire of Victorian society contains the trials and tribulations of young love, the pettiness of the upper class life, the raw energy and excitement of the most powerful city the world had ever seen, and the greed and corruption that lay just below its glittering surface.Bestsellers in DVD
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