Tom & Viv
by Brian Gilbert
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DVD details
Actor: Miranda Richardson, Nickolas Grace, Rosemary Harris, Tim Dutton, Willem DafoeDirector: Brian Gilbert
Brand: Buena Vista Home Video
Producer: Harvey Kass
Producer: John Kay
Producer: Marc Samuelson
Producer: Miles A. Copeland III
Producer: Paul Colichman
Writer: Adrian Hodges
Writer: Michael Hastings
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DTS Surround Sound, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 115 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-04-08
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Miramax
DVD Reviews of Tom & Viv
DVD Review: Grim but revealing
Summary: 4 Stars
I am surprised that this film has not yet so far made it on to Region 2 DVD; this review is based on watching the video. As ever, I am amused by some of the more stern and unforgiving reviews elsewhere on Amazon; for some people nothing is ever good enough and too many people just cannot wait (as we say in the UK) " to put the boot in" and damn a perfectly serious, well-crafted, if rather grim little movie. If you are looking for a feel-good, relaxing film - this isn't it, but I found it intelligent and sensitive in the manner that it portrays poor Viv sympathetically and Eliot's heroic devotion to her and his marriage vows. It is certainly valuable, too, in the manner that it illuminates Eliot's poetry; links between his circumstances and their married life are subtly established when the dialogue echoes famous lines, or excerpts from the poems sparingly comment upon the content of the film. Eliot is expertly embodied by Willem Dafoe; he comes across as more English than the English, complete with a rather (deliberately exaggerated?) clipped English accent and a permanent case of emotional constipation which found its release in the verse. As Eliot says in the film, poetry is expression "free from emotion" - and that really shows here. Miranda Richardson gives a chilling and touching performance as Viv, bringing out her qualities as well as her frightening afflictions; we realise to what degree theirs was a relationship of mutual dependence - though I would have liked more on Ezra Pound's influence over Eliot's final drafts. The film is dark-hued yet sometimes funny. Apart from its intrinsic value, it is very useful as a teaching aid, helping my students to understand the historical context of the texts we are studying and the biographical circumstances behind the verse. So even if others claim that the film taught them nothing, I have to say that it enhanced our appreciation of a great poet.DVD Review: Excellent.
Summary: 4 Stars
Tom and Viv (Brian Gilbert, 1994)
Brian Gilbert's quietly heartbreaking drama Tom and Viv came and went with barely a blip at the box office, though it did get nominated for two Academy Awards; it should have been much more widely seen, I think. But what does the American moviegoing public, especially in the nineties, care for the life and marriage of a poet? For Tom and Viv are T. S. Eliot (Willem Dafoe, once again ignored by the Academy) and his mentally unstable wife Vivienne (Miranda Richardson, who did get a nomination for Best Actress).
The plot is simple and straightforward: American expatriate Tom, who according to the narration of Vivienne's brother Maurice (Tim Dutton) is trying to out-English the English, finds everything he's looking for in England in the person of Vivienne: she's upperclass, moneyed, a member of the British society, but with a wild, untameable streak. He falls in love and they elope, realizing only after they're married that Vivienne isn't just high-spirited, she's quite mentally unsound. Thus, Tom is brought in under the wing of Vivienne's family, made one of them by proxy, and much of the film alternates between Tom's attempts to handle Viv's erratic behavior and him commiserating with various family members. Finally, with everyone at the end of their collective rope, Tom and Maurice come up with a plan that will satisfy everyone except Vivienne herself.
This is a film that plays itself very close to the vest. It's staid, almost glacial on the surface, but simmers beneath with rage and despair. Dafoe and Richardson are both brilliant in their roles, and make an essentially plotless biopic into gripping viewing. Highly recommended. ****
DVD Review: The Dark Side Of T.S. Eliot--And A Study In The Medical Mistreatment Of Women
Summary: 3 Stars
With a sound cast headed by Miranda Richardson and Willem Dafoe, Tom & Viv is a good film about a spirited woman dealt an unfair hand in life, and the selfish man she married. It's also a slightly shocking film for portions of its subject matter, including some parts that might make certain male audience members squirm.
The story itself really made me dislike T.S. Eliot: and for once it was for more than just his---I think---bad poetry. This film tells what was once only whispered among Eliot scholars and was later forgotten, that being Eliot's unforgivably callous treatment of his decidedly hormonally unbalanced first wife, Viv. True, the "mercurial" and foul-mouthed proto-Flapper Vivienne Eliot was no doubt a trial for someone like the choleric Tom to bear, in fact they were a mismatched pair from the start, but for a man to lock his wife away for the duration of her remaining life, including for years long past the time there was any medical need for it (assuming there ever was)...it takes a cold being to be capable of that.
Never having been a fan of Eliot's work, I don't know enough about the details of the marriage at the heart of this story to comment on any errors this movie contained, but if it is reflective of the actual fate of Mrs. Eliot, then it's something people ought to know about the man whose playful little jottings gave us the musical Cats as well as those (IMHO) painfully awful pieces endemic in college textbooks, Murder in the Cathedral, and The Waste Land.
Good performances and a worthy revelation about a literary icon's heartlessness in his private life, but ultimately only three and a half stars, primarily for the fact that the script as written wasn't able to fully sustain the story at its final length.
DVD Review: Learn to hate TSE
Summary: 4 Stars
I'm sure Eliot scholars would have a lot to say about the film, but I'm one of those readers of Eliot who has just grown weary of his heavy handedness. So this film spoke to me--Eliot is shown to be overbearing, manipulative, and one unfeeling mofo. Good enough for me.DVD Review: Arty Schmarty
Summary: 3 Stars
"Tom and Viv" (1994) a Miramax biopic starring Willem Dafoe as the world-famous 20th century anglophile American poet T.S. Eliot, ("The Wasteland," "The Four Quartets") and Miranda Richardson as his unfortunate wife Vivienne Haigh-Wood, opens on the Oxford school days of the poet -- who was initially from St. Louis. We find him studying with Lord Bertrand Russell, well-known anti-war philosopher: another of Russell's students is Vivienne's brother, upon whose memories this film is based. It was filmed on location, around Oxford and London, and garnered two Oscar nominations, plus two other awards.
Tom and Viv elope, and it's basically all downhill from there: she has gynecological and emotional problems that disrupt even the honeymoon. Dafoe does the best he can with a part that's not written on the page: Richardson turns in one of her trademark manic performances. Rosemary Harris almost carries the picture as Viv's worried mum. We meet, briefly, the celebrated early 20th century literary group that centered around Bloomsbury, London-- Virginia Woolf and company. We get the obligatory slow Oxford river boating scenes, but the story stays slow, and doesn't really go anywhere. The sound's often bad, and the film's confusing. It raises the issue of why Eliot behaves as he did; and though you can't insist that a movie should do so, it doesn't answer the questions it's raised. It's the kind of movie, unfortunately, that gives art films a bad name.
Description of Tom & Viv
Screen favorites Willem Dafoe (SPIDER-MAN, SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE) and Miranda Richardson (THE HOURS, SLEEPY HOLLOW) deliver star performances in this passionately rendered story based on writer T.S. Eliot's tempestuous relationship with his first wife, Vivienne, the woman who inspired his greatest work. Widely praised by critics and nominated for two Academy Awards(R), TOM & VIV is the story of their turbulent love affair. It reveals the unspeakable secret that finally drove Eliot to choose between standing by his beautiful yet troubled wife, or letting her go. Deeply felt and exquisitely acted, TOM & VIV is a story of love and commitment .... and passion's ultimate price.Tom is T.S. Eliot (Willem Dafoe), the St. Louis-born poet who tried to turn himself into an Englishman. Viv is his wife, Vivienne Haigh-Wood (Miranda Richardson). She's got money, which allows him to give up his job and focus on poetry. She urges him on, promotes him to the Bloomsbury group (which adopts him but looks down its nose at her), and begins to go slightly crazy. Is it Eliot's chilly demeanor (in a terrific repressed performance by Dafoe) that's driving her nuts, or something else? In fact, she suffers from misdiagnosed physical ailments, and a combination of drugs and alcohol send her around the bend. It's hard to get emotionally involved in Dafoe's Eliot or to really plug into this story, though Richardson's passion nearly pulls you in. --Marshall Fine
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