Cranford

Call me crazy but I was laughing out loud during this movie. PBS on a Sunday evening anyone?

Warning: spoilers ahead. I have to say that Elizabeth Gaskell (the author whose three novels are the basis for this film set in a small English town circa 1840s) threw me for a loop. Perhaps I shouldn’t pin it on her until I read the books. What I mean is this. I guess after one has read (or watched) enough Austen, you start to expect a certain formula for how things get resolved. For instance, when one of Gaskell’s heroes, the young doctor, is wronged through a series of foibles caused by women clamoring for his affection, you are waiting for clear resolution to this injustice. It would have been nice for a Mr. Darcy or a Colonel Brandon to step in, with riding boots perhaps,and silently right all wrongs behind the scenes with a big wad of money or an persuasive argument, making the best use of his society connections. So I waited, but no one really came to the rescue of this guy in a satisfying way, not even himself. Eventually the doctor was accepted into society again, but his name was never cleared in a Shakespearean or in a Law-and-Order-closing-argument kind of way.

I guess the difference here is that the victim of injustice is a man, one of the few in this town of women. Maybe that’s the point? Admittedly, I haven’t read the book so maybe they left the punch out of the script although I doubt it. Where is my justice on each account? Oh well. Do I ask for too much?

The movie was an amusing portrait of a small town. It reminded me of Eliot’s Middlemarch in that way. I particularly enjoyed the way the actresses played up (don’t hit me) the generally female propensity towards passive-agressively controlling everything and making even the smallest decisions wildly complex. And of course, who can resist Judy Dench. Dame Judy gets me every time!