Agnieszka Holland's adaptation of the Henry James novel, already adapted in 1949 by William Wyler under the name of The Heiress. Or more accurately, Wyler's was an adaptation of a stage-play adaptation under that name. The older one, all in all, was more of a movie, but Holland, having spent her entire directorial career in re-creations of the past (The Secret Garden, Total Eclipse, Europa Europa, et al.), achieves some rich period texturing. And she has wisely, and humbly, followed the building plans -- the solid foundation, the subtle gradation -- of that master narrative architect, James. The central weakness that surfaces in the construction is Jennifer Jason Leigh in the role of the eligible but for all practical purposes unmarriageable daughter of a prominent physician in Victorian Manhattan. Though Leigh is as plain and pasty as she is required to be, she is so broad in her social gracelessness that it is impossible to believe, impossible to hope, even for a delusional instant, that her darkly handsome but penniless suitor could be anything but a fortune hunter. A little Old Hollywood dignity, even vanity, would not have come amiss here. A little Olivia de Havilland, to be blunt about it. Still, the movie would be well worth seeing if for one, very sizable reason only. That would be the portrait of the father as sculpted in granite by Albert Finney: domineering, disparaging, unloving; bitter about the trade-off of his cherished wife who died in childbirth in return for this burdensome and maladroit child; a cold man, a hard man, and yet a real man; nobody's fool; skeptical, appraising, truth-telling; grimly serious about his protective responsibilites; brave, strong, even brutal; a savior at the same time as a destroyer. This is a complicated, marvelous role, and Finney is complicated and marvelous in it. For all the wrongs of his pre-emptive meddling and manipulating, the good doctor is incontrovertibly right. It is then left up to the individual observer to decide whether that gives him the right, and whether his daughter is the better off for it. Holland has not extinguished the Jamesian ambiguities of the situation. Ben Chaplin, Maggie Smith, Judith Ivey. (1997) — Duncan Shepherd
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