The Hollow Crown (BBC production, on DVD, 4 disks)
This is a BBC production of three of Shakespeare’s plays about kings Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V. It’s filled with lots of old English speak and traditional Shakespearean writings so it’s a bit hard to follow. However, the story line, political intrigue, costuming and acting was fantastic. The first DVD is Richard II who is deposed by the man who becomes Henry IV. This was the hardest play to follow as there were a lot of characters involved in the various plots.
In the second DVD, Henry the IV is played by Jeremy Irons who is wonderful in the part. He’s kingly and just and more than a bit worried about his first heir, Prince Hal (soon to be Henry V). Hal is played by Tom Hiddleston and he’s a rake at best and a playboy at worst. He hangs out in bawdy houses with drunkards and thieves and prostitutes. He even steals things himself and brags about his conquests. His closest friends are a cousin and a major thief named Falstaff. Falstaff is a fictional character, but he’s quite important in the plays to show the differing characters of Hal. Towards the end of the 2nd DVD Henry IV dies and Prince Hal becomes Henry the V.
The third DVD is all Henry the V and he’s changed from a common thief and ne’er-do-well to a man who’s thrown off all the bad of his previous life and does everything he can to convince his advisors and subjects that he’s worthy of the crown. He attempts to take over France, but instead signs a peace treaty with them and marries the French princess Catherine of Valois.
I really enjoyed the history, costuming and acting in all the episodes and, although I had a hard time following some of the plots and keeping track of the names and enemies and friends; with the help of the internet and several great history sites; I followed the stories and plot.
I completely recommend this series. There was little blood and gore; no swearing, and only one nude scene (in the bawdy house as we’re introduced to Falstaff and he’s in bed with a woman. We see her naked bottom). The acting was wonderful and the actors themselves had quite a bit of dialogue to manage, in addition to learning a different language and staying in character as well as costume.
The down side for me was there were very few women in this series; the queens/consorts were hardly mentioned. The other negative for me was Edward of York was played by a black man. I find this disturbing because there were no black men during this period of time in England’s history and certainly none of peerage. However; those are small issues and overall I thought the series was well done and worth watching.
The White Queen (Starz Channel, on DVD, 3 disks)
This series was based on three novels written by Philippa Gregory who is a writer of historical romance fiction. This series differs in many ways from The Hollow Crown, but has its own merits.
First, let me cover the graphic nature of this series. There was a LOT of nudity and sex in this series. I really could have gotten the idea that they loved each other without having constant flashes of women’s breasts or men’s bottoms on screen several points throughout the series.
I also found the few fighting scenes hard to watch as there was blood flying and numerous beheadings with blood-dripping axes. Again, I got the idea and didn’t need the visual.
Thirdly, this is not Shakespeare, so the story-telling was quite a contrast from my previous DVD. There was little old-English speech; which helped as you weren’t confused by the language as you tried to keep up with the political intrigue and all the names swirling around. It doesn’t help that people went by three or four different names during the series; changing names because of status or familiarity or importance in the story. Again, the internet was helpful for me to keep track of the various characters and the parts they played in the history.
As for the historical part of the stories, I found them to follow the written history pretty closely. There were a few quirks here and there (the boys in the tower and the death of some of Edward’s children); but overall the history and the story followed. The series did play up Elizabeth’s rumored witchcraft and abilities to conjure things and spells and curses. It also played up the love stories of all the people involved, which I suppose is to be expected in a movie made from a romance novel.
The acting was well-done; King Edward is played by Max Irons (son of Jeremy Irons). All the actors were well-cast; it was easy to grow to like or hate the various players as necessary. The second disk was far more interesting as far as history was concerned, but political intrigue and plots were standard throughout the entire series.
Costuming was beautiful and I found very little in error about the series at all, historically. I will comment that the writer played a bit loose with the ‘boys in the tower’ story line and I found it a bit creepy the Richard III had an affair with his niece; even though she was promised to Henry Tudor (who would become Henry VII).
I would recommend this if you like your history liberally laced with romance and sex. The women were more of the story line than in “Hollow Crown”, but the men had equal parts in the series.
The Book Thief (Hardcover book)
I borrowed this from our library in hopes that I would understand the movie better once I see it. If you haven’t read the book or seen the movie, there will be spoilers in this review, so you’ve been warned.
My only real complaint about this book is the writing style of the author. I haven’t read anything else of his so I don’t know if this is his normal style or not, but I found it distracting that *he* kept making announcements throughout the book. It made the reading a bit choppy for me.
I found it interesting that this book is written from the perspective of death. It’s a dark book and takes place in WWII-era Germany. Death talks about colors and souls and God, but I cannot imagine making this book into a movie based on the story-line alone. It would be just too hard to follow the story and keep to the book and its tale. There’s no real romance, no real ebb and flow and not even, to my liking, a real sufficient ending to the story.
There were some interesting insights regarding the Germans and the Jews, the Hitler Youth and the politics of the time. Besides the choppiness of the writing, I found I enjoyed the book. The characters were interesting (once he got around to bringing them all in – which took almost one-quarter of the book). The inter-weaving of the different lives became more important as the book went along but, again, it was dark and sad and pretty unfulfilling as a story. There were some sad parts and a few parts that made me smile, but overall this was a gloomy, depressing and sad story.
I definitely will not read this again and I won’t plan on watching the movie as I just cannot see how they could stay true to the book and make it an interesting movie.
