Parade's End
Sep. 30th, 2012 09:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
birdienl
Parade’s End is the story of one man and a changing society. Christopher Tietjens is a man born in the wrong century. He holds fast to 18th century morals, while the world around him is changing at lightning speed. He gets tricked into marriage by the stunning sociality Sylvia Satterthwaithe, who’s unborn child might or might not be his. Through friends, Christopher meets and falls for the young suffragette Valentine Wannop, but he tries to fight his feelings. In the mean time, war is looming on the horizon.
Adapted from the novels by Ford Madox Ford published between 1924 and 1928, Parade’s End was made into a 5-part tv-series by the BBC. Looking at recent years, this is one of a number of series and movies tackling World War I, as we are approaching it’s centenary in 2014. It was therefore inevitable Parade’s End was to be compared to these series, among others Downton Abbey. There has been much ado about actor Benedict Cumberbatch’s statement that he thought Downton’s second series ‘atrocious’ and that Parade’s End would be nothing like it. Well, this issue aside, I don’t think it’s fair to compare both series anyway. Where Downton Abbey is about a large house full of characters, from kitchen maid to Earl, Parade’s End focuses on one character. And as the novels forming Parade’s End were written by a man who himself fought in WWI, it’s treatment of this event is bound to be different then a series written almost a 100 years later.
The comparisons aside, let’s look at Parade’s End itself. The three main characters were vividly brought to live. The acting in this series was really top-notch, from Benedict Cumberbatch’s introspective Christopher to the convincingly innocent Valentine as played by the originally Australian Adelaide Clemens. But the real star of the show was Rebecca Hall as the manipulative Sylvia, who managed to make this unsympathetic character complex and vulnerable.
The sets and props were, as we’ve come to expect from the BBC, gorgeous, but in Parade’s End also understated. They did not take the foreground. An interesting approach has been taken with respect to cinematography, with intersecting triangles (I can’t explain it better) in some scenes reflecting the love triangle between Christopher, Sylvia and Valentine.
While Parade’s End is a series taking place at the time of WWI, it is much more about the relationships between the main characters and the struggle of Christopher to adapt to a changing world then about the war itself. Though there are some stirring scenes at the front, mainly in episodes 4 and 5, England and London is where the largest part of the action takes place. I don’t know how this relates to the novels Parade’s End is adapted from, which have been called ‘the finest novel about WWI’. I for one was slightly surprised by this, but it did not take away from my admiration for the series.
One thing which annoyed me was the stuttering nature of the narrative of Parade’s End. I sometimes had the idea I was missing chunks of the story, especially the jump from the end of episode 4 to the beginning of episode 5 was very confusing.
The story of Parade’s End is also a moral story about the sanctity of marriage. After finishing the series this week, I’m still not exactly sure what it wants to say about this theme (maybe this will be more clear once I’ve read the novels), but it is a very interesting exploration of the matter nonetheless.
At the end of the series, in choosing Valentine over his wife, Christopher has lost his moral high ground, he is now just a man. But he is finally happy. Does Ford Madox Ford want to say that giving up your straight moral code of conduct will make you more happy?
I would recommend Parade’s End to all of you looking for an in-depth character study set in an interesting historical timeframe. Parade’s End, more than ‘just’ a pretty period drama, is an exploration of an era which uprooted the then society and one man’s place in all this.
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Date: 2012-09-30 07:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-01 08:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-01 11:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-30 09:53 pm (UTC)I felt like I was watching a completely different show in the last episode. I have not read the novels, but a friend has, and the ending was completely tacked on - Christopher never makes it back, so that weird reunion with Valentine never happened. There's some discussion of it in the comments of my review (http://lilithilien.insanejournal.com/472404.html) (warning, I loved the series but hated the ending and what it said about relationships and especially about women).
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Date: 2012-10-01 08:53 am (UTC)I read your review, which is interesting, mainly because I don't feel this way at all. Yes, there was a lot of chemistry between Christopher and Sylvia, BUT, they also brought out the worst in each other. Even when Sylvia, repentantly, visited Christopher in Rouen, she didn't want to listen to hearing him talk about what she did in the war, while Valentine was really interested in him and what he did. It might be a cliché, but Christopher and Valentine were just better matched in my opinion.
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Date: 2012-09-30 10:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-01 08:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-03 05:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-04 10:28 am (UTC)Have you seen War Horse btw? Do you know it has both Benedict Cumberbatch ánd Tom Hiddleston in it? (Harking back to our email praise of Hiddleston)
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Date: 2012-10-05 04:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-05 07:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-06 03:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-18 05:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-19 11:37 am (UTC)