A Dance to the Music of Time
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Gillian Barge, Jonathan Cake, Nicholas Jones, Robin Bailey, Simon Russell BealeBrand: Acorn
Producer: Peter Ansorge
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Box set, Color, DVD, Letterboxed, NTSC, Widescreen
Running Time: 415 minutes
Published: 2007
DVD Release Date: 2007-08-28
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Acorn Media
Movie Reviews of A Dance to the Music of Time
Movie Review: The Best Possible Shot at an Impossible Task
Summary: 5 Stars
Anthony Powell's 12 volume Dance to the Music of Time is the perhaps the best English language novel of the twentieth century. It is certainly a contender, but it is about as impossible a novel to convert to film as you can find. Given that constraint, this is a terrific attempt to do so.
The key parts of the novel are faithfully copied: the trajectory of Widmerpool from buffoon to man of authority to power mad monster and back to buffoon; Nicholas Jenkins calm and grounded personality; the appearance, disappearance and reappearance of minor characters; the nature of coincidence and sirendipity of life; and many of the other themes are here.
Some new scenes are helpful - for instance, Jenkins sitting in a museum while a guide explains the theme of the painting from which
the novel borrows the title - but everyone will miss something from the books.
For me, the most disappointing change was the way Charles Stringham's demise is related. Stringham's sad broken life is redeemed with dignity and honor in the books with an extraordinary scene after the war when Jenkins runs across his former commanding officer. Instead of the brief line (wonderfully charged with unspoken respect), "he did well in the camps," you instead get a gratuitous scene of Japanese troops beating Stringham to death.
But given everything the filmmakers have done well, you have to ask whether they have been faithful to the overall tone of the books. And they certainly have done so.
In some cases, the filmmakers have wisely used different actors to portray the same person but have done their best to preserve continuity. For instance, although three actors play Nicholas Jenkins and the last two have quite different looks, the actors are so superb at portraying the same personality that you immediately accept the new actor as the same person.
Another thing they have done well is to have kept the characters to a manageable number. Brilliant as the Dance is, it has to be read with one of the available guidebooks in hand so that you can remind yourself who a character is when he reappears two books and 500 pages after the last time he appeared. It is remarkable that the technique has been maintained but simplified so that you don't scramble to figure out who someone is.
Anyone who loved the novel must see the movie. It adds richness and texture to one of the most extraordinary literary works of our time.
Summary of A Dance to the Music of Time
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