Gormenghast
by Andy Wilson
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Celia Imrie, George Yiasoumi, Ian Richardson, John Sessions, Warren MitchellDirector: Andy Wilson
Brand: Warner Brothers
Producer: Al Burgess
Producer: Estelle Daniel
Producer: Hilary Salmon
Producer: Michael Wearing
Producer: Rebecca Eaton
Writer: Malcolm McKay
Writer: Mervyn Peake
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 240 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-09-26
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: BBC Warner
Movie Reviews of Gormenghast
Movie Review: Read the books first
Summary: 4 Stars
As other reviewers have mentioned, this tv series is best viewed after reading TITUS GROAN and GORMENGHAST (I'd skip the third book in the trilogy--TITUS ALONE as it isn't anywhere near the standard of the first two books and the minseries doesn't cover it anyway). Watching the tv adaptation after reading the books was like listening to a series of in-jokes that I was in on because I'd read the books. It was intriguing and entertaining.
I only had two problems with it: 1) I wish they'd had the budget to truly do the setting justice. As it was, the sets felt like the background in those BBC Shakespeare play adaptations they make you watch in high school. And Titus Groan and Gormenghast were all about the setting. I remember feeling vertigo reading about the teacup rolling off the trunk of the tree growing out of side of the castle and falling hundreds of feet to the ground. That scene didn't work at all on tv. The tree looked fake.
2) Steerpike. I'm at a loss to understand why the powers-that-be cast such a conventional-looking actor long past his adolescence to play the 17-year old Steerpike. Steerpike, who, in a world of grotesquely ugly people is the most fantastically ugly of all. You only have to look at Peake's illustrations (Along with being a writer, he was one of the most successful professional illustrators of his day) to realize why Steerpike has such a chip on his shoulder. If you looked like that, you would too. His high, bony forehead, his narrow hunched shoulders that looked almost deformed. There's none of that in the Steerpike of the miniseries--they didn't even attempt to make him look ugly. Also, Steerpike is the driving force of the books. He's brilliant and ambitious and for most of the books, he's the most alive character in them. Not so with the miniseries. The actor didn't have the spark that made Steerpike such a compelling character. He looked too old and too normal to even hope to pull it off.
Summary of Gormenghast
A charismatically evil kitchen boy threatens the power of a thousand-year-old dynasty in this fantastic presentation of the classic novels by Mervyn Peake.The BBC's lavish, glowingly designed adaptation of Mervyn Peake's eccentrically brilliant novels Titus Groan and Gormenghast is a triumph of casting. Ian Richardson's Lear-like depiction of the mad earl of a remote, vast, ritual-obsessed building is matched by the brutal pragmatism of Celia Imrie as his wife, the synchronized madness of Zo? Wanamaker and Lynsey Baxter as his twin sisters, and the duplicitous charm of Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as Steerpike, the kitchen-boy determined to take over no matter how many deaths it costs. John Sessions is surprisingly touching as Prunesquallor, the family doctor who realizes almost too late what Steerpike intends.
It is always tricky to film a book dear to the hearts of its admirers. Wilson and his design team achieve a look rather more pre-Raphaelite than Peake's own illustrations--shabby velvets, garish sunlight, and dank, stone passages. The score by Richard Rodney Bennett is full of attractive surprises--fanfares and waltzes and apotheoses--and John Tavener's choral additions are plausibly parts of the immemorial ritual of Gormenghast. --Roz Kaveney
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