The beginning of the modern age: Parade's End

The HBO 5-part mini-series Parade's End is excellent all the way through - the first three parts mostly covering volume 1 of the Ford Madox Ford quartet, as the characters engage in various domestic disputes and as the threat of war looms, and the last two parts cover, I believe, material in the final 3 volumes - in any case, what we see in the last two parts of the miniseries is Tietjens returning to the front lines, after his brief return to England to recover from shell shock, and in effect finding himself through his service as a soldier - and knowing that when he returns to London (in part 5) that he can never return to his horrible marriage to Sylvia (the excellent Rebecca Hall) but must break convention and live with his mistress - it seems their passion has been chaste and from afar - the much younger Valentine Wannop. Essentially, what Ford, and this series - with a really smart and taut script by Tom Stoppard and crisp direction by Susanna White - don't know anything about her) - are able to do is show the growth and development of the main character, moving from a self-righteous somewhat foppish, idealistic young English government official to a worldly, somewhat cynical and mistrustful, far more modern - i.e., breaking free to a degree from the class structure and conventions - adult - and this as a metaphor for the growth and changes of the psyche and social structure of the entire nation, after enduring the fear and misery of the war and rising triumphant. There's still class structure of course - but the closing scenes, of Tietjens finding comfort and well-being not in his huge estate or with his snobbish wife but with the leftist Valentine and with his army buddies in his barely furnished flat - is a hopeful metaphor or analogue to the changes that would slowly transform the culture over the course of the century. In other words, it's about the opening of the modern age - as seen through sexuality, politics, and social class. The production values, as noted in earlier post, are what we have come to expect from BBC shows - but the last two parts are especially strong in depiction of trench warfare, with explosives all around and bullets whizzing and the colonel in charge gone completely insane. The series, great as it is, should not replace reading the novels - I will go back to them - but it's something like a primer to help readers follow the very complex web that Ford wove: his novels are part of the modern-fiction era, something like Woolf (though less interior, more political) and difficult at first go - the fiction itself is an example in style of the movement the novels are meant to depict - moving away from convention and toward a new, more open and free and challenging form of literary (and socio-political) expression.

A rare case in which you should see the film (miniseries) first: Parade's End

Readers of my other blog, elliotsreading, may know that I was both impressed with and frustrated by Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End - finding it really smart and full of complex social issues and at times beautifully written but also extremely challenging, with its fragmented and asynchronous narrative and its willful complete lack of contextual narration - we just find ourselves with character, in a scene of a locale, and only over time do we come to understand who's speaking, what his or her relationship is to other characters, etc. - also we get little or no explanatory passages, which is especially difficult for an American reader not familiar w/ English party politics - particularly of a century ago. HBO miniseries to the rescue - I'm a little scornful of those who see the film and skip the book, and in fact always make a point of reading first if I plan to do both genres - film is so more vivid in its impact that it seems once we've seen the work cinematically it is impossible to envision the characters other than as those who played the parts. But in this case - I recommend seeing the miniseries first - I will now, with greater confidence and more sure bearings, at some point return and read the 2nd through 4th volumes of the quartet. I didn't think this work could translate so well, but the brilliant Tom Stoppard makes a great 5-hour script out of about 1,000 dense pages. The series as all the period details and vivid, rich textures - as well as highly pro acting, that we've come to take for granted from BBC productions. The lead is maybe a little more handsome and "cleaned up" than he ought to be, and the miniseries maybe a little more overtly sexual than the book, which did a lot by implication rather than depiction. But some scenes work way better in the miniseries - trimming extensive dialogue down to a few salient points, for ex the long conversation in Germany w/ the priest handled deftly in one short scene. My only quibble is the casting of Valentine Wannop - the actress in the role is excellent and very winning but she looks far, far too young and innocent for the part, in my view, and I'm constantly thinking that Tietjens is trying to have sex with a teenage girl (she's supposed to be 24 I think). McMaster is suitably unctuous, and Rebecca Hall as Mrs. T. is perfect - every word drips venom. Watched first 3 parts, 2 to go.