March Sunday Corner with Lee Liberman. For Women's Month: SUFFRAGETTE -- it was war

While American women of today work to equalize pay and stave off voter suppression, a century ago winning the vote itself was a war waged -- how much of a war is barely remembered but it should be. The British suffrage movement had genteel beginnings with committee participation, letters, petitions that were to fall on hostile, defiant, or deaf ears. Emmeline Pankhurst turned the genteel campaign upside down calling for "Deeds, Not Words" which led to a violent, militant period in 1912-13 depicted in the 2015 film, SUFFRAGETTE, directed by Sarah Gavron and written by Abi Morgan, now on HBO and earlier reviewed here by TrustMovies. Shown above, left to right, are Helena Bonham-Carter, Carey Mulligan and Meryl Streep; below, middle row l-r: Anne-Marie Duff, Mulligan, Bonham-Carter and Romola Garai. 

Those who possess power keep it till they can't; Edwardian women were treated by law as property of men. In 1906, Finland became the first country to grant full suffrage -- both the right to vote and to run for office. In a number of individual U.S. states, women won the vote in the first decades of the 20th century but it wasn't until 1920 that women in the remaining states got the vote with the passage of the 19th amendment to the Constitution: "The rights of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex" (below, US women protest lack of suffrage in many states).

Mixed up in the US struggle for suffrage was the fight to abolish slavery and also the peculiar resistance to women speaking in public ('seen but not heard'). Susan B Anthony wrote in 1900, "No advanced step taken by women has been so bitterly contested as that of speaking in public. For nothing which they have attempted, not even to secure suffrage, have they been so abused, condemned, and antagonized." In the UK, World War I diverted the suffragettes, but in 1918, suffrage was granted to women over 30 with property qualifications (21 for men,19 for men who had fought in the war). In 1928, UK women gained suffrage rights equal to men.

Suffragette was the first commercial project to shoot inside the real Houses of Parliament rather than on a constructed set, but the grit and urgency of the plot remove any likeness to the usual dignified British period drama. Much of the action is filmed with hand-held camera making it feel like contemporary news, drawing you into the urgency of our own style women-in-danger thrillers, here depicting the 1912-1913 period of British government-inflicted beatings, force-feedings, and repeated imprisonments (below, prison yard).

It was a violent campaign of terror, arson, and intimidation carried out by movement militants -- members of 'Mrs. Pankhurst's Army', as they called themselves. There were fire bombings, window breakings, attempted and completed suicides, telephone wires cut, damage of museum paintings and sculpture, refusals to pay taxes, assaults on homes of British officials.

Emmeline Pankhurst, after many arrests, had gone into hiding from the police during the time-frame of Suffragette; she makes a brief balcony appearance (followed by a police scuffle), played by our modern-day torch-carrier, Ms Streep, whose recent outspoken declaration against cruelty and tyranny puts her in tune with Pankhurst's persona. (Streep's Iron Lady, gaining her an Academy Award, was scripted by Suffragette's Ms Morgan.)

Fern Riddell, writing for British publication History Today (2015) decries the lack of engagement by historians on the subject of suffragette militancy, which she calls "an evolution of the social revolutionary spirit that had been sweeping Europe since the 18th century and their uses of public masculine language of war combined with violent actions.....". One suffragette militant she describes is Kitty Marion, music hall artist. Marion's autobiography tells the story of her radicalization because of the indignities suffered by women on the stage who were expected to trade sex for roles and be targets of random assault; Kitty Marion needs her own biopic. (Read Riddell's article here.)

Workplace harassment and assault is an undercurrent suffered by the women employees at the laundry workplace of Carey Mulligan's character, Maud Watts, who slowly becomes swept up in suffragette militancy. An apolitical young married mother, Maud, along with teenage workers, is subject to intermittent assault by their slimy boss (Geoff Bell), misery accepted as the price of employment. She has no words to express the indignities, only furtive action to protect the most vulnerable from assault; but it is easy to imagine Maud's suppressed pain being triggered into rage by friends already radicalized.

While the troubles of Mulligan's muted Maud are the focus of the story, several other women give such bright performances that they are as memorable as her poor (composite character) everywoman -- not to her detriment but as evidence of the strength of this entire ensemble of best Brits. Anne-Marie Duff is Maud's friend Violet, already deeply engaged in the movement, Helena Bonham-Carter is Edith, a pharmacist (below) and protest organizer, and Romola Garai is the upper class wife of an MP. Two men merit notice in addition to slime master, Bell -- Brendan Gleeson (Braveheart's Hamish) as a police official with a smidgen of empathy and Ben Whishaw (at right, above) Maud's working class spouse whose humiliation over his wife's growing activism finally leads him to refuse to let her come home after a miserable stint in jail.

The plot builds to the dramatic action of real-life Emily Wilding Davison, who threw herself in front of a horse owned by the king in 1913 to be trampled to death at Epsom race course (shown in archival photo, below).

Director Gavron uses original footage of Davison's stirring funeral procession to conclude the film -- the story unfinished, as are women's rights today, exemplified by the recent  March 8 International Women's Rights Day and U.S. walk-out protests (below). Winning the vote was and is not to be the same as winning the influence battle. That war is yet to come.

The above post was written 

by our monthly correspondent, 

Lee Liberman.

Sacrifice & caring: Sarah Gavron/Abi Morgan's bone-deep feminist history, SUFFRAGETTE

Maud Watts, one of the drab but determined protagonists of the new film, SUFFRAGETTE, doesn't have much to show for her life: a poorly-paid job in a laundry, a semi-caring husband, and a child she adores. That she will lose all of this, and that the loss will be of her own doing because she is attempting to bring fairness and justice to herself and to the women of her day (the film is set in the early 1900s) brings to mind a word we've seldom heard of late and seen put into action even less. That word is sacrifice, and although the film, as best I can recall, never uses this term, the act itself is everywhere to be seen.

As written by Abi Morgan (The Invisible Woman), shown at right, and directed by Sarah Gavron (Brick Lane), shown below, this is bone-deep and not-at-all-pretty feminist history. For starters, the two filmmakers do not use their "suffragettes" -- the British women who worked tirelessly to help gain women the right to vote --as we usually see them: figures meant for mostly comic (Hysteria) or romantic (Parade's End) purposes. Gavron and Morgan treat their suffragettes seriously; consequently, so do we.

Everything about this film --except the great energy

and specificity of its performances -- is somber and subdued. With only a couple of exceptions, the filmmakers avoid outright melodrama in favor of low-key but often devastating incident. One of these, perhaps the most devastating, comes as protesting women are beaten -- and badly -- by the police. As a director, Ms Gavron manages to let us feel the full force of this beating without in any way overdoing things or reveling in the violence. It's a remark-able scene. But then, so are so many others.

The filmmakers and their casting director, Fiona Weir, have done a superlative job of finding the right actors and then letting them do their stuff. The result is one of the finest films of the year, and one that, though it makes few concessions to the current need for feel-good-above-all, I suspect will be remembered come awards time.

In the leading role, that pert-but-deep actress Carey Mulligan (above with Ben Whishaw, who plays her husband), again does a bang-up job of drawing us in and making us understand her character's sometimes awful choices. As her friend and the woman who brings her into the movement, Anne-Marie Duff (below, left), as she often does, all but steals the movie with her wide-open, compelling eyes and great spirit.

Also major in the cast are Helena Bonham Carter (below, right) as one of the longtime suffragettes who helps train and strengthen the newcomers, and Natalie Press (My Summer of Love), below, left, as the girl who gives it her all.

Ah, yes: What about Meryl Streep? She's here, all right, below, in a very small role as the leader of the movement, Emmeline Pankhurst. Yet via her one short scene it becomes easy to understand both how Pankhurst was able to inspire her followers, and how Ms Streep is so adept at bringing whatever character she attempts to full-blown life.

In the opposition (and, yes, that would be us men), Brendan Gleeson, below, scores as the undercover policeman who arrests and otherwise natters the ladies without much success. Yet, so truthful to its time and to the situation at hand is the film, that I doubt many men who are still able to think and feel will come away from the film unmoved.

The gains made by women over the past century and a half seem to have caused a backlash, particularly among fundamentalist men. The title crawl that ends the film, just before the final credits roll, is eye-opening indeed. It lists the year in which various countries at last allowed their women the vote. It will have you muttering, "What? No!" time and again. Suffragette, as you might have already gathered, is a must-see movie.

From Focus Features and running 106 minutes, while continuing its run in New York and elsewhere, opens all over South Florida this Friday, November 6.

Caleb Carr's long awaited transition of THE ALIENIST makes its TV debut on TNT tonight

From the time of its 1994 publication, Caleb Carr's notorious novel The Alienist was said to be on track for a major motion picture. And why not, as it would seem to have just about everything going for it? Set in New York City during The Gilded Age and peppered with real-life characters (Teddy Roosevelt), as well as the usual fictional ones, with a tale of a serial killer who preys in particularly vicious fashion on child prostitutes (both boys and girls), it had just about every "hook" in the book -- from transgressive sex and pedophilia to uber-violence, guts and gore, all wrapped into a lovingly detailed "period piece."

Finally and nearly a quarter-century later, THE ALIENIST arrives -- if not on the "big" screen, at least on your TV screen -- in a ten-part series that, from the first two episodes we critics were sent for review, captures the above "hooks" in all their ugly, tawdry glory. In fact, though the series is set in that "gilded age," we spend so much time in the 1890s slums, brothels and filthy streets of New York City that you come away from those initial episodes remembering mostly the grime and dirt, rather than any opulence you might have viewed.

The "alienist" of the title refers to the term used back then to describe what we would now called a psychiatrist. Our alienist is one, Dr. Laszlo Kreizler (played with his usual skill and charisma by German actor Daniel Brühl, shown above, center). Surrounding him are two other major characters, Sara Howard (Dakota Fanning, below) a pretty, young, up-and-coming suffragette from a very good family who works in the office of Mr. Roosevelt, and talented artist John Moore (Luke Evans, above left) who is able to capture the desecrated corpses of the victims with unusual skill and realism. Both these characters will assist the good doctor in his off-the-record investigation.

These characters, as written and performed, are perfectly acceptable but not too much more than that. Instead -- at least in those initial episodes --  it is some of the subsidiary characters who pack the most punch. In particular, we have the young doctor brothers, Lucius and Marcus Isaacson (played by Matthew Shear and Douglas Smith) -- Jews, and so definitely outsiders in this time and place-- who bring some welcome humor, energy and charm to the proceedings.

The Alienist is dark and ugly indeed, so you'll need to gird up your loins and grit your teeth while viewing this one (unless, of course, dark and ugly is already your cup of tea). But over the entire enterprise hangs a kind of "manufactured" quality. I recall feeling this, too, while reading the novel, and so stopped midway and never finished it.

The television version of the novel does have the added impact of coming now, when so many of the problems from that Gilded Age -- the enormous "wealth gap" to the ever-popular "we-hate-immigrants" movement -- are timely all over again. I would certainly watch at least a few more episodes of the television series, as it is visually interesting and well-acted enough to pass muster. But finish it? I don't know. We'll have to see....

From TNT, The Alienist begins tonight at 9pm EST. Good luck! (That's Brian Geraghty, above, as the series' version of Teddy Roosevelt.)

TrustMovies' best (and most overlooked) movies of 2015 -- independent, foreign language and documentary films

What do you know? One of the first movies I covered in 2015 turns out to remain the best of the year. That would be Still Life (my original review of which appears here), a wonder of beauty with a subject that movies almost never get near. The result is, as a good friend of mine observed, "Haunting. It has stayed with me ever since I watched."

The remaining 51 films are listed in the order in which they opened -- or at least in which I finally viewed them. (You can click on each one to go to my original review.)  I am not including any big-budget, mainstream movies this year. There were plenty of good ones, but this blog is devoted to the less-seen and under-marketed films, so let's honor that intention.
Here we go....

Still Life (see above), the great Eddie Marsan in what may be his greatest role, in the most beautiful (theme, cinematography and total execution) movie of the year. Unforgettable.

Timbuktu: A look at the Muslim world like little you'll have seen. It probably should have won Best Foreign Film last year. In any case, it's a keeper.

Girlhood: Céline Sciamma's look at French youth in the banlieues of Paris turns out to be ever better than I initially thought. And that was already damned good.

The Voices: Another film that, having viewed it twice, grows in stature. Alternately ugly and funny, it's a movie I wager you won't have seen anything quite like.

Matt Shepherd Is a Friend of Mine: This warts-and-all doc turns the late poster-boy-for-gay-hate-crimes into a full-bodied, sad and memorable person.

Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem: How to get a divorce (a "gett") in Israel. A quiet shocker of major proportions.

What We Do in the Shadows: Vampires and comedy do not have a storied history. This movie changes all that. A riotous, non-stop delight.

Queen and Country: Shockingly bypassed by too many critics and most audiences, this is one of John Boorman's best films.

The Best Offer: I'm late in catching up with this riveting, much-overlooked psychological drama from one of my favorite directors, Giuseppe Tornatore. It's a "must."

Predestination: and Spring: Exceptional and very different kinds of sci-fi/fantasy films, both executed supremely well, and in the case of the latter, very strangely.

A Wolf at the Door: This Brazilian film is every bit as dark and believable as any you'll have seen. A quiet, unsettling shocker that deserves a much wider audience.

Ned Rifle: the final piece of Hal Hartley's Henry Fool trilogy. A "must" for his fans, and at least a "maybe" for all others.

5 to 7: The year's best love story juxtaposes French and American culture with a fine eye, while offering juicy performances and an ending that is just about perfection.

Chic! This barely-seen French comedy about fashion, creativity and romance is a delicious, subversive surprise. Seek it out if you can find it. Good luck.

About Elly: Finally being released here in the USA, this one is the best of all from that much-lauded Iranian filmmaker. Asghar Farhadi.

Like Sunday Like Rain: Another overlooked gem about an odd relationship that somehow works quite beautifully. Pitch perfect, quirky, funny and finally extraordinarily moving.

GÜEROS -- From darkest Mexico come an exhilarating movie that is -- can you believe it?! -- not about kidnapping.

Gemma Bovery: An unusual "take" on Flaubert's famous tale that proves a comic delight.

Sunset Edge: Kids spend a day in an abandoned trailer park. One of the least-seen but best filmmaking debuts of the year.

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence: Another Roy Andersson amazement. 'Nuff said.

10.000 KM: A long-distance relationship via laptop makes for a smart, surprising relationship movie.

Phoenix: A post-Holocaust mystery that explores guilt, shame, denial -- and hope -- in intriguing ways.

Listen to Me Marlon: Marlon Brando as you've never seen (nor heard) him in a fascinating documentary based on the actor's private recordings.

The Kindergarten Teacher: Israeli drama exploring art, creativity and hypocrisy -- among other things -- in that country today.

Counting: Terrific cinematography and allusive meaning highlight this provocative and beautiful-to-behold documentary about time and place and... what?

A Little Chaos: Alan Rickman's splendid look at Louis XIV and his court and garden. Perhaps the most overlooked and under-rated of all the year's films.

Rosenwald: How the Academy overlooked this fine and important documentary about one of America's great businessmen/philanthropists is a mystery indeed. Don't you do the same.

Guidance: The year's most glorious comedy -- oh, so wonderfully politically incorrect!

The Second Mother and I Touched All Your Stuff: Two underseen Brazilian films -- the first a narrative, the second (a still from which is shown above) a documentary -- both of which deserved a much wider audience.

Blind: An original exploration into the mind of the non-sighted, this is one hell of a trip.

Home from Home: An amazing movie from one of Germany's least-known (but ought not to be) filmmakers.

Closer to the Moon: a terrific little based-on-fact tale filled with nonstop fun and irony (and Vera Farmiga and Mark Strong).

The Fool: The darkest, bleakest, black comedic look at today's Russia that you can imagine. Beats out even last year's Leviathan

The Farewell Party: The end-of-life movie to end all of 'em, this Israeli comedy/drama is spectacularly well-done.

Movement + Location: Brilliant, low-key sci-fi that's about a whole lot of things -- especially the immigrant experience.

The Creeping Garden: It is almost unimaginable how interesting, enjoyable, educational and fun this documentary about slime mold turns out to be.

Taxi: The Iranian provocateur Jafar Panahi takes us into his life as a taxi driver in this hybrid of documentary and narrative.

Walter: This little-seen Canadian film is a winner in all respects -- especially in the way it confounds our ideas about religion, ghosts and god.

Tab Hunter Confidential: The story of one of Hollywood's most popular 1950s stars is laid bare in this excellent documentary.

Why I'm Not on Facebook: This must-see doc tackles everything from that social network behemoth to narcissism and the way we live today.

Suffragette: The struggle for women's right to vote in England becomes a major work of sacrifice and upheaval.

Mustang: France's BFLF submission is a fine tale of Turkish sisters struggling for their freedom from fundamentalist Islam.

Brooklyn: One of the year's best, with a fabulous lead performance from its star, Saoirse Ronan.

Stink!  A fine activist doc about safety, corporate power and greed that needs to be seen.

Hitchcock/Truffaut: The film-buff doc of the year, a treasure-trove of info about (nearly) everyone's favorite director.

My Friend Victoria: From France, and the movie of the year so far as race, class and the building of character are concerned.

Chi-Raq: Spike Lee and Kevin Willmott's updating of Lysistrata to present-day Chicago proves Lee's best movie in a long, long while: funny, smart, and sporting a crack cast. music, dance and rap poetry.

45 Years: A love story, the likes of which we rarely see, in which a long-time marriage threatens to unravel before our -- and its participant's -- eyes.

Youth: Paolo Sorrentino does it again in this, the most visually arresting film of the year. Gorgeous.

(Dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lies. Sure, lying is only human, but this fine doc shows us why and how to keep this particular characteristic in check.

Experimenter: The Stanley Milgram story -- done with enough wit, style and passion to create a memorable minor classic.

Faults: Cults and deprogramming get a look-see like nothing you will have thus far encountered. This one's a humdinger!

THE DIVINE ORDER: Switzerland's tardy response to women's rights in Petra Volpe's hugely enjoyable adult coming-of-age movie

I had forgotten just how very late in the western-civilization game that the country of Switzerland finally recognized women's right to vote: 1971. That's a jaw-dropper. (You can find the year in which each of the world's countries recognized women's suffrage here.) Swiss filmmaker Petra Volpe has made a tasty little delight centered around that landmark Swiss year and what happened in one particular small town that helped change things. Unlike 2015's much darker Suffragette, THE DIVINE ORDER proves a lighthearted but also smart and genuinely "felt" film about this fraught time -- when the rest of the western world was experiencing everything from the sexual revolution to anti-war protests but Switzerland was still back in the dark ages concerning certain subjects.

As both writer and director, Ms Volpe (shown at right) trusts her subject to make its own importance clear, and she doesn't paint her little town as any hotbed of anti-woman feelings. It's simply patriarchal and old-fashioned -- with all that goes along with those conditions. Old habits die hard, as they say, and Switzerland proves not much different from other locales -- just later in coming to terms with change.

The group of women Volpe creates is given fine life by the set of actresses chosen for the roles, beginning with the film's wonderful star, Marie Leuenberger (of Amnesia and The Circle), who won the Tribeca Film Fest's Best Actress award for her work here.

Ms Leuenberger, above, plays Nora, a mousy little Swiss hausfrau with a decent, hunky husband (Maximilian Simonischek, below, right), a couple of cute kids, and a nasty, lazy father-in-law and brother-in-law in tow. When an interesting, random and quite believable confluence of events forces a crack in Nora's sense of identity and justice, that crack keep opening slowly into, well, a whole new world of change.

Helping that change occur are a number of local women, each with her own special problem to solve, but each also open to aiding the others in solving theirs. So this is a "solidarity" movie, yes, but it's one with a large, open heart and a mind sharp enough to recognize that the "other" -- men, and even some of the town's women who refuse to understand what suffrage and justice could bring -- are not the enemy per se but rather "family" that must be made to embrace progress.

How all this comes about proves alternately funny, moving and very specific -- bringing together several generations of women (and men) into a time of change in which most do not always behave in an admirable way, yet still manage to learn from their mistakes.

Featuring a plethora of juicy scenes, the movie's best of all is the one (below) in which the sexual revolution suddenly enters these women's lives as they learn for the first time about the look, as well as the uses, of their own vagina.

Sure, The Divine Order is a feel-good movie, but it offers enough irony, human foibles and satire (of religion and hypocrisy, among other subjects) to ensure that the feeling good is fully deserved. Performances are fine down the line, with Ms Leuenberger absolutely memorable as a country mouse who becomes a "tiger" without losing a trace of her humanity or generosity.

From Zeitgeist Films -- in German and a bit of Italian with English subtitles, and running a just-about-perfect 96 minutes -- the movie is Switzerland's entry into the Best Foreign Language Film "Oscar" race. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find it placed on the shortlist. The film opens tomorrow, Friday, October 27, in New York City (at Film Forum) and Santa Barbara (the Riviera) and on November 17 in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Royal and Playhouse 7. Here in Boca Raton it will open at The Living Room Theater on December 1. To see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters, click here and scroll down.

Parade's End -- an acquired taste. (Scroll down for the companion review of Downton Abbey)

This post is written by our "Sunday Corner" 

corresponent, Lee Liberman

Parade's End (BBC/HBO), a psychological drama, and cream puffy Downton Abbey (PBS) treat the effects of world war and industrialization on tradition-bound Edwardians, especially on women. Parade's End, in 5 episodes based on novels by Ford Madox Ford, is a tougher go; it takes a few takes to dig itself into your heart, but the payoff is far more interesting -- you feel world war shaking the ground and savor a bit of well-earned joy as the parade ends. Despite excellent reviews here, the series, directed by Susanna White, slipped under the radar quickly but was widely celebrated and honored across the pond.

Tom Stoppard (prolific playwright, screen-writer) can't have had a simple time distilling Ford Madox Ford's four-novel series because the work unfolds in non-linear fashion, jumping around dizzily. Written close to the period, the novels were called by poet W.H. Auden and others 'great', but they aren't easy -- as though Ford meant his work to be as contrary as he made his characters. The first go at the mini-series is also off-putting. I didn't get into it until the re-watch; then became engrossed in the story of the protagonists and also their being metaphor for the bloom being off the rose of the aristocracy. It did help to know where the story was headed before focusing on how the words and actions of the characters contribute to the synergy of the whole.

The antiheroes of the drama are Christopher and Sylvia Tietgens, a miserably-married aristocratic couple whom anyone will recognize who has encountered a relationship in which the parties don't get each other, talk past each other, relentlessly disappoint, and make each other angry or depressed. Yes, toxic, but Christopher and Sylvia turn each other on -- he thinks she is "glorious" and his braininess and impeccable taste have spoiled her for other men. Sylvia wants to keep her husband but cannot help repelling him. Duty compels him to wear the hair shirt: 'I stand for monogamy and chastity and not talking about it,' he says. Benedict Cumberbatch (at far left) is so quietly, deeply expres-sive that Christopher's suffering is palpable -- his 'romantic feudalism', his nostalgia for a time of 'rights, duties, and supposed orderliness' (Julian Barnes, the Guardian, 8/2012) making him a dinosaur in his own time. (Press here for Barnes's rich analysis of Ford's characters.) 

Sylvia (the beautiful, formidable Rebecca Hall, above, right), acts out the narcissism of the aristocracy with the seductive charm of a sociopath. Her mother (Janet McTeer) calls her manipulative behavior 'pulling the strings of the shower bath'. Christopher, an intellectual savant, shoulders the guilt and unhappiness of an aristocracy that is becoming anachronistic. Although brilliant, he nevertheless courts failure through one self-deprecating act after another. He works at the Imperial Department of Statistics and perfectly predicts the outbreak of war. But when asked to manipulate data, he quits, deeply offended, and joins the army. Through the war years, Sylvia's sadistic antics and Christopher's own self-effacement conspire to ruin his reputation. He is banned from his club and sent down to a combat unit at the front.

Appearing early but not often in the story is young, brainy suffragette, Valentine, (Adelaide Clemens, below, right), middle-class daughter of a classics professor and journalist mother (Miranda Richardson at her most winsome). Christopher and Valentine meet for the first time on a golf course where she and a friend are demonstrating for the vote among 'fat golfing idiots' (whose own view is that suffragettes are whores and deserve to have their bare bottoms spanked). Christopher chivalrously foils arrest of the girls by heaving his clubs in the way of a police officer who is giving chase. In this and later brief chaste encounters, we see the exact opposite of mutual repulsion. Christopher and Valentine "get" each other, make each other think, and disagree amiably. Their fresh good will is hope for the future, but he is not ready to shed his old-fashioned honor.

Honoring the rules of the 'parade' of the social elite (aggressively flouted by Sylvia), Christopher does not take up with Valentine until the war has dragged on, his parents have died of disappointment, and Sylvia has exhausted him with histrionics. The last straw is her having the ancient tree at Groby Hall felled because it darkens the parlor. (Groby, the Tietgens family seat in Yorkshire, is 'older than Protestantism'.) In a decisive change in behavior, Christopher dismisses Sylvia with an unforgiving stare and throws a log from the old tree on the fire. Peace is declared, the troops are released, and in the final frames Christopher is at last happy as he finally joins his heart with Valentine.

More British acting elite add depth to the parade, among them are Rufus Sewell, a batty cleric; Rupert Everett, Christopher's older brother (above, left), who lives with his mistress and wants no part of Groby; and Anne-Marie Duff (below, left) as whiny Edith, a middle-class snob who has snared Macmaster, (Stephen Graham, below, right), a writer, to enhance her social climb among the literati.

Parade's End is streaming on HBO; it's worth the work.

***********************

Compared to Parade's End, the PBS series DOWNTON ABBEY is the soap opera version of the cracking Edwardian facade during and after WWI. Created by Julian Fellowes, shown below, Season 5 has ended and season 6 ordered -- could be the place to stop.

Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville), hapless head of the aristocratic Crawley family, broods over the inability of his land-rich, cash-poor estate to support itself. Fortunately his modern daughter Mary (Michelle Dockery) is able to walk the line between appreciating papa's decency and prodding him toward running the estate like a business. The growing assertiveness of women in the new century is punctuated by daughter Sybil (Jessica Brown Findlay) running off with the chauffeur, cousin Rose (Lily James) falling for a black jazz musician followed by snagging a Jewish banker-- at least avoiding an interracial scandal.

But an hour special that ran on PBS at the start of Season 5 spelled out the premier obsession of this series: 'The Manners of Downton Abbey' (for sale at PBS). The host, Alastair Bruce, historian and consultant, bobs about the film set adjusting posture, bits of dialogue, and scene to assure perfect replication of the ballet of manners that dictated daily life of the Edwardian elite upstairs and staff downstairs.

Bruce explains that the aristocracy were so traumatized by contageous disease and the violence of the French Revolution that habits of restrained physical contact and emotion even among family solidified into protocol. The Edwardians enveloped themselves in a complexity of nuanced formalities, insulating them from change. Dowager Countess Violet (Maggie Smith, below), Butler Carson (Jim Carter), and Lord Grantham keep the flame, resisting slippage of the status quo.

There are few if any story lines in Downton that do not revolve the Edwardian code in one way or another. One stays tuned to find out what's coming next (or what Violet will say next). Soap opera is geared to the gossip gene or the ginned-up fear response as plots charge to and fro, anticipating a favorite character's horrible dilemma. All the talk, tears, wit. joy, grief at Downton Abbey are skin deep. In season 5, the only character whose painful struggle (with his sexuality) makes us care is Thomas, the devious under-butler, played by marvelous actor Rob James-Collier (below), who is owed lead roles as soon as possible. There is something behind those eyes, and you want more.

DA's success is aided by "camp and class", said one reviewer; it surely is beautiful and fans feel elevated by its British toniness (reputedly some royals tune in). Perhaps one more season is enough, though, as plots are repeating themselves and going stale. It is quite a contrast to feature-film who-done-it, Gosford Park, also scripted by Fellowes. But Gosford had director, Robert Altman, who, like great writers, make us care about the inner life and motivations of characters. Taking place during a weekend gathering at a country estate, a murder is committed by a character whose pain we begin to understand and share as the crime is solved. At Gosford Park, as in Parade's End, we are slowly drawn into the inner lives of a number of characters. Parade's End and Gosford Park can be mined over and again; repeat visits to Downton offer thin gruel.

Downtown Abbey Season 5 will be available for a short time on line at PBS. Only the first four seasons are available on DVD in the NTSC version compatible with our DVD players, but for those who own an all-region player, the UK version of Season 5 is now for sale. (It can't be long before Season 5 is available here, too.)