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Post by roverpup on May 13, 2018 14:56:37 GMT
I didn’t feel it was rushed and I have read the books as well. In fact, their adapatation of Bad News went well beyond my expectations. They got the essence of all the emotions of the characters and even had lots of room for direct lines from the book without the screen version feeling like it was just “ripping off” the book (so to speak) - it was well integrated in a beautifully written script.
I thought IV was perfect in her role (both flashback and the here and now scenes). She was the perfect foil for PM‘s frenetic/comatose phases, and did a great job reacting with complete astonishment and puzzlement at his frightful behaviours. That whole scene of her aborted apology for her past attempt to help Patrick as a boy was so well done, and gave the motivationsal bridge necessary to lead to Patrick’s hurried exit (it just flowed magnificently from one scene to the next).
About the eyes... I don’t think it mattered one whit (to me at least). I never even noticed it - I was too engrossed with the actual story unfolding and the young boy who they chose to be PM in his youth was so expressive and sorrowful that I was overwhelmed with his acting. All of his scenes were excellently done but my favourites are when he was trembling on the stairs and Anne came to talk to him (that’s a favourite reoccurring scene from the book for me too) and when he wakes from his sleep and Eleanor is by his side (that scene gave me - and still gives me, when I think of it - shivers!!!).
So many of individual scenes were just like little gems and yet the episode wasn’t fragmented in any way to me. It just flowed so beautifully. Great composition. And don’t get me started on the cinematography!! To die for!!!!
:-))
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Post by miriel68 on May 13, 2018 16:33:43 GMT
The different color of eyes was very noticeable, doesn’t it? Especially because they framed both actors in te same way and from one shot to the other! It seems they went for the talented kid instead of the features. Exactly. It wouldn't be so evident if it weren't for the parallel cuts of adult/young Patrick. Of course, it is a minor detail, but can be a bit distracting. And not really difficult to amend: they could easily have found contact lenses for him. And it always works in plus if you have the young actor who is a believable physically as an alter-ego of the adult one. Still, the kid is excellent.
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Post by queenzod on May 20, 2018 2:16:14 GMT
Wow. Just wow. I cannot get over the beautiful, sumptuous cinematography and the sheer number of horrible British assholes! JJL did make Eleanor more sympathetic than I thought she would be. Young Patrick was just heartbreaking. This is so damn good!
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Post by sgev1977 on May 20, 2018 2:24:23 GMT
I actually loved Jennifer Jason Leigh. She is great playing this little pathetic women.
The director is very good. The way he filmed the rape scene without showing absolutely anything but still being very shocking! He show static shots of the luxury lonely rooms without music or any sound. It felt so chilly.
EDITED: Also it’s amazing how faithful they are to the books. I can see the same with the next episode but probably not with the last two! We will see!
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Post by roverpup on May 20, 2018 2:51:46 GMT
Wow. Just wow. I cannot get over the beautiful, sumptuous cinematography and the sheer number of horrible British assholes! JJL did make Eleanor more sympathetic than I thought she would be. Young Patrick was just heartbreaking. This is so damn good! I think I am still shaking from the impact of this episode. Bloody marvelous and totally ingenious how the reversed the order of the books and how it works so well on the screen. Yes, JJL was able to make her character a bit more sympathetic but I still hate how she treated her pòor little boy. She could be so coldly selfish when she knew what a monster David was. Patrick was just a little boy who needed some one to be there for him so much - it makes me weep to think the pain he had to go through because of the negligent and abusive adult in his life. That dinner scene was almost unbearable but so essential for understanding what made Patrck the way he was in the first episode. When I was a teacher I had a child in one of my classes (Grade one) who suffered under a tyrant much like David Melrose and between my principle and me we helped free both the child and his mother from the grip of such a monster. This boy was so terrorized by his father he was virtually in a "zombie" state because of his trauma. The biggest difference between this child and Patrick is that his mother (although completely cowed and fearful of the dad) did manage to at least come forward and ask for help to save her child. Thank God! Of course I realise this happened in a time when there was a much more level of awareness about such things. Still, seeing this episode really brought the whole thing back to me. About the skill in this episode - the cinematography was superb. The colors! The arrangement of shapes and the use of chiaroscuro! And the music... so beautiful and yet so oppressive. And the insect sounds... everything was so perfect! And that ending scene with BC coming through the nightmare of his withdrawal. Devastating... simply devastating!!! Bring on next week! :-))
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Post by queenzod on May 20, 2018 3:28:48 GMT
This episode brings up so much for me as well, and I’m going to say something personal here, too. My own father was a difficult person who raged one minute and was gentle the next. His masculinity was always under seige and it was very hard for him to grow old and lose his vigor. He took it out on me. Not physically, but with hurtful comments and a lot of mixed messages and passive aggressive stuff. It was pretty horrible, and to my shame, I didn’t handle it very well. I didn’t have the emotional capacity to deal with him, so I escaped into an alcoholic relapse, much like Eleanor, to just not be there (in a way). So I understand where she was coming from. She was too fragile to deal with a monster like her husband and booze and pills were an out. Yes, she let Patrick down and was pathetic, but so was I. It’s hard to be human sometimes, and to understand and accept our limitations. We hurt other people without meaning to (yes, some people mean to but most of us are just trying to live). I find it very sad. This ep has me shook.
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Post by roverpup on May 20, 2018 4:32:22 GMT
Children just don't have the capacity to handle such horrible treatment so it is completely understandable that they (and you) react by withdrawing by way of various methods (drugs, alcohol, or maladjusted behaviours). It is a way of protecting themselves from the immediate trauma, but unfortunately it is also eventually a very self-destructive way as well, strangely enough. This why they absolutely need the support and guidance of a responsible adult to protect them. There's nothing to be ashamed of QZ. Children shouldn't be expected to handle such things - they need adults to step up and advocate for them.
Patrick had no one, sadly enough. He had to struggle through his trauma on his own and it warped him as a result. Which made his struggles as an adult all the more difficult, of course. That's what makes this story so touching and eventually life affirming... because he finally does achieve his freedom from his past (and his class). You obviously are are also a testament to a similar achievement because you came through this sort of thing and became a thoughtful, caring adult.
And just so people don't think the David Melrose's of this world are all men - another child I taught also had massive problems with this sort of thing (minus the sexual abuse) and his mother was the person in his life who tortured him emotionally by telling him she needed him so much one minute and then in the same breath she would announce, to his face, that she wished she had aborted him! And he was only 6 years old when this was going on! I was a witness to this abuse and reported her. The poor child was a complete wreck emotionally and couldn't function in any normal way. All he wanted was to be loved and feel secure. He had nothing even remotely close to that in his life. I see a lot of him in Patrick.
This episode has so much aching humanity (through the character of young Patrick) in its presentation of the inhumanity in that household.
This episode packed quite an emotional wallop!
:-))
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Post by mllemass on May 20, 2018 6:46:42 GMT
I have a cousin who's a psychiatrist, and I remember her once saying that as long as a children have one loving parent, they can grow up unaffected by the horrible parent. In other words, the power of love is stronger than the power of hate. It's such a struggle for Patrick because he has one horrible parent and one loving parent who let him down. He grew up watching them drown their problems in pills and alcohol, so he learned to do the same.
My parents are part of a generation who grew up getting beatings on a regular basis - the usual parenting strategy in the good old days. But I give them credit for breaking that cycle of violence when it came to me and my sister. They would often tell stories of the corporal punishments they endured as children. My father explained once that when you become an adult, you have the choice of being like your parents were, or being better. He acknowledged that his parents did what they thought was right at the time, but he wanted to be better, so he was. He also has this mind set that a real man would never need to use physical force over someone smaller and weaker. Your authority as a parent can't come from threats of violence because no one learns through violence. That's what I grew up hearing. So it came as a shock when I became older and found out that there were people who were grateful for the beatings they received as children from their parents. If it wasn't for those beatings, they would never have learned to behave! It makes me so sad to hear that people think violence equals love, because you just know they're going to raise their own children that way.
Back to young Patrick -.despite his parents' lack of decent parenting skills, he seemed to be surrounded by otherwise caring people. They didn't go as far as to rescue him from his nightmare, but they did give him a different perspective and show him that not all adults are like his parents.
I too thought that this episode was very faithful to the novel, and I was grateful that they weren't too graphic in showing the abuse. It was handled very well - closed door, silence, empty rooms. Anyone who hasn't read the books should be able to figure out what happened. I think they're going to keep flashing back to his childhood in the next three episodes. Next week is that dinner with all those horrible people!
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Post by sgev1977 on May 20, 2018 20:03:32 GMT
A few more thoughts: it seems to me they are humanizing the women a lot compared to the books. There was a very silly article about the novels that claimed Edward St Aubyn hated American women. It was one of those essays that clearly use just selected info to confirm their biases because the author completely ignored that the most sympathetic character in the book is actually an American woman (Anne) and she also did the typical move of post out of context quotes about the famous person, in this case St Aubyn, from articles written by others and using them to conclude he is not a good person. That old article was actually linked in the recent NYT article about the series.
Still, there is a good number of female characters whose portraits are very nasty. It happens the same with the men but most nasty male characters are very smart even when they are awful (David, Nicholas, the Irish guru etc.). There is a few that are dumb (Sonny, the French ambassador and a good number of the male guests in Some Hope) but it’s the most prominent female antagonists the ones that are dumb, including, of course, the two American sisters: Eleanor and Nancy. On the other hand, smart women are the most moral individuals. And the most self-conscious. That’s the main attribute for St Aubyn. Patrick is not perfect but what save him is that even with all his flaws he can be very self-conscious.
Anyway, here we can see a more humanized Eleanor but more interesting and surprising was the brief scene with Julia at the end. She, of course, is a combination of at least three characters: the first apparition of Julia in the books is until book number 4. Here Jessica Raine is playing the lover of Patrick in the first book, the ex-lover in book three that tried to seduce him again and Julia. But in this episode she is also playing a helpful friend in scenes that aren’t in the books at all. IMO this gave a whole new dimension to the character. All those female characters were presented as frivolous dumb socialites who we can’t imagine worrying for a friend in one of his lowest moments. I can wait what they do with her in the next episodes.
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Post by roverpup on May 20, 2018 22:32:20 GMT
I don't think gender has anything to do with portrayal of positive or negative characters. In fact EstA's feelings of despise for the male upperclass seems to be such a major theme of the books (and the series so far) I really don't think the author of the piece you posted about has a leg to stand on concerning their premise. But to me the books spread the criticism pretty evenly around among men, women, Americans, Europeans and everyone in fact.
Johnny is a very sympathetically portrayed character (to me) in the books (and so far in this series). And he is the one true friend of Patrick's who, although (in the books) isn't pro-active in helping Patrick during the early days - in fact he is a "partner in crime" with his drug habit, - does stick with him and is the person who really listens to his confession about David's abuse and realises the enormity of it. He also is someone who gives Patrick some very solid advice and allows him to open up and discuss issues that help him along the way.
As far as the men being portrayed as intelligent even when they are presented as evil - I don't consider the Irish guru as particularly a standout in the cleverness department. He wasn't outright drooling stupid but I don't think his flimflamming of Eleanor (who was a total drunk and needy person) is a good measure of any kind of superior mind. I'd put Mary's intellect up against his any day and Mary was a much more noble character for me.
As for the portrayal of Eleanor - I found her, both in the books and in this movie (so far) to be a very unsympathetic creature. JJL is doing a hugely wonderful job in the role and so it is completely complimentary when I say the character really disgusts me totally. Overflowing with self-pity, manipulative (of her own young son, FFS), selfish, hot and cold with her affections for her little boy, not an ounce of empathy for her child, spoiled and wholly immature - her remark to Anne in the car about why should mentioning Patrick cause her to react differently, is so cold it made me grit my teeth and indicates to me that she had no true affection for her son. It reeks of resentment for Patrick and her willful indifference to his plight reinforces this for me. She is indeed a pitiful creature, but I don't feel pity towards her.
Whatever Anne's sins are they pale besides Eleanor's so I hardly think it fair to put these two characters in the same basket.
I just watched this episode again and still am totally blown away by it! I feel like the air has been punched out of me.
Can I also say that when BC was being helped up the stairs by "Johnny" his agonised cries reminded me of James' cries in the tent when he is in pain from the cancer in Third Star. There was one split second I heard James and it made me doubly sad.
:-))
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