Crafted by the same team who produced the famous Pride & Prejudice mentioned in about every other post on this blog, Wives and Daughters is a marvel. The costumes are amazing, the sets are unbelievable, the acting superb and the script, fantastic. If you were asleep like I was in 2003 and missed this, see it soon!I loved the heroine of Molly Gibson so much. Her integrity and intelligence, her sense of right and fairness, her compassion and charm, her ability to be graceful in difficult situations all combine to represent that better self many of us hope to be.
The script explores many things, but most fascinatingly how we find ourselves in love with another person. Characters in the film represent so many differing avenues to this end. The father chooses love by appropriatenss and station. Cynthia chooses love by the desire to be desired. Her mother chooses love in order to be rescued. Molly chooses love by friendship and admiration.
I thought the following comments also presented very interesting aspects of the story:
"Davies, who wrote the scripts for such Masterpiece Theatre classics as A Rather English Marriage, Moll Flanders, the House of Cards trilogy, and Middlemarch, found Wives and Daughters to be perfect costume-drama material. It posed a rather interesting problem: Gaskell died just before completing the book. She was obviously aiming at a happy ending, and Davies has supplied the lost denouement with surprise and style. "
"Wives and Daughters is about the ordinary mysteries of life," says producer Sue Birtwistle, previously responsible for the BBC's Pride and Prejudice and Masterpiece Theatre's King Lear. "[It's about] where love comes from, how it grows, how it can break our hearts, how it can bring happiness and fulfillment. It's about the mistakes we make and the secrets we have to keep."
***This dvd is available through netflix and there are a few copies though Amazon.. for around $30..I think that if you liked Pride and Prejudice, you might find it worth owning.
