Somewhat long and strange
Added 11/8/2009
World War II in Egypt and the middle east traps a couple in strange circumstances.
The English professor appears after several episodes to be a Marxist,
and his wife, the author, seems to be wanting more of his attentions.
Her husband's actor friend kills himself ( said to be in love with
the husband), but we know that his Atlantic open boat experience
with a boat load of children haunts him.
There is a big deal about Pyramid climbing.
The acting is very good, but I never felt that the narration
of the story got me involved in the characters as real 3d people.
They all seem more or less 2d characterizations with hidden motivations.
A lot of people die in this and not always in the war.
Since I'm a big fan of both Emma Thompson and, Kenneth Branagh,
this min-series is a disappointment no matter how well
filmed.
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"The fortunes of war flow this way and that"
Added 10/27/2009
The BBC's 1987 seven-part miniseries based on Olivia Manning's BALKAN TRILOGY and LEVANT TRILOGY were the first pairing of Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson (who would soon wed and become each very famous internationally in his and her own right), and they've never been better as Guy and Harriet Pringle, an academic couple trapped "on the wrong side of Europe" during the early years of World War II. In Bucharest, for Guy's first job teaching English as a married man, the Pringles find themselves increasingly isolated, first by the movements of the Rumanian fascists in league with Hitler (the Iron Guard), and then by the invading German army; they become transplanted first to Athens and then to Cairo as the war continues, along with a changing group of other involuntary English exiles. The miniseries, like the books it is base on, is tremendously episodic, and sometimes you lose track of who's who in Guy's and Harriet's circle given the enormous cast of characters. Whereas the Manning novels (like that other great extensive roman a clef that covers the same period, Anthony Powell's DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME) allow the characters to be joined by the sense of the ebb and flow of the author's strong prose style, here many of the episodes seem highly disjointed. Yet many of the moments within have been unforgettable to me for more than twenty years: the Pringles finding to their horror at a performance at the Bucharest Opera that the German influence has replaced "Rigoletto" with "Tannhauser"; the final result in Cairo of Professor Lord Pinkrose's long-deferred lecture on Byron; the consequences when the likable but impossible sponger Prince Yakimov (Ronald Pickup, in a classic performance) indulges in a cigarette during an Athens air-raid; the strained humiliated goodbye of a Syrian who has shown Harriet the sights in Damascus when she leaves him to run off with her countrymen.
The effect of the production is helped tremendously not only by the expensive sets and costumes (the BCC wanted to compete with the success of Granada Television's recent expensive miniseries adaptations of BRIDESHEAD REVISITED and THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN, and spared little) and by the terrific acting. Branagh has never been more charming as the irrepressible and platonically promiscuous Guy, a Marxist English teacher who makes everyone feel as if he's the most important person in the room, and Thompson has one of her signature roles as the lonely, long-suffering Harriet. One can genuinely fault the series for presenting World War II mostly as a bothersome nuisance to bourgeois, well-educated Englishmen; yet as so many novelists and filmmakers of the twentieth century were aware, few things have more appeal to audiences than young people in love separated and displaced by war.
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How do you turn on the Subtitles?
Added 5/10/2009
This DVD was hard to work with on my (new) DVD player. Please, someone, how do you turn on the subtitles? I've tried everything I know several times. The box says "closed captioned" and I really need that feature to hear properly.
1 out of 3 people found this helpful.
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As good as it gets
Added 3/25/2009
If this type of entertainment is your thing, this is an incredibly good value. Nine bucks for six something hours - seven episodes - of great entertainment. There are plenty of reviews here about the program if you need that kind of info - I say buy it, pop some corn and stay home from the crap movies - I guess that would be almost all of them - and save yourself at least a hundred bucks and be well entertained. There's some laughs, some cries and a great story of people looking everywhere for what's right under their noses.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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A Classy Series
Added 2/20/2009
"Fortunes of War" is a seven part British series that is based on autobiographical books by Olivia Manning. It follows the lives of a British Literature Professor and his wife during their sojourn out of England during World War II. The cinematography is stunning and clearly the series was filmed on location in Hungary, Greece, Egypt and Syria. It is worth watching just for the spectacular scenery, but it has much more to offer.
The professor and his wife are played by two of England's most distinguished actors, Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson, and both give sterling performances. Branagh's character is complex, a contrast of selfishness and generosity, introvert and extravert, thoughtfulness and absent-mindedness. His wife, steady, outgoing, generous and thoughtful, has a difficult time coping because most of the time he simply neglects her.
The War rages all around them killing friends and threatening their own safety. Forced to evacuate one war zone after another, they flee to different countries and seek to re-establish their lives. One can only marvel at their tenacity to stay in such places, given the ever-present danger.
Watching this is one of those experiences that when it ends, you wish there was one more episode. Highly recommended.
3 out of 3 people found this helpful.
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