Archive: Film Reviews, August 2000
The House of Mirth
Dir: Terrence Davies, USA, 2000
A Review by Ian Haydn Smith, Westminster University, London, UK
Terrence Davies' The House of Mirth is a moving adaptation of Edith Wharton's bleak novel. A caustic account of the repressive, enclosed environment of turn-of-the-century New York society, it recounts the downfall of one woman who attempted to live by her own rules, unaware of how brittle reputations in her world actually were.
Lily Bart is one of New York's most eligible socialites. Beautiful, charming and fully aware of her popularity amongst both bachelors and married men, she enjoys the privileges of her position whilst secretly indulging in gambling and associating with a man whose insubstantial income would make him an unsuitable husband. However, her popularity wanes when she is accused of liaisons with a married man and is discovered to have had dubious business dealings. As a result she is denied future financial security by her family and cast out of society by her peers. Disgraced, with no money to her name, Lily is forced to seek employment and accommodation in the Slums of New York.
Terrence Davies' film excels in contrasting the development of Lily's character against the New York society she inhabits. As Lily discovers more of the world she has been a part of for so long, the more superficial this world appears to be. Davies captures Wharton's brooding mix of tragedy and farce, exposing and ridiculing the Europhile, class-ridden society whilst presenting the full-blooded horror of Lily's predicament and her agonising fall from grace.
Unlike Isabel Archer in The Portrait of a Lady, Lily does not start out an innocent adrift in the world. Although blissfully unaware of the danger she courts, she feels her privileged place in New York society and the circle of people she counts as her friends, are enough to protect her under any circumstances. Through Lily's eyes this society is show in all its hypocrisy, with any transgression of its supposed code of morality acceptable, provided that discretion is always employed. Lily's only fault was the indiscreet way in which she conducted both her business dealings and personal life. As a result, her closest friends become her most bitter rivals in order to extricate themselves from any harm her behaviour may have had on their reputation.
Although destined to be compared with both Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence and Jane Campion's The Portrait of a Lady, Terrence Davies' approach to The House of Mirth is a far less flamboyant. Though each film is successful in articulating the themes of their respective sources, always steering clear of the more banal elements of "heritage" cinema, Davies' adaptation appears more conventional. Shying away from the visual pyrotechnics of the other films, Davies relies solely upon his own subtle, fluid direction, the exceptional performances he elicits from his eclectic cast and Remi Adefarasin's stunning cinematography, to steer his way through the events that cause Lily's fall from grace.
Although told in linear form, covering the years 1905-7, Davies divides his film into segments with the use of a series of tableaux, reflecting Lily's place in the society she inhabits. Though not as prominent as the "painterly" images used in Barry Lyndon or more recently, Breaking the Waves, Davies' images focus on Lily's increasing state of exclusion and loneliness. Beginning with a seemingly perfect picture of Lily with her friends amid the opulent surroundings of a country estate, the images transform, finally showing her alone, in the pitiful surroundings of poverty row. Moving from the luminescence of a Sargent painting to the much darker world of Vermeer, these tableaux reinforce the hopelessness of Lily's situation.
Only when Lily accepts Bertha and George Dorset's invitation to travel with them in the Mediterranean does Davies feel enough at ease to loosen his grip on the narrative. Though less outrageous than Jane Campion's film-within-a-film representation of Isabel's Grand Tour of Europe, Davies' expressive handling of Lily's vacation is a beautiful reminder of his immense ability to communicate through images alone (though we are thankfully excused from enduring a longuer on a carpet that caused such a storm in The Long Day Closes). A five-minute journey through the empty rooms and landscape of Lily's country home, showing the season change and a colder, harsher environment settling in, it is the pivotal moment in the film, where Lily's place in society becomes irreversibly changed. Accompanying this shift in her fortunes, Davies uses an obviously fake image of the Mediterranean to emphasise the falsity of both Bertha's friendship and her seemingly incorruptible moral stance. Whereas Lily offers her genuine friendship, as witnessed by her unwillingness to succumb to blackmail even when she could have used evidence to gain readmission to the society that shunned her, Bertha's only interest lies in using Lily as a pawn to deflect any suspicion of infidelity away from her. Davies' staging of these scenes emphasise the cruel superficiality of Bertha's behaviour and the willingness of a society too enamoured with its own image to do anything but ostracise the source of a scandal, true or false (however, this set may have also been used due to the expense of shooting on location. I prefer my view!)
In drawing comparisons with Jane Austen's accounts of English society, Davies has commented that "With Edith Wharton, the gloves are off and there's blood on the walls." The House of Mirth is certainly more visceral than Austen's work. However, his adaptation never resorts to over blown melodrama. A majestically paced film, Davies has succeeded in creating a beautiful, ultimately tragic account of people's capacity for cruelty.