The Wings of the Dove (1997)

Best movie of this year hands down!

The first must-see film of the year.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

An impoverished woman who has been forced to choose between a privileged life with her wealthy aunt and her journalist lover, befriends an American heiress. When she discovers the heiress is attracted to her own lover and is dying, she sees a chance to have both the privileged life she cannot give up and the lover she cannot live without.What is interesting to me is how great an actress Helena Bonham Carter has been, apparently since the beginning. She did not really come to my attention until "Fight Club" (and then even barely) or the films of Tim Burton. But she had been doing great period pieces for a while. This film narrowly predates "Fight Club", and if I had been someone who followed the Oscars at the time, I would have taken more notice.That is the beginning and end of this -- a showcase for Bonham Carter. Not that it is a bad film, but it is not terribly remarkable and already largely forgotten.

The Wings of the Dove (1997)Yes, this is a quite, indirect, thoughtful movie. But it is never slow. And the acting is incredible, almost as incredible as all the dresses and interior sets, which will blow anyone's mind. The story, by Henry James (the master of indirect but probing feelings), is about love of all kinds. And about being a good person, really. Three of the four main leads struggle with doing the right thing (and they do the right thing). The fourth struggles, falters, then comes forward again, then falters, finally, by making a demand that can never be met.It's unfair to compare this kind of period movie (set around 1910 even though James's book was published in 1902) to "A Room with a View" (set in the same decade) but the reason this happens is that the 1985 Merchant-Ivory masterpiece seemed to open up a new way of making period films, filled with beauty and lingering thoughts and, well, feeling. Not the feeling two people have for each other, but a feeling of a time and place. It so happens the star of this 1997 film, Helena Bonham Carter, also starred (magnificently) in the first one.The other star is a man, Linus Roache, who almost overplays his understated character by making him dry and deadpan and polite. But it works, over time, to help make the final few seconds of the film (which are so important) succeed. The third lead, really, in this lopsided triangle, is Alison Elliott, who puts in an equally subtle performance. So much of the movie is about little changes in facial expression, the acting had to rise to the needs of the plot. Bonham Carter, above all, does this with chilling perfection.But those dresses! This is what is called Edwardian England, the first decade of the 20th Century, a time when modernity swept Europe with a passion (Picasso and Klimt) and when cars and other new technologies were surging. The styles of the dresses are part Art Nouveau, with its Asian influences, and part European excess, a showing off of style and wealth and material sensibility. Thank god! It's just breathtaking. The interiors are likewise brimming with tiles and flowers and paintings and light of all kinds.All of this is handled with a cinematic control that reminds me of the color coordination of mid-century Technicolor films, where the palette of a scene is often limited to a pair of colors. You'll see many scenes where a mix of blue and rusty orange are the only two colors in various guises (and these are most common because of the hair and eyes of Elliott). The cinematography is by Eduardo Serra, one of a handful of the most sumptuous contemporary shooters in film ("Girl with the Pearl Earring" and "What Dreams May Come"). And he lets the light and color inhabit every scene, never letting the photography get in the way. Just beautiful.So what does it mean to be a good person? Who cares with all this great acting and beautiful filming? But really, you do care, and it's a touching and provoking film in all its quietness. And it's not a bit obscure. Henry James never quite liked the book, but I think it's because he expected more from it, the themes and characters are so promising. Critics have come to see it as one of his great late novels, and that much is here. Director Iain Softley takes a couple of turns that the book avoids--a little sensational talk toward the beginning, and a frank and sex scene at the end--and both are okay in the film but not actually in keeping with the tone of the rest of it, which is about never quite showing your hand even to your closest friends. It's about waiting to speak, and hiding even good intentions for fear of seeming good when in fact part of being good is simply being good, not merely seeming it.

Although neither of them had anything to do with "Wings of the Dove," it reminded me strongly of the string of Merchant-Ivory films. It's a period film, based on a famous novel (by Henry James), set in gorgeous locations (London and Venice), with magnificent costuming and a largely English cast led by Helena Bonham Carter, who graced many a Merchant-Ivory film. "Wings of the Dove" is widely regarded as her finest performance. It earned an Oscar nomination. Although she lost out to Helen Hunt, many critics thought she deserved the honor more. Here she plays Kate Croy, the impoverished niece of her wealthy Aunt Maude (Charlotte Rampling) in love with a handsome, impecunious radical (Linus Roache) and decidedly not in love with her Aunt's choice, Lord Mark (Alex Jennings). I won't give away the scheme that is at the root of the story but Bonham Carter is both distinctively beautiful and a powerful actress. Only Rampling holds her own -- in a much less prominent role, although Michael Gambon in a small part as Kate's ne'er do well father is excellent (as always). Subsequent to "Wings of the Dove," Bonham Carter drifted in the direction of films (the Harry Potter series, for example) that failed to utilize her enormous talent or take full advantage of her slightly unusual but distinctive beauty. She's still young enough to make a big splash at some point in the future but she seems to have lost the urge to make the most of her considerable talent. If so, this film, which she made at the age of 31, may turn out in retrospect to have been her career high.

This is a movie which might be overlooked for the romantic side of it because some people tend to judge a movie as trash if it is about romance. Well, I agree but not all romantic movies are the same. There are romantic movies that have messages which go beyond the emotion of love to the twin emotions jealousy, envy, sexual desires, respect, humanity, sacred love, pain and many others. All these feelings you can still experience in a romantic movie cooked well.Wings of dove is a movie with a plot and actually there is a part in the middle of the movie where if you pay attention carefully you might be able to understand what's going on before the story starts revealing its chapters. Actors are great; Helena Bonham Carter is indeed good in this role and Alison Elliotte is just as good and even better. Linus Roache also knows how to exhibit his transmitting emotions in a brilliant way. He knew how to play the difference which is a thin line between love and desire. You only have to guess whom he loved and whom he desired.