The Mystery of Edwin Drood (2012)

Strong and Moving!

A lot of fun.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

"The Mystery of Edwin Drood" was Dickens's last novel, famous for being left unfinished at his death, so producing a film adaptation is always going to be a speculative undertaking, as nobody is quite sure how Dickens intended it to end, although there are a number of theories. The title character is a young man from the cathedral city of Cloisterham, a thinly-disguised version of Rochester. (The film was shot on location in that city). The plot revolves around the strange triangular relationship which develops between Edwin, his fiancée Rosa Bud, and his uncle John Jasper. Edwin has been engaged to Rosa since they were both children, as a result of provisions in their father's wills, but neither seems to have much passion for the other. Jasper, the opium-addicted choirmaster of Cloisterham Cathedral, is secretly in love with Rosa, although she does not return his love. A further development comes with the arrival in Cloisterham of the twins Neville and Helena Landless from Ceylon. In this adaptation they are of mixed race, although their racial origins are not indicated in the original book. Neville finds himself attracted to Rosa, and he and Edwin fall out with one another. Another important character is the clergyman Septimus Crisparkle. The "mystery" to which Dickens alludes in his title is the sudden disappearance of Edwin. It is presumed that he has been murdered, although no body is ever found. The novel in its unfinished state offers no definitive solution to the mystery, so the writers of this version have had to come up with their own. (I won't say what it is). The film was made for BBC television, and falls within the long British tradition of visually attractive costume drama, a tradition which is even longer on television than it is in the cinema. (Feature films of this type were rare before the late sixties and relatively uncommon before the eighties). It is a good example of ensemble acting so I won't single out any individual performances. Like a number of recent adaptations of the classics it is used to put over a modern perspective on history; the Landless siblings are used to raise some points about colonialism and racism in Victorian society. (Edwin's initial dislike of Neville is partly based on race prejudice). It is, of course, anyone's guess whether the new ending is the one Dickens intended; literary buffs may suspect that it is not. The film-makers have, however, at least come up with something that makes sense on its own terms and comes across as a seamless whole; it would be difficult for anyone not acquainted with the novel to guess which parts of the story are Dickens's own and which the invention of the scriptwriter. The film is required viewing for any Dickens enthusiast and an entertaining period drama for anyone else. 7/10

This recent BBC adaptation of Dickens' unfinished final work for me takes too many liberties with the tale. Not for the first time of late in a TV Dickens adaptation, one suspects the hand of political correctness rather than imaginative casting in having the Landless siblings played by black actors. It only serves to make the nascent love scene between Reverend Crisparkle and Miss Landless seem the more awkward especially in the context of the time in which it is set. While there is melodrama in the plot, a Gothic over-dramatisation is applied, especially when John Jasper "has one of his heads", a cue for unusual camera placements, distorted shots and mad-scene background music. It also disobeys the golden rule, which even Hitchcock acknowledged, of never using a flashback that lies. The invented ending, which plays on the title of the piece, made me wonder if the writer hadn't had a hookah or two of opium before putting pen to paper.As for the acting, I found some solace from the scenery-chewing of the leads in the supporting parts of Durdles, Brossard and young Deputy. No offence to the actress playing Rosa but one can hardly imagine her freckled, girlish demeanour inspiring the passions it does here.In short, I found this production overdone and undercooked at the same time and rather think the BBC for once failed the great writer in this particular version of this tale.

I just finished watching this film for the second time--and it is a film with production values equal to anything you could pay to see in a theater. I'm a former Dickens buff who gradually turned my attentions to Wilkie Collins; and what many reviews fail to mention is the extreme likeness between this 2012 adaptation and The Moonstone, the "crossing-over" of Dickens from crowd-pleaser to a man who might just have written one final novel for his own pleasure (as his former friend Collins always seems to have done). There is no shame in the character of John Jasper, something Matthew Rhys reveals with restraint. Rhys is excellent in being his very own doppelganger, to the extent that the viewer wonders if opium actually prevents his Jasper from being even more malignant. He deserves attention at awards' time for his portrayal of the nauseating convergence of guilt and agony.Ms. Hughes' strength *is* Jasper, whom she knows is a descendant of the striving middle-class hypocrites that Dickens was so good at, beginning with Jonas Chuzzlewit, then (most famously) with Uriah Heep, and--right before The Mystery of Edwin Drood--most menacingly with Bradley Headstone. As another reviewer points out, Rhys' Jasper captures the sexual menace of Headstone in a creepy, truly frightening, way. Of course some of Ms. Hughes' twenty-first century sensibilities are evident in Jasper's open sexual aggression toward Rosa, but the viewer can't help but suspect that this honesty would have been EXACTLY what Dickens would have wanted, if he had lived to finish the work. Years ago, a critic said that the novel had a feel of being written from beyond the grave. It is a palpably autumnal work that can make a reader or viewer wonder if Dickens' death was caused by his inability be as frank about the sexual aggression of his anti-hero as Wilkie Collins never had any trouble being at all.Hughes has an unerring instinct for what is and isn't Dickensian, including the recurrent--and disturbing--older man/younger woman couple (Crisparkle and Helena), the village idiot politicians, and the cruelty of the class system. This novel is set in a Hardyan place, and so there are no Southwark Nancy's or abused Jo's. Hughes showed a sensitivity to the thematic Dickensian staple--London--by making the character Edwin Drood perhaps more racist and callous than Dickens would have made him, thereby bringing sordid London into the countryside. Freddie Fox' portrayal is a pretty raw portrait of the Dickens' "cad."Shame, that this movie has not received the media and academic attention it deserves, because this was clearly a labor of love. Bravo--a perfect 10.

THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD is the second of two Dickens adaptations that the BBC showed over the New Year 2011/2012. The good news is that it's a damn sight better than GREAT EXPECTATIONS, being noticeably more 'Dickensian' in feel, with plenty of amusingly monkeyed supporting characters. The hilarious scenes involving churchyard urchin Deputy are alone better than anything in that other awful production.My viewing of this one benefited from not having read the famously incomplete story that Dickens died during writing. It's split into two instalments, and the first does admirably well in setting up the chessboard of characters: Matthew Rhys (BROTHERS AND SISTERS) is great as the sweaty and sinister Jack Jasper. Kudos too for the familiar character actors fleshing out more minor roles: Julia McKenzie, Ian McNeice and Alun Armstrong all acquit themselves well, and Rory Kinnear (FIRST MEN IN THE MOON) seems to be going from strength to strength.What a shame, then, that the second part just doesn't hold up. It's clear that this segment wasn't written by Dickens, instead completed by the scriptwriter. The ending is particularly bad, hinging around one massive plot hole/contrivance (a character appearing from nowhere at just the right time) that it's impossible to ignore. Way too many twists are attempted in this latter part so that it feels muddled and ludicrous, nothing like Dickens at all.