Weekly meditations from your humble messenger
School
for Scandal
(The Duchess, 10/20/08)
By Nicholas Nicastro
Is
it possible for an actress to be upstaged by her eyebrows? Set in the
sunny interiors of Austen-land, populated by a cast fully upholstered
in 18th century chic, the new Keira Knightley melodrama The Duchess
offers plenty of pretty things to look at. Arching above them all, however,
are Knightley's eye-pelts, set up there on her forehead like two dozing
woodchucks on a snowy hillside. So glorious are Milady's abundances,
it's as if each is angling for its own Oscar nomination. True, the movie
is set before the advent of locomotives, steamships, and breechloaders.
But it happens that they did have tweezers in the 18th century, and
they did use them—a lot.
Dwelling on this flaw might seem
unfair. But the dull, unimaginative Duchess provides not much
to distract us from it. If you must know, Knightley plays Georgiana
Spencer, Duchess of Devonshire, who was sort of the English answer to
her more famous contemporary, Marie Antoinette. Like Marie, she was
attractive, and fun, and previewed all the best frocks for her public.
There were differences, though—this celebrity noble was a bit more
sure-footed politically, so she didn't end up beheaded. She also faced
special challenges, such as a brutal, philandering husband (Ralph Fiennes)
and a lifelong love for an unattainable commoner, Charles Grey (Dominic
Cooper). Things are bad enough when the Duke's only interest in his
pretty wife is seeing her fulfill her contractual obligation to give
him a male heir; they get worse when he brings a second woman into their
marriage (Hayley Atwell) and gives not a whit for Georgiana's impotent
protests.
On a certain level this could have
been, as that old SNL satire put it, "delightfully ribald"—more
so if screenwriters Jeffrey Hatcher, Anders Jensen and Saul Dibb had
let Georgiana take the kind of sexual revenge that livened up the bedroom
farces of the day. But The Duchness isn't The School for Scandal,
much less Dangerous Liaisons. It's just too humorless and conventional
to make the Duchess anything more than a noble, suffering wife. One
supposes Oprah would approve.
The model for the movie Georgiana
is the canonized version of her modern descendant, Princess Diana. Like
"the people's princess," the Duchess is naturally brighter,
and more modern, than all the less-pretty faces around her. In our superficial
age, this seems so obvious as to be unquestionable. But who says the
tyranny of the beautiful is any less cruel than the tyranny of the entitled?
Knightley, who was so winning in
the recent Pride and Prejudice, certainly has the talent to keep
an edgier heroine appealing to a popcorn audience. As it is, she seems
unchallenged by this role—for the first time (though I haven't
seen the latest Pirates of the Caribbean), I got the feeling
she was phoning in a performance.
The sole bright spot is Ralph Fiennes.
Now that his English Patient days as a romantic lead are behind
him, Fiennes has become one of the purest, least compromising character
actors of his time. His Duke of Devonshire is a monster to everybody,
not excluding himself. He broods, but we get the feeling there are no
thoughts in his head except a suspicion of his own misery. As such,
this character makes an interesting pendant with Amon Goeth, the psychopathic
Nazi commandant Fiennes played in Schindler's List. Fiennes is
dedicated to telling a good story, not to making you fond of his character.
It's just too bad the filmmakers wouldn't trust Keira Knightley to handle
a similar challenge.
©2008 Nicholas Nicastro
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