Masterpiece Theatre: Mill on the Floss [DVD]

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Product Description ------------------- Emily Watson (Breaking the Waves, Hillary and Jackie) stars in this powerful, emotional story about the choice between love and loyalty. Based on George Eliot's novel, The Mill on the Floss. As a child, Maggie Tulliver adores her brother Tom and desperately seeks his love and approval--but never receives it. While Tom grows up to be the kind of person the world approves of: dutiful and proud, Maggie becomes the kind of person the world judges harshly. A woman ahead of her time, brimming with intelligence and imagination, Maggie is difficult for her brother and the rest of her family to understand.Through her craving for intellectual stimulation, Maggie finds a kindred spirit in her childhood friend Philip Wakem. Though Philip feeds her mind, and eventually falls in love with her, Maggie finds her true passion is for her cousin Lucy's fiancee. Now she is faced with a choice: follow her heart or her sense of duty. .com ---- Emily Watson is luminous and heartbreaking as the brilliant, stifled Maggie in the 1997 TV production of The Mill on the Floss. All her life, young Maggie has heard "You're far too clever for a woman," with her deep intellectual curiosity and thirst for knowledge. But in 19th century England, the options for clever women were few--and many believe this story, by George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans), was a thinly disguised autobiography of Eliot/Evans herself. "I want there to be great things, beautiful things, in my life," Maggie wails to her cousin Lucy. "It's a sin, isn't it?" Later she finds a mantra she repeats often: "It we deserve nothing, if we yearn for nothing, then we can't be disappointed." In fact, Maggie (played unsentimentally as a young child by the captivating Lucy Borton) does yearn for education, stimulation, and witty interaction, which she must settle for finding, largely, in her home at the mill on the Floss River. As her family endures financial hardship, Maggie finds herself torn by love--for her struggling her; her headstrong brother, Tom; her childhood friend, Philip; and Lucy's fiancé. It's her relationship with Philip that is the strongest metaphor for Maggie's life and choices. Played with depth and grace by The Tudors' James Frain, Philip is disabled with a hunchback, yet his intellect fires on every cylinder, and from their first meeting, Philip and Maggie form a deep bond. Philip's physical disability mirrors Maggie's own--of simply having been born in the body of a woman; each is limited by nothing but others' perceptions. Watson's Maggie, trembling with rage, realizes this and struggles daily, hourly, to make peace with the limitations imposed upon her. The film was in the sumptuous English countryside, and the beautiful expanses seem unchanged from Eliot's day. And Watson, fairly glowing with inner radiance, shines against even the loveliest backdrop. --A.T. Hurley