UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Solidrariol Am I Missing Something?

ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

laraineryan-195-701640 This was well done, but it was distracting how easily Daniel found Mirah's family. She was going to kill herself because she was hopeless. How many synagogues would there have been in 1870s London? Yet Mirah gives up. Daniel finds them right away. Mirah is not very bright.I have not read this book, so maybe she comes off better there. I also wonder that Gwendolen did not at least seek a second opinion about her singing. Or have more confidence in it so as to persevere in spite of one negative opinion. Ms. Glasher was not very smart either. She would have to convince a whole series of potential fiancees not to marry Grandcourt, and eventually he would get smart and get one to marry him without her being able to get to them. So useless. And Grandcourt was supposed to be so calculating, yet he let her get the diamonds to Gwen directly with that note, fully on notice that she would try to do it that way. Then again, maybe he thought that was a good thing as he is sadistic.

smalkuhlani I enjoyed the Movie until it turned to be a Zionist Propaganda. No suffering justifies stealing lands and causing other people to suffer. Some modern critics, notably Edward Said, point to the novel as a propaganda tool to encourage British patriation of Palestine to Jews. I also find it to be racist, calling jews the chosen ones, Daniel marrying the Jewish once he discovered to be one, although through out the entire movie he's attracted to another woman... I'm very glad jews are represented fairly by a major British novelist, yet calling for a homeland in east was presented as a fair solution to their suffering when It only cause other millions to suffer!

Aura V I never read or heard of the novel and out of boredom and curiosity I decided to watch the movie, given that Hugh Dancy and Romola Garai star in it. I loved Hugh Dancy in "David Copperfield", I was 10 or 11 when the movie aired on TV and I watched it every year. I watched Romola Garai in "Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights" and I wondered how she would be like in other films."Daniel Deronda" is something I never thought I might encounter. This is more than entertainment, this is culture, something more directors and producers should try to achieve. If they were to make this movie with Zac Efron and Miley Cyrus in modern America, people might be interested. - Joking, after the failure of "Clash of the Titans 3d" the last thing we'd need is more of Hollywood's appetite for destroying culture! I can't talk much about the plot of this movie since every line and every meaning is still spinning in my head. It's a great story about self-discovery, kindness, life's way of giving everybody a little bit of what they deserve. Of course, I'm rather one to think life doesn't give us anything we are getting everything based on what we have decided.

Philby-3 The usual lush mini-series adapation from that reliable team, Andrew Davies and the BBC, of a literary property, this time George Eliot's almost forgotten last novel. Daniel (Hugh Dancy) is the gorgeous if slightly wet boy of mysterious parentage adopted by wealthy amiable old buffer Sir Hugo (Edward Fox). He falls in love with the wrong woman, the beautiful but self-absorbed Gwendolen (Romola Garai). She however is propelled into marriage with ace bounder (and Sir Hugo's heir) Henleigh Grandcourt (Hugh Bonneville). Daniel then becomes interested in Mirah (Johdi May), a promising singer of Jewish background, and through her ailing brother Mordecai (Daniel Evans) the Zionist cause (yes, hotting up as far back as the 1870s). Grandcourt meets a bounder's fate and Gwendolen is now free to marry Daniel, but guess what…?The costumes are great, the acting impeccable, the photography luminous but the story lacks punch. It is didactic rather than romantic, with metaphorical posters all over the place for women's rights and a homeland for the Jewish people. Hugh Dancy looks right for the part but Daniel is too much of a prig to be very likeable (though he has my sympathy when he discovers that Barbara Hershey, resplendent in a Venetian Palazzo is his mother – Greta Scacchi would not have been so bad). The most engaging characters are Grandcourt the bounder and his sidekick Lush (David Bamber – Mr Collins in `Pride and Prejudice') and yet we are meant to despise them both. Gwendolen is sympathetic to the extent she marries Grandcourt to provide financial security for her mother and sisters, but she is a real dork otherwise. Generally the characters lack the panache of say, Trollope's characters in `The Way We Live Now', or Eliot's own in `Middlemarch'. Perhaps Ms Eliot should have quit while she was ahead.The critics at the time (including Henry James) were baffled by the `Jewish' aspect of the story. It certainly was an outsider's view, yet it rings true today; here Ms Eliot was being prophetic, or was at least aware of the combination of repression, deprivation and myth that could give rise to a successful social movement. In 1876, the year the novel was published, it seemed most unlikely that Palestine would ever become a significant Jewish settlement. Daniel, desperate to find out about his background, finds a cause bigger than himself and eagerly throws himself into it. One has the feeling that Mirah, musically talented though she is, is going to be playing second fiddle.Anyway, I enjoyed Hugh Bonneville's Grandcourt, a terrific bounder, and David Bamber's Lush (Mr Collins turns bad). And of course, this is Sunday evening stuff, so one mustn't be too picky about the crummy plot and the unsympathetic principals. I usually find myself at this point thinking `I must read the book' (if I haven't already), but this time I don't think I'll bother.