The Golden Bowl

The Golden Bowl is a drama film directed by James Ivory. The screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is based on the novel of the same name by.
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But it is at its heart a deadly, creepy, absolutely chilling story, with unforgettable characters—once you can penetrate the verbiage. See 1 question about The Golden Bowl…. Lists with This Book. Oct 02, Lizzy rated it really liked it Shelves: The Golden Bowl is a wonderful novel. Through his usual beautiful but convoluted and sinuous prose that swims around itself again and again, Henry James tells us the story of four people, two men and two women, and two marriages. These two marriages, whose essence holds secrets and truths, is the heart of its plot.

Yes, it seems a simple enough plot and it revolves around the most basic human shortcoming that is adultery; and the relationships that are instigated by these four individuals. Adam The Golden Bowl is a wonderful novel. Adam Verver, a very wealthy American art collector without scruples, has acquired almost all the material possessions his heart desires. However, he then makes his most important purchase, a husband for his daughter Maggie. And in Prince Amerigo, he finds the perfect candidate: He can provide what Mr. Verver most wishes for Maggie, a title. Maggie now determines that the best thing is for her widower father to remarry.

So, to alleviate her guilty for having married, Maggie will suggest that her father marries her school friend Charlotte Stant — vivacious, smart and likewise poor American — unsuspecting her prior romantic relationship with Amerigo himself. So begins the play of love and marriage. And so the shrewd stage is set, and we readers are only left to enjoy its sinuosity.

And we discover, through a dialogue between Fanny — the matchmaker — and her husband, that this plot is not simple at all but deeply complex: It has ceased to be yours. I think too that there's Charlotte's and mine. In short, you see, there are plenty. Even after both marriages the millionaire father and his daughter remain so devoted to each other that their two sposi are left for themselves. The father and daughter relationship seem dominant while the others are abandoned to their company. Charlotte and Amerigo discuss exactly that: And it leaves us"—she made the point—"more alone.

Maggie would have given herself to his child. The book is filled with ambiguity: Nuances and innuendos are plenty in his prose. He gives nothing away, but lets the readers learn and discover for themselves about the people and their relationships; we have to learn as we usually do in normal life, by paying attention to dialogues and inferring our understanding of it all.

So, we are left to our own conclusions, and so its reading is much more enjoyable for those that brave it. As we read a dialogue between Fanny and the prince, we are exposed to James's powerful and ethereal writing, where the symbols are not always effortless: The 'boat,' you see"—the Prince explained no less considerably and lucidly—"is a good deal tied up at the dock, or anchored, if you like, out in the stream.

I have to jump out from time to time to stretch my legs, and you'll probably perceive, if you give it your attention, that Charlotte really can't help occasionally doing the same. It isn't even a question, sometimes, of one's getting to the dock—one has to take a header and splash about in the water.

Why not take them, when they occur, as inevitable—and, above all, as not endangering life or limb? Verver too, moreover—do her justice—visibly knows how to swim. But the beauty of his prose conquers the most attentive reader: They learned fairly to live in the perfunctory; they remained in it as many hours of the day as might be; it took on finally the likeness of some spacious central chamber in a haunted house, a great overarched and overglazed rotunda, where gaiety might reign, but the doors of which opened into sinister circular passages. And the author confesses his ambiguity: Charlotte was in pain, Charlotte was in torment, but he himself had given her reason enough for that; and, in respect to the rest of the whole matter of her obligation to follow her husband, that personage and she, Maggie, had so shuffled away every link between consequence and cause, that the intention remained, like some famous poetic line in a dead language, subject to varieties of interpretation.

Through a prose that is highly introspective, a kind of interior monolog that overwhelms the reader and prefers to sail upon a vast ocean of impressions that we never know where is leading us; and a style of dialogue, to which James is committed, that has the virtue of realism but does not define. I would imagine that James uses Fanny frequently in these conversations, for she is the most neutral character, through whom he can explore the main character's consciousness. As we can read in a dialogue between Maggie and Fanny, that infers but fails to define: I do strike you as surprising, no doubt—but surprisingly mild.

I can bear anything. I want happiness without a hole in it big enough for you to poke in your finger. The bowl without the crack. But it's what will have saved you. For they're the ones who are saved," she went on. I hope to be able to explain my preference by the end of this review. Compared to this book, I found The Golden Bowl more direct in format and thus easier to follow. I don't think the prose is quite as tortuous as it is in The Portrait of a Lady , and the plot straighter forward, and James here seems to require less of the reader.

While reading The Golden Bowl , I could not wholly sympathize with its most compelling character, Maggie, for her role as the betrayed is in part the result of her actions. Thus, I was much more involved in the reading of the latter. It seems fair to say that Maggie asserts herself; she did not appear to become a victim if we consider her marriage. But to the end, she believes that she and her father have lost the most. So, what option did she have but to choose her marriage, could she have chosen her father in detriment of that?

Not in her time. Thus, in a sense, she resigns herself to her fate much as Isabel Archer did in The Portrait of a Lady. Of course, Maggie's actions are what will define how The Golden Bowl ends, as Isabel Archer likewise leads her novel to its closing. Their choices, regardless if we agree with or dislike them.

I hope to have explained fairly well my choice here, but deep down it is a question of preference, and I liked Isabel Archer better and enjoyed The Portrait of a Lady more. Despite its 4-star rating, I relished reading The Golden Bowl , and strongly recommend it. View all 26 comments. Henry James is funny. I see already the raised eyebrows inspired by that statement. I certainly had fun reading it. The fun was in the characters, who they were and how they spoke. It was in the shifting points of view, which revealed so many things to the reader and hid just as many more. It was in the constant Henry James is funny.

It was in the constant play between the known and the unknown, the said and the unsaid. It was in the cool acknowledgement that the coincidence at the centre of the plot was the sort of thing that happens mainly in novels. It was in the clever way in which the golden bowl, in a story about collecting beautiful things, becomes a symbol of the failure of the power of purchase.

But the best fun for me was in the way the author seemed to insert himself, and the reader alongside him, into the heart of the story. I could examine all those claims one by one, slowly and carefully, but the examination would very likely take as long as the book itself so I'll just focus on the last point: From early on, two characters stood out for me, Mrs Assingham and her husband Bob, otherwise known as Fanny and the Colonel.

Fanny and the Colonel are not main characters, the story might easily have been told without them, but I'm choosing to imagine that Henry James created them to inject exactly the element of fun he himself needed while writing, and which he wanted to offer the reader as a kind of bonus. The book is divided into two parts, the first more or less written from the point of view of a handsome but impoverished Italian called Amerigo who marries an American heiress called Maggie whose father collects art objects of every kind.

The second part is mostly from the point of view of Maggie. In both parts, Fanny Assingham is given special treatment: During these sections, Fanny analyses the thoughts and actions of all the other characters as if she were the author and had created them all and understood all their motives, even the most hidden. Her analysis takes the form of a series of hilarious dialogues with the Colonel in which she mostly speaks and the more humble Colonel mostly listens.

In fact Henry James calls her the Sphinx at one point, and the Colonel is some old pilgrim in the desert, camping at the foot of that monument. As her theories get more and more cryptic, the Colonel reacts like a typical reader, raising an eyebrow here, wincing visibly there, and sometimes showing such an exhausted patience with his wife's circling of the other characters' motives that indulgent despair was generally at the best his note.

The 100 best novels: No 36 – The Golden Bowl by Henry James (1904)

At other times, he keeps up with the complex logic of her theories remarkably well, this was another matter that took some following, but the Colonel did his best , and he occasionally asks the kind of irritable question we the readers may silently put to the author, "Are you saying that…? The only thing was that it took such incalculable twists and turns.

So the Colonel reacts exactly like a reader of Henry James; after all, which reader of his longer books has not felt that indulgent despair from time to time. In spite of all the serious analysis Fanny indulges in, there's still a lot of humour in her exchanges with the Colonel. They are playing a game together which they both enjoy. When she broods about the punishment the other characters may have to endure, he teasingly asks what his own punishment will be.

When she's not being regal, she's being tragic, it had still been their law, a little, that she was tragic when he was comic , and even if the Colonel pretends to be long-suffering, his cigar invariably gives him away. Many of their exchanges are punctuated by reference to the Colonel's pleasure in smoking his cigar or his pipe as he listens to his wife being tragic. He paid this the tribute of a long pull on his pipe….

After a long contemplative smoke… His cigar in short once more alone could express it. At one point he is described, on taking his pipe from his mouth, as 'ejaculating' his response, after which, the Colonel sat back at his ease, an ankle resting on the other knee and his eyes attentive to the good appearance of an extremely slender foot which he kept jerking in its neat integument of fine-spun black silk and patent leather. It seemed to confess, this member, to consciousness of military discipline, everything about it being as polished and as perfect, as straight and tight and trim, as a soldier on parade.

Putting all that together, alongside the names Henry James chose for these two characters, Fanny and Assingham , I felt there had to be something salacious in his intentions with regard to the provocative pair. I may be hilariously wrong but I reserve the right to analyze and interpret things in my own way, just as Fanny Assingham does. You are free to raise an eyebrow, and even wince - like the Colonel. Just as Fanny relies on the Colonel to listen to her analysis and see her through, Henry James relies on us, and engages to come out at the right end if we will have sufficient patience.

I very much feel he did in this book, and that I did too. View all 49 comments. Jan 07, James rated it it was ok Shelves: Book Review It is difficult to give a low review to one of your favorite authors. And I've read this book twice. But it barely changed me upon a second read. Somewhere between a 2 and a 3, this book has many great moments; however, it's also very disconnected, almost as those there are several stories consolidated in a single book with at unmatched effort made to weave them together properly.

The language -- great and consistent. The characters -- strong and memorable. The plot -- confused an Book Review It is difficult to give a low review to one of your favorite authors. The plot -- confused and confusing. The theme and lesson -- uncertain where it is trying to go. I am considering reading this a third time, as it's been a good 15 years since the last read. And I do adore him as a write, but this one was a miss. About Me For those new to me or my reviews I read A LOT. I write A LOT. First the book review goes on Goodreads, and then I send it on over to my WordPress blog at https: Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Vote in the poll and ratings. Thanks for stopping by. View all 6 comments. Good Lord, do I hate this book. This is very, very late Henry James, when he was hopped up on painkillers and "writing" his novels via dictaphone. Consequently, the entire book reads like a very, very long, barely edited transcript of a dying Victorian intellectual rambling incoherently for hours in turn of the century English, because that's exactly what it is.

The narrative is simplistic, is buried underneath clouds of irrelevant and soporific detail, and frankly isn't very interesting to begi Good Lord, do I hate this book. The narrative is simplistic, is buried underneath clouds of irrelevant and soporific detail, and frankly isn't very interesting to begin with. The characters are wooden and uninteresting. The entire book is less about actual storytelling and more about talking at great length about arcane Victorian traditions without actually getting to the point.

For all of the thousands of words in this book, very few of them actually have meaning. This book adds nothing to either literature in general or to James's reputation, and only came to be because he was delirious and lonely at the end of his life and wanted to write one last epic novel despite being physically incapable of doing so. Even so, he should have let it die when it became obvious he couldn't do it properly. Actually publishing this turgid mess as a novel was a crime against humanity.

Avoid this one at all costs unless you're a very, very, very patient masochist, or you're too pretentious to realize how absolutely awful this book really is. View all 4 comments. Feb 09, Melindam rated it it was ok Shelves: OK, no more excuses. I just have to take this into stride Dear Henry James, after all these years I still cannot decide if it's just me or you or the both of us aka the fault in our stars.


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Maybe we met in the wrong place at the wrong time. Let's give our relationship another try in Yours in obfuscation, Melinda Dec 04, Suzanne rated it liked it. I like a long, baroque, convoluted, labyrinthine sentence as much as the next guy and usually enjoy unpacking the types of twisty phrases and syntax James is known for, along with coaxing out the meaning of said sentences that illustrate complex characters and their even more complex relationships.

The Golden Bowl

But the writing in this one seemed to take his style one unnecessary step further, rendering the untangling of the prose so strenuous it practically made me cross-eyed. The main trouble was, I could see enough of the story to know I wanted to understand it thoroughly, but the opacity of the prose got in the way of my comprehension.

After two or three readings of some sentences, I would resolve to cut my losses, move on, and hope it all became clearer in context further on. Sometimes it did, but much remained hazy behind the whirly-gig of words. It may be my own brain cells to blame, which are not as spry as they used to be. The 3-star rating is an average of my appreciation if not enjoyment of this and my frustrations. View all 17 comments. Feb 16, David rated it it was amazing. Am still seeking words for the experience of reading The Golden Bowl.

Less "fun" than Wings of the Dove, more serious in manner. Yet, oddly, the one James novel that could be counted as having a "happy" ending. As often with James, there is the fascination of watching the movements of a complicated machine or curious contraption and feeling a sort of wonder as you follow, or try to, how the dang thing works. Also, as with Wings, I found the book an astounding psychological investigatio Am still seeking words for the experience of reading The Golden Bowl.

Also, as with Wings, I found the book an astounding psychological investigation, an amazing case study of what I find myself compelled to call the politics of love or the politics of marriage. Or the politics of sex. For at the heart of the book is the portrait of a power struggle, between the American ingenue, Maggie Verver, and the brilliant, gorgeous Charlotte Stant, Maggie's BFF from school days, who also happens to be the lover of the European playboy aristocrat Maggie's father Adam's money buys Maggie for a husband. Blind to the relationship between her husband and Charlotte, Maggie pushes her father to marry Charlotte, thinking to make up to her widower father for leaving him all by himself, prey to every passing gold digger.

One way to register, fictionally, the situation James sets up is to think back to Jane Austen's Emma and Emma Woodhouse's dilemma about how to manage her semi-invalid father's distress when she marries Mr. Knightley at the end of the novel. Essentially, in the Golden Bowl James follows what happens after the marriage -- with the semi-perverse twist that he adds the spice of an adulterous relationship, as if Mr.

Knightley had been carrying on with Jane Fairfax and Emma, in her last bit of match-making, had gotten her father and Jane married to one another -- had brought the snake into her own garden. The passages, at the beginning of volume 2, that trace Maggie's dawning suspicions and doubts about the real relationship between her husband and her step-mother must rank among the most brilliant interior portraits of the contest between awareness and resistance to awareness in all of literature, fictional or psychological; they are worth a hundred psychological studies.

And I found it at once inspiring and chilling to watch Maggie proceed from innocent passivity to deliberate agency in pursuit of both knowledge and the political goal of winning her husband--not back but for the first time--from Charlotte, which is the core contest of the book. Maggie's ruthlessness is matched only by her passion, for James makes it clear that the Prince has claimed the sexual avidity of both women. There are passages where James with extraordinary insight shows how the Prince, aware of his erotic power, uses it to blind and dazzle Maggie, and how Maggie, if she is to realize her goal, must exert her own force of will to beat back the appeal, while at the same time feeling the full force of her own desire.

For the satisfaction of her desire remains, after all, the ultimate prize she is after. The Prince dangles the prize in front of her tempting her to snatch at it before she has in fact won it -- before he is in her power rather than she in his. There is much, much more to say and note, especially about Adam and Maggie Verver as American characters in contact and conflict with Europe. Suffice it to say that, as one of the astonishing, chilling masterstrokes of his investigation, James portrays Adam and Maggie as ultimately guided by the determination that, having bought Maggie a real European aristocrat for a husband, they are not going to stand for being cheated or satisfied with anything less than the real thing they bought and paid for.

They indicated the value they set in the financial price they paid, and they won't, and don't, rest until they've got what they paid for! Jun 10, Roman Clodia rated it really liked it. He tried, too clearly, to please her — to meet her in her own way; but with the result only that, close to her, her face kept before him, his hands holding her shoulders, his whole act enclosing her, he presently echoed: I see nothing but you. The love triangles of The Portrait of a Lady and The Wings of the Dove , especially, reach a conclusion here in a text which expands the triangle into a more stable quartet or square.

Structurally, this cleverly divides into two halves focalised around Prince Amerigo note the connotations of his name in the first part and his American wife, Maggie, in the second. It seems odd to me that some readers find James dry: With layer upon layer of irony, James might have finally worked out how to stabilise the erotic triangle that animates some of his other works but I was left slightly unsatisfied — and curious about what Charlotte does next.

View all 3 comments. Jun 13, Captain Sir Roddy, R. For a man who was never married nor, to the best of my knowledge, was ever in a long-term relationship with a woman, Henry James has written a novel that drills down deep into the heart of the dynamics of marriage and relationships between the sexes. While a stoutly thick novel, it largely swings back and forth between the relationships of three married couples--just six people; and like most of James's fiction, The Golden Bowl is a psychological tour-de-force.

This is a tale that allows the rea For a man who was never married nor, to the best of my knowledge, was ever in a long-term relationship with a woman, Henry James has written a novel that drills down deep into the heart of the dynamics of marriage and relationships between the sexes. This is a tale that allows the reader to experience what a protagonist is thinking, and about what a protagonist thinks another protagonist is thinking. Sometimes facts are not facts, and sometimes assumptions and inference provide glimpses through clear glass, and other times everything is murky and quite unclear.

This is a complicated and richly complex novel that involves a very wealthy American patron of the arts, Adam Verver, and his daughter, Maggie. While in Europe acquiring art for his museum back in the states, the Ververs decide to acquire a husband for Maggie. Enter Prince Amerigo of a titled, but now poor, Italian family. Ah, but this marriage now upsets the harmonious balance in the relationship between father and daughter. Enter Charlotte Stant, a young, vivacious and street-smart poor American expat.

The Golden Bowl () - IMDb

It is probably safe to postulate that as long as there are humans linked in marriages or relationships there will be adultery or cheating; not in each and every relationship, but it is a real enough threat that we all know that lurks in the darker fringes of our psyche and soul. The question that remains to be answered in each and every relationship is how it is dealt with; and that is what this novel-- The Golden Bowl --explores. Not only the circumstances leading to the extramarital affair, but how each of the characters in the novel responds to it.

I think, for me, the novel's most powerful character is Maggie. Through the course of the novel the reader watches her mature and grow in knowledge and the capability to see what is happening around her and deal with it in the fashion that brings the least amount of pain and anguish to all involved, and most especially to her father and even herself. The most tragic character for me is Charlotte Stant, as I believe that she knows going into her marriage with Maggie's father, Adam; and even her adulterous relationship with Prince Amerigo; that while she can attain financial stability, it is not clear that she will ever achieve romantic stability.

There is a scene near the end of the novel where Charlotte and Maggie have a quiet, but forthrightly candid conversation on the balcony of the Verver estate. Both women know what the other knows, and both women know what needs to occur moving forward. The reader can almost hear both women panting as they breathe and think, the reader can feel the pounding of the pulses in arteries of both women as they face off and discuss how they will manage their marriages. It is gripping stuff, to be sure. Nuance, subtlety, innuendo, and inference are your watchwords.

Masks and facade camouflage the powerful undercurrents of emotions that course through each of the characters as the tale unfolds. And while Henry James has crafted a fascinating portrait of marriage and relationships in The Golden Bowl , it is first and foremost a brilliant examination of human nature, and this is its relevance to each of us as we can see glimpses of our own selves and our own behaviors in each of the novel's characters.

Mar 23, Lynne-marie rated it it was amazing. I am re-reading the mature James right now and have found The Golden Bowl an ethereal experience. James' use of words as well as his deliberate failure to say things and still communicate epiphany after epiphany is staggering. The sentences fall into one's mind like honey and their sense is as gall.

All within the formal right-acting of the drawing rooms of the very well to-do. I feel, reading these books as if I am under a spell. It hurts me that there is only one more of this period of his wri I am re-reading the mature James right now and have found The Golden Bowl an ethereal experience. It hurts me that there is only one more of this period of his writing life, but I'm going to prolong the sleep-walking period by adding on The Portrait of a Lady , which is considered the best of his earlier books.

The story is told by a non-omniscient third person narrator, and since there is little action and much dialogue, the reader must interpret conversations in much the way we do every day with each other, trying to understand just what the speaker is trying to communicate and to conceal. The plot is easily told. The fabulously rich American industrialist and art collector Adam Verver and his beloved daughter Maggie are residing in London.

Prince Amerigo, an impoverished Italian nobleman, marries Maggie, having of necessity given up his lover, Charlotte Stant, whom he cannot afford to marry. Maggie knows nothing of his history with Charlotte, but, because she thinks her father is now lonely, she engineers the marriage of Adam and Charlotte. Over the following few years, the foursome is inseparable. Eventually Maggie discovers the hidden relationship between Amerigo and Charlotte, and the remainder of the book follows the trajectory of the results of that discovery.

This is one of my favorite novels, a tour-de-force of psychological sensitivity and masterful writing. The tale is timeless, plumbing the themes of desire and jealousy, openness and concealment, rationality and emotion. A joy to read, the novel also inevitably leads the reader to reflect on language, the role and function of conversation, and the subtleties of interpersonal interactions in daily life.

So far typical James plotting and manipulation Even if James' opinion of women wasn't well know, it would easily be determined by the behavior of his female characters-conniving, meddling, shallower The most enjoyable chapters include the discussions of the guilelessness of the couples between Colonel and Fannie Assingham. The ambiguous use of pronouns, the constant need for clarification and the backtracking makes for entertaining reading.

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I'm really torn over the ending. I have strong feeling f So far typical James plotting and manipulation Even if James' opinion of women wasn't well know, it would easily be determined by the behavior of his female characters-conniving, meddling, shallower The most enjoyable chapters include the discussions of the guilelessness of the couples between Colonel and Fannie Assingham. I have strong feeling for both Maggie and Charlotte, but I'm not sure how to discuss them without giving away too much of their pivotal relationship. I could give this book 3.

Oct 09, Maria rated it did not like it Shelves: Henry James - you are awful.

I will spend no more of my life reading you. What is the point? View all 9 comments. The Golden Bowl , set in England and in Italy during to , is the story of four people, two men and two women, and two marriages. Two marriages whose core holds the same secret, the same unackno Although The Portrait of a Lady will no doubt always be Henry James' most read and most loved novel, I think The Golden Bowl is his masterpiece.

Two marriages whose core holds the same secret, the same unacknowledged truth. The plot is a simple one, and revolves around that most human of all "failings"--adultery--or at least the suspicion of adultery, and in this case, suspicion may prove to be more deadly than the actual deed, itself. Adam Verver, a wealthy American industrialist, sans scruples, has acquired almost all the material possessions his heart desires. When he travels to Europe, accompanied by his young daughter, Maggie, however, he has one important "purchase" yet to make--a husband for Maggie. He thinks he's found the perfect candidate in Prince Amerigo.

And in some ways, he has. Although now impoverished, Prince Amerigo is descended from an aristocratic Florentine family, a family who lives in the once elegant Palazzo Ugolini. When Jarvis discovers the barely discernible crack Amerigo had noticed, he brings it to Maggie himself, reveals the defect, and offers it at half price. While waiting for her in the drawing room, he recognizes Amerigo and Charlotte in photographs on a table, and he innocently reveals they were the couple who originally considered purchasing the bowl, three days before the wedding. Maggie realizes that the two were not meeting for the first time, as she had always assumed.

She confronts Amerigo, who confesses to his past with Charlotte and to their affair. When the Ververs retire to the country, Adam is noticeably distant. He suggests to Charlotte that they return to America to oversee the opening of his museum, though Charlotte is violently opposed to the idea.

The tension grows worse after Amerigo and Maggie arrive with the Assinghams. Charlotte tries to convince Amerigo to run away with her, only to be rebuffed and told that he does not love her. Meanwhile Maggie and her father agree to separate for the sake of both their marriages. Although initially in great despair, Charlotte appears to reconcile to the idea of being with Adam, and the film ends with footage of the couple arriving to great fanfare in an unnamed American city.

The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival , and when it received a cool reception, executives at Miramax Films , the original distributor, asked Ivory and Merchant to make several cuts to shorten its running time. When they refused, the company sold the film to Lions Gate. The film opened throughout Europe before going into limited release in the US on 27 April , following an earlier showing at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. At its widest release in the US it played in theatres.

The New York Times observed, "In translating the novel into a film, the producer Ismail Merchant, his directing partner, James Ivory, and their favorite screenwriter, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, have made a movie that's an ambitious, profoundly ambiguous statement about their own passion for the cultivated, high-culture sensibility epitomized by James and E. Forster , as opposed to the cruder mass culture that has eclipsed these literary heroes.

Much of the dialogue in Ms. Jhabvala's carefully wrought screenplay voices feelings that remain unspoken in the novel, and this is the movie's biggest problem. No matter how well the characters' thoughts have been translated into speech, the act of compressing their rich, complex inner lives into dialogue without resorting to voice-over narration inevitably tends to cheapen them and turn a drama about the revelation of hidden truths into the terser, more commonplace language of an intelligent soap opera.

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It kept me at arm's length, but that is where I am supposed to be; the characters are after all at arm's length from each other, and the tragedy of the story is implied but never spoken aloud. It will help, I think, to be familiar with the novel, or to make a leap of sympathy with the characters. Edward Guthmann of the San Francisco Chronicle called the film "impeccably mounted, nicely scored and beautifully written" and noted, "Charlotte wasn't the principal character in James' novel.

Played by the long-necked Uma Thurman, she's less vixen than ninny - a smooth operator whose maneuvers seem to issue not from shrewdness or intelligence but from a microchip that allows her to robotically spout her lines with careful inflection. It's a blunder of a performance, and makes the viewer wish that Ivory had cast a more accomplished actress - Kate Winslet , perhaps, or Cate Blanchett - who could give dimension to the character and indicate subtext in a way that Thurman can't.

Mike Clark of USA Today rated the film two out of four stars and commented, "Too many dialogue exchanges sound like actors reading lines, and even the film's better performers seem to be acting in a vacuum. The movie establishes good will or even great will in the initial scenes because it's so gorgeous, but the rest is such a slog that even the revealed significance of the title artifact elicits a shrug. Emanuel Levy of Variety called the film "vastly uneven, with some wonderful period touches but also more than a few tedious moments," "tasteful, diffident and decorous," and "a deliberately paced literary film that takes too long to build narrative momentum and explore its central dramatic conflicts.

Everything in the film, particularly in the last reel, is spelled out in an explicit, literal manner. Production values, particularly Andrew Sanders' design and John Bright's costumes, are exquisite, but they decorate a film that's too slow and only sporadically involving.