 "Thought-provoking" | 2009-07-06 |
| - Reviewed By WheelerQ |
| This film is disturbing in a good way, in that it encourages us to look at our own lifestyles, relationships, and assumptions. The movie has the feel of a play. |
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 "Bloom to Hopkins to Richardson" | 2007-05-23 |
| - Reviewed By quality music lover from Oakland CA |
| Ibsen's "A Doll's House with the superb acting of Claire Bloom, Anthony Hopkins and Ralph Richardson. Hubby(Hopkins) dominating and authoritarian in his manner commands his wife lead a perfect and errorless existence. One minor transgression on her part and Hubby goes ballistic. Knowing that her live in almost servant status in the household will end with nothing changing, nothing getting better, she bolts the abode to find her identity and Daddy mind the Baby, much to his consternation. Alls well but the Wife's gone ? |
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| "Worth Showing" | 2007-05-08 |
| - Reviewed By LIC HS from Queens, NY |
| Anthony Hopkins is wonderful as Torvald capturing both the insecure man and the dominating husband. The film is very close to the text. The director staged more aggression from Torvald in the final scene, but my students all agreed that even that, was true to his character and the integrity of the story. |
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| "A Doll's House, Seriously" | 2006-11-24 |
| - Reviewed By jamesd768 |
| This 1970s production of Ibsen's classic play is well worth the viewing -- it's a solid and believable -- if unsensational -- reading of one of the most famous plays in literature -- and one of the key documents in feminism. The total lack of gimmickry and straight interpretation work in its favor -- A Doll's House is one of the canonical works that doesn't need to be updated. Claire Bloom & Anthony Hopkins (the latter shockingly young) support this production with subtle, nuanced, powerful performances. Denholm Elliott is especially good as Krogstad and Ralph Richardson is moving as the dying Dr Rank ("Thanks for the light!") This version of A Doll's House makes a strong argument for tragic plot patterns which have been banished by Hollywood. My Islamic female students responded positively to this play in DVD. I only wish there were more works available in DVD of this calibre. |
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 "Excellent satire played straight" | 2006-08-22 |
| - Reviewed By Brian from New York |
| Director Patrick Garland's interpretation of Ibsen's famous social satire 'A Doll's House,' while competent and loyal to the source material, lacks effect, I think, mainly for its needlessly dry, Victorian take on a vital, perpetually contemporary theme: the systematic marginalization of those who resist the roles assigned to them by the prevailing mores and conventions of society. Missing in this production is the spirit of Ibsen's wit, which I believe would help us chuckle sympathetically, rather than scowl from a distance, at the vain hopes, hypocrisies and excesses of the playwright's bourgeois set staged in the first two acts, thus providing a much broader context, dramatically speaking, for fleshing out the universal relevancy of the poignant but potentially period-bound subject matter revealed in the third. Ironically, the film's earnest attempts to portray the play's events and characters so literally, so BBCeriously, ultimately work against it and by the final scene the whole exercise seems to have been reduced to a rather dull and dour polemic proposing feminism as an imperfect, last-ditch remedy for 19th century social injustice. Hopkins turns in a skillful but too-restrained performance as the phallocentrically rigid and self-admiring banker/husband Torvald, and Bloom (probably herself over-mature for the role) comes across as too wise and conniving to be believed as the flighty doll-wife Nora. All that having been said, though, the movie is well done. The sets are rich and befitting the era; the actors, however possibly miscast the principals (I'd like to have seen Albert Finney and Susannah York take a crack at the time), are all technically first-rate; and the story, even told as it is, without a hint of caricature, is engaging and paced efficiently by the director. |
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| "Good without being brilliant..." | 2006-07-17 |
| - Reviewed By Judy-Viv from Oslo, Norway |
I must say I find Miss Bloom a bit too old and static for the part, it seems she is struggling to fit into the shoes of Nora; the doll-wife-woman who had surrended all responsebilities to the male dominant in her life... But she excells when Nora matures.
True, this was the case for most women over 100 years ago...
I also find Torvald`s objections in the finale, on the not so "evil side..."
I mean Nora abandens three children in search of herself? What kind of a rolemodel is THAT???
Do we live for ourselves or for our commitments? I must say that from the day you have childeren and enter matrimony, you no longer can do whatever pleases, but must face responsebilities.
This is what is known as growing UP.
In the year of 2006 we see that too many people must "realise" themselves and end up lonely because they have escaped nearness, tenderness, closeness and committment to other than themselves...
Hopkins is a bit overweight, but with Dame Evans and Ralph Richardson - excellent....
Miss Bloom was awarded a Special award in Oslo in 2006, an award called "IBSEN`S WOMEN OF THE 20th CENTURY" with Lise Fjelstad(an excellent Nora, c the NRK adaption), Glenda Jackson(Hedda 1975-Academy Award nominee), Liv Ullmann(The Wild Duck), Wenche Foss and Bibi Andersson(amongst others) for her portrayels of Ibsen`s women...
This is a theme never to be closed hehehe |
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