** Spoilers**
The other reviews have hit all the important high points. This is, indeed, a lovingly filmed story, with lots to reflect on in the difference that social class made -- just after WWI -- in England. (And still does; see Michael Apted's Up films: 7Up, 14Up, 21Up, and so on.) The acting is superb, the relations between characters believable (catch Mellors's mother criticizing him as she hangs his clean laundry to dry), and although the ending is not as the book's, it's much more satisfying.
A reviewer below wonders why Mellors's face isn't shown during lovemaking. The whole point of the book, and the movie, is to show how this relationship, and her infidelity, is affecting Connie. It's not just that she's unfaithful -- she's unfaithful with a man `not our class, dear', which was a social sin greater than any dalliance. And as to their doing it `Greek' -- I perceive what's portrayed is simply rear-entry, like most mammals, what Lawrence referred to as `à l'italien'.
It's fascinating to recognize that Sean Bean a few years after this series worked in Lord of the Rings -- because both Tolkien and Lawrence wrote, in very different ways, of the contrast between the natural world and the mechanical world. Wragby Hall, where the Chatterleys live (because his older brother was killed in WWI, Sir Clifford has inherited the title and the place, though he has been paralyzed -- but not, we're led to believe by Mrs. Bolton, who cares for him, quite so paralyzed as to make some kind of intercourse with Connie impossible...if only he would want it) -- Wragby Hall is beautiful, but stony and cold. Mellors's cottage is small, dark, intimate. When Connie visits him there for the first time, flowers he's picked wait for her on the table. The gorgeous woods, where most of the Connie/Mellors relationship lies, are green, leafy, full of life -- and the contrast to the mining town Mellors came from and returns to, black and grim, is cruel. At one point Sir Clifford, trying to break a miners' strike, threatens to go down into the mine -- presaging the flight down into Tolkien's vision of Saruman's pit, where weapons of war are crafted and birthed.
Hilda, Connie's sister, totally disapproves of the illicit relationship and is taken aback when Mellors calls himself her brother-in-law. `Far from it, I assure you!' she retorts, scandalized. Yet Mellors means that he is married to Connie by nature -- and that is far more powerful than the dead, though legal, marriage of Clifford to Connie.
The themes of care, and of flight, run through the films. Connie, seeing a nest, says she'd like to be a bird, perhaps to escape her husband, who is irritable and cold. Mellors, as gamekeeper, patrols for poachers, but also raises pheasants for Sir Clifford by taking most of their eggs and putting them under sitting hens. One of the first things he says to Connie, when he indicates a bench she can rest on, is, `You've not been well, I know'. Soon the eggs have hatched, and a tender scene has Mellors and Connie watching the tiny chicks -- which she describes as `so unafraid'. Not long after, Mellors is doing the same thing for Connie -- she runs, flies, to the woods to be under him, with whom she feels warm and safe. At the end she persuades Hilda to race to Southampton, hoping to catch Mellors in his own flight to Canada.
Note about the music: It's so awfully florid, I wish Ken Russell would re-score the whole thing using public domain classical pieces. Other than that, though, this 2-DVD set is a fine piece of work, and was hugely popular in the UK when it first aired -- even referred to in `The Vicar of Dibley'. Ken Russell handled the story with great love as well as passion, and the thump you feel in the pit of your stomach may not be entirely due to the eroticism of this film.
The other reviews have hit all the important high points. This is, indeed, a lovingly filmed story, with lots to reflect on in the difference that social class made -- just after WWI -- in England. (And still does; see Michael Apted's Up films: 7Up, 14Up, 21Up, and so on.) The acting is superb, the relations between characters believable (catch Mellors's mother criticizing him as she hangs his clean laundry to dry), and although the ending is not as the book's, it's much more satisfying.
A reviewer below wonders why Mellors's face isn't shown during lovemaking. The whole point of the book, and the movie, is to show how this relationship, and her infidelity, is affecting Connie. It's not just that she's unfaithful -- she's unfaithful with a man `not our class, dear', which was a social sin greater than any dalliance. And as to their doing it `Greek' -- I perceive what's portrayed is simply rear-entry, like most mammals, what Lawrence referred to as `à l'italien'.
It's fascinating to recognize that Sean Bean a few years after this series worked in Lord of the Rings -- because both Tolkien and Lawrence wrote, in very different ways, of the contrast between the natural world and the mechanical world. Wragby Hall, where the Chatterleys live (because his older brother was killed in WWI, Sir Clifford has inherited the title and the place, though he has been paralyzed -- but not, we're led to believe by Mrs. Bolton, who cares for him, quite so paralyzed as to make some kind of intercourse with Connie impossible...if only he would want it) -- Wragby Hall is beautiful, but stony and cold. Mellors's cottage is small, dark, intimate. When Connie visits him there for the first time, flowers he's picked wait for her on the table. The gorgeous woods, where most of the Connie/Mellors relationship lies, are green, leafy, full of life -- and the contrast to the mining town Mellors came from and returns to, black and grim, is cruel. At one point Sir Clifford, trying to break a miners' strike, threatens to go down into the mine -- presaging the flight down into Tolkien's vision of Saruman's pit, where weapons of war are crafted and birthed.
Hilda, Connie's sister, totally disapproves of the illicit relationship and is taken aback when Mellors calls himself her brother-in-law. `Far from it, I assure you!' she retorts, scandalized. Yet Mellors means that he is married to Connie by nature -- and that is far more powerful than the dead, though legal, marriage of Clifford to Connie.
The themes of care, and of flight, run through the films. Connie, seeing a nest, says she'd like to be a bird, perhaps to escape her husband, who is irritable and cold. Mellors, as gamekeeper, patrols for poachers, but also raises pheasants for Sir Clifford by taking most of their eggs and putting them under sitting hens. One of the first things he says to Connie, when he indicates a bench she can rest on, is, `You've not been well, I know'. Soon the eggs have hatched, and a tender scene has Mellors and Connie watching the tiny chicks -- which she describes as `so unafraid'. Not long after, Mellors is doing the same thing for Connie -- she runs, flies, to the woods to be under him, with whom she feels warm and safe. At the end she persuades Hilda to race to Southampton, hoping to catch Mellors in his own flight to Canada.
Note about the music: It's so awfully florid, I wish Ken Russell would re-score the whole thing using public domain classical pieces. Other than that, though, this 2-DVD set is a fine piece of work, and was hugely popular in the UK when it first aired -- even referred to in `The Vicar of Dibley'. Ken Russell handled the story with great love as well as passion, and the thump you feel in the pit of your stomach may not be entirely due to the eroticism of this film.