It's so good

Rating: 7/10 (8 March 2006)

It's so good to wash our eyes and souls watching such a charming romantic movie after tons of bloodshed, violence, wars, horror, robots, special effects made by computer, etc. It's like to see something human after all. Well but I must comment on the merits of the movie itself and not dwell upon my filmic nostalgias. And besides it I don't want to give the impression that I don't appreciate many of those modern movies with bloodshed, robots, etc when they are good indeed. This movie tells us a story of the clash between the aristocratic way of life and values of England in the beginning of 19th century and that of the middle classes against the background of rural atmosphere. The members of the often impoverished middle classes aspire to imitate the aristocracy and if possible, to become its members one day too. For the girls however, the only hope is to marry noblemen preferably rich because at the time girls had no other choice for they were economically dependent since their birth because they were not allowed to get any profession or job that could bring them a substantial income. Therefore the parents of five girls like the one in the movie, whose income was rather low, had the hard task of marrying them all above their social status to avoid disgrace and ruin to the whole family. A hard task indeed. Well but human beings have feelings and sentiments and young men and girls tend to love one another irrespective of their social positions and that collides with such materialistic ideas. And the substance of romanticism is precisely this collision which was of course much more acute at the epoch portrayed in the movie than nowadays. This movie gives us that atmosphere through the good performance of its whole cast and the various scenes and dialogues where all these contradictions are shown and the sentiments are sometimes revealed sometimes concealed because of strict social and mundane or etiquette rules. In formal terms the images and sequences either interior or exterior are beautiful enough, express adequately the general atmosphere of the movie and are faithful to the portrayed epoch in every aspect.