Too hard to get into, and all too easy to walk out of.

Rating: Null/10 (8 October 2008)

The period drama never has been a genre that has offered cinema attendees high octane thrills and pacing, instead opting for a much more subdued, elegant formula to tell whatever historically placed story it may be willing to explore. To say that much of the genre as a result is usually unfairly deemed as dry to the point of uselessness would be somewhat of an understatement; in fact the vast majority of such films, although slow and exceedingly dry, usually make up for their blandness in story with well rounded, memorable and exciting characters. The Duchess however, is not one of these films. No, this is dry turkey with an ostensible glaze created by superficial juice. Going through the motions at every turn, director Saul Dibb fails to create anything worth noting here; it's an extremely straight-forward, standardised period drama with little to no interesting characters whatsoever. So not only do you have to sit through a soap opera plot that feels about as fresh and exciting as seeing Keira Knightley in another period costume, but you have to do so with inane personas that never do anything but pamper about in their big mansions, shouting at their servants. Dull, dreary and utterly disposable, The Duchess is as boring as the genre gets, and while there are some good elements present, they fail to mesh coherently to disguise the fact that the script has no intrinsic value inherent in its thin, formulaic design.
To discuss the premise of the movie is almost futile; if you have seen any movies from the genre, you have pretty much seen The Duchess. Revolving around yet another privileged woman who in turn marries a man of prestige and obviously finds out he is interested in her only for the chance to birth an heir, the twists and turns that take place here are stunted and all too obvious. Throw in the ambitious dreamer that whisks the duchess to her dream fantasy land where the sex is just so much better because, well, he's rugged and a little more emotionally viable, and you can see that not much out of the ordinary is set to take place over the next couple of hours. At this point in discussing the story I would normally diverge onto something that works a little better, and yet I can find no opposing tangent to bring up here. Aside from the happy error of making the film's quietened antagonist more empathetic and compelling than the lead woman, The Duchess is straight forward, no risks involved, period drama; all the staples are here and yet never before have they all felt so lifeless, tired and irrelevant.
Indeed, in order for such a film to work, one must bridge the massive gap that separates the culture of today with that on the screen. Many of the most memorable movies residing within the genre have managed to do this, but The Duchess never does. Sure enough, the script does well to put character and themes of love and regret in the forefront of focus in order to tell a story of humanity rather than history, yet in direct contrast with this year's much more engaging The Other Boleyn Girl, this outing feels emotionally mundane. Lead actress Keira Knightley is no stranger to these types of features, but unfortunately her whole performance this time feels perfunctory and useless; her character is ruled by emotion to that the point that she is perceived as weak and without reasoning. When you have a central character who asks for sympathy in every scene without doing anything to warrant such a thing, you have a troublesome predicament. As a personality The Duchess of Devonshire is banal and the antithesis of compelling. She never surprises and shows less personality than in her ridiculously fake beauty spot that she sports in one scene. During this sequence I was enraptured by this giant obstruction on Keira's face, and then I remembered where I was. To scream irony at this point would have been befitting.
To be sure, there are audiences out there who will eat up this sort of thing for what it is; cheap, seen-it-all-before drama that demands little and offers not much more in exchange. Behind me sat two older women, both of whom I deemed aficionados of the genre going by their hoots and wails during certain scenes that tickled their fancy. Sure enough, I would guess that they at least were entertained, yet I was not. Again, I blame culture difference. And yet with major worldwide successes this year from the likes of Iron Man, Indiana Jones and Batman, one wonders if the period drama will ever manage to draw in the demographic that such movies have thus far managed to do. Going by The Duchess however, which prompts one to believe that things are only getting worse for a genre that is by now churning out the same story time and time again, this potentiality seems unlikely. Perhaps if the historical setting and themes present here were delivered with more poignancy and an overall conviction or sense of modern relevancy, The Duchess could have at least dispelled my apathy towards the genre by the likes of The Other Boleyn Girl. Unfortunately this is not the case; esoteric and emotionally stunted, this movie is too hard to get into, and all too easy to walk out of; only for those who haven't seen a period drama in the last five years.

A review by Jamie Robert Ward (http://www.invocus.net)