A snobs' picnic, methinks

Rating: 5/10 (18 October 2008)

Call me obtuse, but I will never understand the fascination so many people experience when confronted with the lifestyle and behavior of the so-called nobility, one of the worst species of parasite on our blighted planet. This movie concerns, by and large, the antics of a 'duke', equipped with more money than sense, whose main interests in life seem to be young women (preferably naked in bed) and dogs. Predictably, his young, naive and perhaps not terribly bright wife is the victim of the duke's callous, capricious behavior, and, in spite of some attempts to assert her trodden-upon dignity, she is finally discomfited in the end: a bit like Winston Smith in the last chapter of Orwell's '1984'. The playwright and the director have missed a unique opportunity to highlight the obscene contrast between the majority of the British population and their idle, parasitical and cruel 'aristocracy'. Worse still, peasants and the urban working class are occasionally shown while wildly cheering 'progressive' candidates to a general election when these pussyfoot around, promising some vaguely-worded 'reforms'. How the undeserving class known as aristocracy could be (and alas, still can be) respected and generally admired, will always remain a complete mystery to me.