SparkNotes: Miss Julie: Context Miss Julie Table of Contents Plot Overview August Strindberg was born in 1849 to an unhappy family of ten in Stockholm, Sweden. His father was a shipping merchant and his mother a former servant, and Strindberg later attributed much of the family's strife to the social differences between them. Bitter sibling rivalry, the death of Strindberg's mother in 1851, and Mr. Strindberg's immediate remarriage to the housekeeper did little to improve the situation. As a youth, August Strindberg held a variety of odd jobs, briefly attended the University of Uppsala. He worked as an actor, journalist, and librarian at the Royal Library while pursuing his writing career. Though his first literary success, Red Room (1879), was a novel, Strindberg is primarily remembered as a chief founder of the modern prose play. Miss Julie (1888) remains Strindberg's most famous work. In the history of drama, it is primarily canonized for its stylistic innovations. Its preface serves as a classic manifesto of late-nineteenth century naturalism.

In defining the new naturalist theater, Strindberg makes two major demands of contemporary playwrights. First, he demands that they adhere to an unflinching realism, whether in content (for example the explicit references to menstruation, blasphemy, lust, and bodily functions in Miss Julie); staging (the elimination of footlights and makeup); and time (Miss Julie, for example, takes place over a single, compressed, and unbroken ninety-minute episode). Strindberg also demands that the naturalist playwright strive toward a new conception of character. Eschewing the one-dimensional stock figure of the melodrama, the playwright must people his stage with full, lively beings. Characters must not be collections of idiosyncrasies and catch phrases coupled with simple motivations. Instead, the playwright must craft a psychology, a "soul". Strindberg is also venerated as a progenitor of the expressionist theater, though he did explicitly theorize about expressionism as he did about naturalism. Expressionist devices are present throughout Miss Julie and Strindberg's other works.

Key examples include continual allusions to mystical forces, the use of symbology and ritualized dance, the backdrop of the pagan festival, and the construction of an absent, shadowy, and yet precipitating center of authority in the figure of the Count. Censored for its shocking content, Miss Julie revolves around a familiar Strindbergian encounter: a quasi-Darwinian struggle across sex and class lines. Strindberg scholars believe that a short story by Zola, "The Sin of Father Mouret," served as direct inspiration for the play. Zola's tale tells of a priest who abandons his order to take up with a virgin but returns to the cloth upon being "caught in the act" by a fellow clergyman. Grief-stricken, the maiden commits suicide by suffocating herself in a bed of rose petals. There is also some evidence that Strindberg intended the play as a warning to the first of his three unfortunate wives, the Baronness Siri von Essen. When confronted with the suggestion that the play is a warning to his wife, Strindberg reportedly answered that he could hardly be sure enough to deny it. Strindberg was an infamous misogynist, and he intended to portray Miss Julie as a monster.

One can trace the genealogy of his hatred for women in some of his early works, such as Getting Married (1884), which earned him a charge of blasphemy, and The Cloister (1886), a grim portrait of his second marriage. Strindberg's misogyny was central to the many psychotic episodes he suffered throughout the 1890s, episodes that put a stop to his dramatic production altogether. In 1898, however, Strindberg took up his pen anew, writing 36 plays in the following decade. In 1907, he began experimenting with what he called an "intimate theater" based on the structures of chamber music, turning from the conventional figure of the protagonist in favor of a small and more balanced group of characters to direct his plays. The following year, Strindberg retired to his house, the famous "Blue Tower," where he lived until his death in 1912. More Help Miss Julie / The Dissolve by Noel Murray Jessica Chastain, Colin Farrell, and Samantha Morton are talented, charismatic actors, and Liv Ullmann is a theater- and cinema-trained actress/director who’s worked with geniuses in both disciplines.

August Strindberg is the most important Swedish writer of the 19th century, and his 1888 play Miss Julie is a classic that’s been staged and adapted repeatedly for over a century. So why don’t all these formidable people work well together? Why does Ullmann’s new film version of Miss Julie feel so inconsequential? Ullmann directed and wrote the script for the latest Miss Julie, which moves the action from Sweden in 1888 to Ireland in 1890, but otherwise stays fairly faithful to Strindberg. Chastain plays Julie, an aristocrat’s daughter who’s alone on her family’s country estate one midsummer night with the handsome valet Jean (Farrell) and Jean’s girlfriend Kathleen (Morton), the family’s cook. Julie has often teased and flirted with Jean, but on this night, she pushes the game too far, and the two end up in bed together. Before the sex, Julie and Jean banter about class and values. Afterward, they keep talking, debating whether either of them is free enough to pursue any kind of future together.

In the process, the power dynamic between the two of them shifts, with Jean no longer feeling so beholden to his mistress’ whims. Strindberg wrote Miss Julie as a way of speaking directly about how the social order was changing as the 20th century approached. Adopting the principles of naturalism, Strindberg kept the plot, setting, and characters in Miss Julie to a minimum, in order to put these three representatives of modern life—Julie, Jean, and Kathleen—under intense scrutiny. Strindberg meant to expose something harsh but true about situational morality, and the symbiotic relationship between the lordly and their servants. Because Ullmann doesn’t update Miss Julie’s setting, she also doesn’t update the theme. That’s a choice that raises some important questions, for both the director and the audience. Is this production meant to be a true period piece, capturing both the time in which the characters lived and the theatrical conventions of its era? Or is it meant to show the past as it really was, and to connect it to the way human beings behave in the present? This Miss Julie seems to lean more toward the latter.

For example, immediately after Julie and Jean’s tryst, Ullmann shows Julie in bed, where she frantically and vainly tries to clean the sheets between her legs, before slowly and painfully getting up and hobbling downstairs. That’s a bit of acting and directing that feels modern. It’s matched throughout the first half of the film by moments in which Jean speaks with open wonder and lustiness about how Julie likes to watch dogs in heat, and how she uses vulgar language with her friends. The sexual frankness is taken from Strindberg’s play, but the performances here go a little deeper into the innuendo. The problem is that as played by Chastain and Farrell (or perhaps as directed by Ullmann), the sexual tension comes off as intellectualized, not actual. The early scenes of Miss Julie are just a few degrees away from some soft-focus 1970s European smut film, and the movie might’ve had more oomph if Ullmann had just gone all the way with it and made something lurid. Instead, the film lacks both the mannered restraint of 19th-century theater and the cheap thrills of sexploitation.

Ullmann’s Miss Julie is as dominated by long speeches and conversations as Strindberg’s, but those scenes don’t play as well when the two would-be lovers are sidling up to each other in close-up, practically panting. That’s why the best moments in this Miss Julie are the ones where Ullmann lets the pictures tell the story, like when she watches Julie stroll commandingly across the grounds and into her empty mansion. Too much of Ullmann’s film feels like a social commentary being delivered more than a century too late. But when Chastain’s Julie dares Farrell’s Jean to damn propriety and follow her upstairs, and he refuses, her long, lonely walk up the steps is as poignant in 2014 as it would’ve been in 1914. GoWatchIt: Buy. Rent.

Stream Miss Julie ★★★★★ Background Miss Julie Background Miss Julie by Egil Törnqvist on februari 10, 2013 in Book Project When August Strindberg (1849-1912) wrote his remarkable dramaMiss Julie in 1888, he had already tried his hand at a dozen plays, including the pioneering historical drama Master Olof (1872) and the brilliant The Father (1887). Himself The Son of a Servant on his mother´s side, the title of his autobiography (1885-86), he had married the Swedish-Finnish noblewoman Siri von Essen in 1877. After six years in Stockholm, devoted to various occupations, he had moved to France in 1883 with his wife and their three little children to escape the stifling parochialism of Sweden. Strindberg at this time claimed to be a disciple of Rousseau and styled himself an “agrarian socialist”. In his provocative The Swedish People (1880-82) he had written the history not of Sweden’s kings but of the common people.

The work gave rise to a storm of negative criticism. His savage attack on the Swedish establishment , The New Kingdom (1882), had further tarnished his reputation in his native country. During the next few years he moved restlessly from France to Switzerland, thence to Germany, finally to Denmark. In this period he drifted towards ethical nihilism in the spirit of Arthur Schopenhauer and Eduard von Hartmann, and his former egalitarian principles were replaced by the idea of the intellectual superman as described by Max Nordau. The outstanding Danish critic Georg Brandes, advocate of optimistic individualism and of fiction focused upon current issues, had dominated intellectual life in Scandinavia for a decade. In the lecture series Main Currents in 19th Century Literature (1872-75), he had examined the position of the isolated romantic genius in Germany, France and England. Brandes introduced Strindberg to Nietzsche’s work. Strindberg’s ideological change was precipitated by the infamous trial in 1884, in which he was accused of blasphemy because of a disrespectful remark about the Eucharist in one of the short stories in his book Getting Married of that year.

Though he was acquitted, his reputation in Sweden was damaged. But Strindberg was hardly one to turn the other cheek. This time the chief targets of his counterattack were his fiercest opponents during the trial: the Christians, the emancipated women, and the small-minded common herd. In the so-called woman question, Strindberg was on the whole conservative – which did not prevent him from holding progressive ideas in some respects. He defended the traditional agrarian division of work between husband and wife and saw the emancipation of (upper-class) women as adumbrating a future of matriarchy. The suffragists, he argues in the preface to Miss Julie, deny woman’s reproductive function because they have themselves become half-women, . In his view of women Strindberg met resistance from many of the writers in his generation who agreed with Ibsen’s positive attitude to emancipation, most clearly demonstrated in A Doll’s House. But as a naturalist he could gain their appreciation. Following the lead of Zola, many European writers had begun to call themselves naturalists. They subscribed to the view that man’s course is determined by his heredity, his environment, and by the pressures of the individual situation.

They held that the artist should adopt a scientific methods in order to represent reality as objectively as possible. But Zola’s famous definition of art as “un coin de la nature vu à travers un tempérament” could easily shift its emphasis from the “coin de la nature” to the “tempérament” of the artist-observer. From Théodule Ribot he learned that the self is an evershifting coalition of countless manifestations ( Lindström 116f.). Henry Maudsley’s Pathology of Mind helped making him interested in abnormal states and in hypnosis. And Hippolyte Bernheim’s investigations made him conclude that suggestion is possible also in the waking state. The psychological works which Strindberg read with such keen interest convinced him that psychological dissection – what he called “vivisection” – is very common in life and therefore should be so also in the contemporary literature intended to mirror it. “The battle of the brains”, Strindberg’s name for hypnosis in the waking state, generally results in what he called “psychic murder”, the subtitle of his essay on Ibsen’s play Rosmersholm.

In this essay he develops the idea that psychic power has replaced physical power in the struggle for survival and that murder and suicide are nowadays largely cerebral operations. In The Father the protagonist is driven to insanity by his wife’s use of suggestion, insinuation and trickery. In Miss Julie the title figure is driven to suicide by her servant Jean’s use of hypnosis. And in Creditors (1889), Adolf develops epilepsy ending in death through the fatal influence of the intellectually stronger Gustaf. Although Strindberg in this period steeped himself in scientific, especially psychological, literature and felt that the writer’s mission is to produce documents humains, his relation to naturalism in its purest form remained tenuous. In May 1888 the Strindbergs moved into Skovlyst, a ruinous manor house not far from Copenhagen. The estate belonged to Countess Louise de Frankenau. She was forty, unmarried, and quite eccentric. The young, good-looking Ludvig Hansen was bailiff on the estate. Everyone believed that Hansen was his mistress’ lover; in reality he was her illegitimate half-brother. Hansen was assisted by his sixteen year old sister Martha who looked after the Strindberg children.

Intimate relations between the married couple by this time belonged to the past. Strindberg found Martha sexually attractive; once or twice he had intercourse with her. Hansen spread rumours that his sister was pregnant and then tried to blackmail Strindberg. Again his reputation was tarnished. In the long novella Tschandala (1888), his most Nietzschean work, he gives his version of the Hansen affair. Strindberg considered himself victimized by two calculating and greedy pariahs but at the same time he was presumably ashamed of his own behaviour. His reaction can be sensed in his portrayal of Miss Julie who retrospectively regards her coupling with Jean as an act of bestiality. If Miss Julie is the embodiment of certain aspects of Strindberg himself, she also resembles some real and fictional women. The social gap between Strindberg himself, whose mother had been a servant, and his noble wife Siri von Essen has an obvious kinship to that between Jean and Julie. Both the masculine upbringing and the suicide of Miss Julie resemble what overcame Victoria Benedictsson, one of the leading Swedish writers of the 1880s.

Strindberg happened to stay at the same hotel in Copenhagen as Victoria Benedictsson when, in January 1888, she made an unsuccessful attempt to end her life – after a disrupting affair with Georg Brandes. The following July, when Strindberg was at work on Miss Julie, she succeeded in killing herself – like Julie by cutting her throat with a razor. In the preface to Miss Julie Strindberg tries to divert attention from these probable life models by claiming to have based his play on a true story he had heard about years earlier. Because this story dealt with the reversal of fortune and the extinction of a noble line, he felt it provided excellent material for a modern tragedy. In the preface he points to the influence the psychological novels of the Goncourt brothers has had on him. A highly erotic scene in Edmond de Goncourt’s La Faustin (1882) may have been on his mind when writing the first part of Miss Julie. La Faustin has, like Julie’s mother, risen from the people. Despite her acquired aristocratic elegance, she retains her love for the simple life. By turns she plays the role of duchess and grisette.

She nearly loses control of herself when she is sexually attracted by a fencing master. More closely related to the main theme of Miss Julie is another novel that Strindberg greatly admired: the Dane Jens Peter Jacobsen’s Marie Grubbe (1876). Marie Grubbe was a highborn 17th century figure whose story has been retorld by several Danish writers. Her marriage with the royal kinsman Ulrik Frederick ended in divorce and Marie Grubbe left Denmark with a melancholy voluptuory. When their passion cooled, she returned to her father’s manor where, during a fire in the stables, she responded to the physical attraction of one of the grooms whose coarse behaviour and language both attracted and repelled her. Like Julie Marie is compared to her dog which, like Julie’s, carries the symbolic name Diana. Strindberg was so impressed by Jacobsen’s subtle psychological study of this sado-masochistic woman that in the early 1880s he had plans to dramatise Marie Grubbe.

In one of the relatively few scholarly works devoted to the one-act genre, it is unequivocally stated that “seit Strindbergs theoretischem Debüt von 1889 muss der Einakter als eigenständige Gattung gelten” (Schnetz 24). To qualify as a one-acter a play must not contain any intermission, curtain or black-out, all of which indicate a change of time and/or place. Miss Julie and Creditors, both evening-filling plays, qualify as one-acters – although the former with its intermediate “Ballet” may seem a disguised two-acter. In accordance with the above mentioned criterion, Strindberg has written fourteen one-act plays, eleven of which were written between 1888 and 1892 during his so-called naturalist period. When Schnetz speaks of Strindberg’s theoretical debut of 1889, she refers to the article “On Modern Drama and Modern Theatre” published in the Danish journal Ny jord.

But Strindberg had, in fact, commented on the one-act form already the year before in his preface to Miss Julie, where he says: As for the technical aspects of composition, I have, by way of experiment, eliminated all act divisions. I have done this because it seems to me that our declining susceptibility to illusion would possibly be disturbed by intervals, during which the spectator has time to reflect and thereby escape from the suggestive influence of the dramatist-hypnotist. (64) As appears from this quotation, Strindberg’s interest in the one-acter is directly related to his ambition as a naturalistic playwright to create maximal illusion.

In “On Modern Drama and Modern Theatre” he notes that the naturalistic drama pays more attention to character description than to plot; that the unities of time and place are observed; and that “when searching for the significant motif” the playwrights of this mode focus on life’s two poles, life and death, the act of birth and the act of death, the fight for a spouse, for the means of subsistence, for honour, all those struggles, with their battlefields, cries of pain, the wounded and dead, during which one heard the new view of life as a continuous struggle blow its fruitful southerly winds. These were tragedies, of a hitherto unknown kind; but the young authors [...] seemed reluctant to impose their suffering on others more than was absolutely necessary; therefore they made the suffering as brief as possible, let the pain pour forth in one act, sometimes in a single scene. (Strindberg 1996:83f.) Strindberg then sketches the history of the short one-acter. In the quart d’heure he sees “the type of play for contemporary theatregoers”. At the same time he regards “the extended one-acter” as “the formula for the drama of the future”.

In the dramatic proverb à la Musset, he points out, “one got the heart of the matter [...], the battle of the souls” and “with the help of a table and two chairs one could present the most powerful conflicts life has to offer” by resorting to “the discoveries of modern psychology” (Strindberg 1996:85). With his eleven naturalistic one-acters Strindberg created a basis for a genre that has proved exceedingly vital ever since. Not only have one-acters for various reasons, not least economic ones, been relished by theatre schools and small theatre groups. The appearance of new media – radio, television – has meant an increasing demand for short plays. Of all Strindberg’s one-acters Miss Julie has been by far the most successful both nationally and internationally. Merely in English there are by now more than twenty translations of the play. It is arguably the only naturalistic play that is still universally read and produced in various media. Why this is so, the following analysis of the drama text will hopefully clarify. Miss Julie on Naturalism Essay - 655 Words Essay about Miss Julie ...beings.

In other words, like lower animals, humans respond mainly to inborn instincts that influence behavior in concert with—and sometimes in opposition to—environmental influences, including economic, social, cultural, and familial influences. Miss Julie, for example, responds partly to her inborn female instinct for male companionship and partly to her environmentally induced hatred of men. Consequently, she both desires and despises Jean, causing her deep... 1181 Words | 4 Pages Naturalism in Miss Julie Essay ... Naturalism .......Naturalism developed in France in the 19th Century as an extreme form of realism. It was inspired in part by the scientific determinism of Charles Darwin, an Englishman, and the economic determinism of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, both Germans. Four Frenchmen—Hippolyte Taine, Edmond and Jules Goncourt, and Emile Zola—applied the principles of scientific and economic determinism to literature to create literary naturalism.... 532 Words | 2 Pages Miss Julie Essay ...Intro to Theater 10/30/10 Script Essay on Miss Julie Miss Julie is a well written play by August Strindberg.

This play is mainly about two characters one who is obviously Miss Julie and the other Jean. Miss Julie is a twenty-five-year-old tragic heroine. The other major character Jean is a thirty-year old valet who is chosen as Miss Julie’s lover. There are other... 678 Words | 2 Pages Essay about Miss Julie ...Miss Julie In Miss Julie, by August Strindberg wrote about the naturalistic view of human behavior. He symbolizes the behavior through animal imagery. The animal image Strindberg uses helps him exemplify his naturalistic view. The first animal imagery Strindberg uses is the dog. Jean uses the dog imagery to describe to Kristen how Miss Julie made her ex-fiancé act before the break-up. "... 843 Words | 2 Pages Essay on Naturalism in Miss Julie ...until it is detrimental to our very existence. In Strindberg's naturalistic play Miss Julie, the two main characters, Julie and Jean are driven to experience a life other than their own. The minor character, Kristin, is the only one content with the simplicity of her life. By portraying the differences between these three characters, Strindberg emphasizes the elements of naturalism. One of the major themes within naturalism...

423 Words | 1 Pages Essay on Miss Julie ...known as a father of naturalism. Throughout Miss Julie Strindberg uses animal imagery to explain the behavior throughout the play. In the play, Miss Julie is obsessed with the animals. The animals are used to symbolize her behavior. Jean the manor’s thirty year old valet describes Miss Julie as wild and crazy. At this point he is talking to Kristen, his fiance and the manor’s cook. In the play... 765 Words | 2 Pages The Illusion of Freedom in Miss Julie Essay ...The Illusion of Freedom in Miss Julie August Strindberg’s Miss Julie is a naturalistic play which deals with the themes of love, lust, and power struggles between social classes and genders. Being a naturalistic play, Miss Julie deals with the upbringing of and the environment surrounding the two main characters, Julie and Jean, and how these factors affect their motivations. As with the...

1253 Words | 4 Pages Miss Julie Essay ...An Investigation to Find Out How much Hydrochloric Acid is Neutralised by Various 100cm3 Antacid Solutions Dependent Variable Amount of Hydrochloric Acid – The dependent variable in the investigation is the amount of hydrochloric acid that is neutralised by the antacid solution. The amount of hydrochloric acid that is used will be measured in a burette which makes my results accurate. To make it a fair test the same concentration of hydrochloric acid will be used which will be 0.1M as... 870 Words | 4 Pages Miss Julie - a play by August Strindberg MISS JULIE an analysis of the play by August Strindberg The following essay was originally published in The Social Significance of the Modern Drama. Emma Goldman. Boston: Richard G. Badger, 1914. pp. 51-61. IN his masterly preface to this play, August Strindberg writes: "The fact that my tragedy makes a sad impression on many is the fault of the many.

When we become strong, as were the first French revolutionaries, it will make an exclusively pleasant and cheerful impression to see the royal parks cleared of rotting, superannuated trees which have too long stood in the way of others with equal right to vegetate their full lifetime; it will make a good impression in the same sense as does the sight of the death of an incurable." What a wealth of revolutionary thought -- were we to realize that those who will clear society of the rotting, superannuated trees that have so long been standing in the way of others entitled to an equal share in life, must be as strong as the great revolutionists of the past! Indeed, Strindberg is no trimmer, no cheap reformer, no patchworker; therefore his inability to remain fixed, or to content himself with accepted truths. Therefore also, his great versatility, his deep grasp of the subtlest phases of life. Was he not forever the seeker, the restless spirit roaming the earth, ever in the death-throes of the Old, to give birth to the New? How, then, could he be other than relentless and grim and brutally frank?

Miss Julie, a one-act tragedy, is no doubt a brutally frank portrayal of the most intimate thoughts of man and of the age-long antagonism between classes. Brutally frank, because August Strindberg strips both of their glitter, their sham and pretense, that we may see that "at bottom there's not so much difference between people and -- people." Who in modern dramatic art is there to teach us that lesson with the insight of an August Strindberg? He who had been tossed about all his life between the decadent traditions of his aristocratic father and the grim, sordid reality of the class of his mother. He who had been begotten through the physical mastery of his father and the physical subserviency of his mother. Verily, Strindberg knew whereof he spoke -- for he spoke with his soul, a language whose significance is illuminating, compelling. Miss Julie inherited the primitive, intense passion of her mother and the neurotic aristocratic tendencies of her father.

Added to this heritage is the call of the wild, the "intense summer heat when the blood turns to fire, and when all are in a holiday spirit, full of gladness, and rank is flung aside." Miss Julie feels, when too late, that the barrier of rank reared through the ages, by wealth and power, is not flung aside with impunity. Therein the vicious brutality, the boundless injustice of rank. The people on the estate of Julie's father are celebrating St. John's Eve with dance, song and revelry. The Count is absent, and Julie graciously mingles with the servants. But once having tasted the simple abandon of the people, once having thrown off the artifice and superficiality of her aristocratic decorum, her suppressed passions leap into full flame, and Julie throws herself into the arms of her father's valet, Jean -- not because of love for the man, nor yet openly and freely, but as persons of her station may do when carried away by the moment. The woman in Julie pursues the male, follows him into the kitchen, plays with him as with a pet dog, and then feigns indignation when Jean, aroused, makes advances.

How dare he, the servant, the lackey, even insinuate that she would have him! "I, the lady of the house! I honor the people with my presence. I, in love with my coachman? I, who step down." How well Strindberg knows the psychology of the upper classes! How well he understands that their graciousness, their charity, their interest in the "common people" is, after all, nothing but arrogance, blind conceit of their own importance and ignorance of the character of the people. Even though Jean is a servant, he has his pride, he has his dreams. "I was not hired to be your plaything," he says to Julie; "I think too much of myself for that." Strange, is it not, that those who serve and drudge for others, should think so much of themselves as to refuse to be played with? Stranger still that they should indulge in dreams. Jean says: Do you know how people in high life look from the under-world?... They look like hawks and eagles whose backs one seldom sees, for they soar up above.

I lived in a hovel provided by the State, with seven brothers and sisters and a pig; out on a barren stretch where nothing grew, not even a tree, but from the window I could see the Count's park walls with apple trees rising above them. That was the garden of paradise; and there stood many angry angels with flaming swords protecting it; but for all that I and other boys found the way to the tree of life -- now you despise me.... I thought if it is true that the thief on the cross could enter heaven and dwell among the angels it was strange that a pauper child on God's earth could not go into the castle park and play with the Countess' daughter.... What I wanted -- I don't know. You were unattainable, but through the vision of you I was made to realize how hopeless it was to rise above the conditions of my birth. What rich food for thought in the above for all of us, and for the Jeans, the people who do not know what they want, yet feel the cruelty of a world that keeps the pauper's child out of the castle of his dreams, away from joy and play and beauty!

The injustice and the bitterness of it all, that places the stigma of birth as an impassable obstacle, a fatal imperative excluding one from the table of life, with the result of producing such terrible effects on the Julies and the Jeans. The one unnerved, made helpless and useless by affluence, ease and idleness; the other enslaved and bound by service and dependence. Even when Jean wants to, he cannot rise above his condition. When Julie asks him to embrace her, to love her, he replies: I can't as long as we are in this house.... There is the Count, your father.... I need only to see his gloves lying in a chair to feel my own insignificance. I have only to hear his bell, to start like a nervous horse.... And now that I see his boots standing there so stiff and proper, I feel like bowing and scraping.... I can't account for it but -- but ah, it is that damned servant in my back -- I believe if the Count came here now, and told me to cut my throat, I would do it on the spot.... Superstition and prejudice taught in childhood can't be uprooted in a moment.

No, superstition and prejudice cannot be uprooted in a moment; nor in years. The awe of authority, servility before station and wealth -- these are the curse of the Jean class that makes such cringing slaves of them. Cringing before those who are above them, tyrannical and over-bearing toward those who are below them. For Jean has the potentiality of the master in him as much as that of the slave. Yet degrading as "the damned servant" reacts upon Jean, it is much more terrible in its effect upon Kristin, the cook, the dull, dumb animal who has so little left of the spirit of independence that she has lost even the ambition to rise above her condition. Thus when Kristin, the betrothed of Jean, discovers that her mistress Julie had given herself to him, she is indignant that her lady should have so much forgotten her station as to stoop to her father's valet. KRISTIN: I don't want to be here in this house any longer where one cannot respect one's betters. JEAN: Why should one respect them? KRISTIN: Yes, you can say that, you are so smart. But I don't want to serve people who behave so.

It reflects on oneself, I think. JEAN: Yes, but it's a comfort that they're not a bit better than we. KRISTIN: No, I don't think so, for if they are not better there's no use in our trying to better ourselves in this world. And to think of the Count! Think of him who has had so much sorrow all his days. No, I don't want to stay in this house any longer! And to think of it being with such as you! If it has been the Lieutenant -- ... I have never lowered my position. Let any one say, if they can, that the Count's cook has had anything to do with the riding master or the swineherd. Let them come and say it! Such dignity and morality are indeed pathetic, because they indicate how completely serfdom may annihilate even the longing for something higher and better in the breast of a human being. The Kristins represent the greatest obstacle to social growth, the deadlock in the conflict between the classes.

On the other hand, the Jeans, with all their longing for higher possibilities, often become brutalized in the hard school of life; though in the conflict with Julie, Jean shows brutality only at the critical moment, when it becomes a question of life and death, a moment that means discovery and consequent ruin, or safety for both. Jean, though the male is aroused in him, pleads with Julie not to play with fire, begs her to return to her room, and not to give the servants a chance for gossip. And when later Jean suggests his room for a hiding place that Julie may escape the approaching merry-makers, it is to save her from their songs full of insinuation and ribaldry. Finally when the inevitable happens, when as the result of their closeness in Jean's room, of their overwrought nerves, their intense passion, the avalanche of sex sweeps them off their feet, forgetful of station, birth and conventions, and they return to the kitchen, it is again Jean who is willing to bear his share of the responsibility.

"I don't care to shirk my share of the blame," he tells Julie, "but do you think any one of my position would have dared to raise his eyes to you if you had not invited it?" There is more truth in this statement than the Julies can grasp, namely, that even servants have their passions and feelings that cannot long be trifled with, with impunity. The Jeans know "that it is the glitter of brass, not gold, that dazzles us from below, and that the eagle's back is gray like the rest of him." For Jean says, "I'm sorry to have to realize that all that I have looked up to is not worth while, and it pains me to see you fallen lower than your cook, as it pains me to see autumn blossoms whipped to pieces by the cold rain and transformed into -- dirt!" It is this force that helps to transform the blossom into dirt that August Strindberg emphasizes in The Father . For the child born against the will of its parents must also be without will, and too weak to bear the stress and storm of life. In Miss Julie this idea recurs with even more tragic effect. Julie, too, had been brought into the world against her mother's wishes.

Indeed, so much did her mother dread the thought of a child that she "was always ill, she often had cramps and acted queerly, often hiding in the orchard or the attic." Added to this horror was the conflict, the relentless war of traditions between Julie's aristocratic father and her mother descended from the people. This was the heritage of the innocent victim, Julie -- an autumn blossom blown into fragments by lack of stability, lack of love and lack of harmony. In other words, while Julie is broken and weakened by her inheritance and environment, Jean is hardened by his. When Jean kills the bird which Julie wants to rescue from the ruins of her life, it is not so much out of real cruelty, as it is because the character of Jean was molded in the relentless school of necessity, in which only those survive who have the determination to act in time of danger. For as Jean says, "Miss Julie, I see that you are unhappy, I know that you are suffering, but I cannot understand you. Among my kind there is no nonsense of this sort. We love as we play -- when work gives us time.

We haven't the whole day and night for it as you." Here we have the key to the psychology of the utter helplessness and weakness of the Julie type, and the brutality of the Jeans. The one, the result of an empty life, of parasitic leisure, of a useless, purposeless existence. The other, the effect of too little time for development, for maturity and depth; of too much toil to permit the growth of the finer traits in the human soul. August Strindberg, himself the result of the class conflict between his parents, never felt at home with either of them. All his life he was galled by the irreconcilability of the classes; and though he was no sermonizer in the sense of offering a definite panacea for individual or social ills, yet with master touch he painted the degrading effects of class distinction and its tragic antagonisms. In Miss Julie he popularized one of the most vital problems of our age, and gave to the world a work powerful in its grasp of elemental emotions, laying bare the human soul behind the mask of social tradition and class culture.

AUGUST STRINDBERG RESOURCES Theatre | Is |Easy | Reviews | After Miss Julie After Miss Julie by Le-Anne Jonny Lee Miller and Sienna Miller in After Miss Julie. Photo by Joan Marcus. BOTTOM LINE: It hurts me a little to say that I didn't like this. It had bold choices but lacked support. An interesting adaptation but the production is missing something. The Roundabout Theatre Company's production of Patrick Marber's After Miss Julie at the American Airlines Theatre on Broadway is...different. Marber's retelling of Swedish playwright August Strindberg's Miss Julie, a play about sex and class, is set in a country house in England on the night of the Labour Party's landslide victory in 1945. A groundbreaking work, the original Miss Julie was heavily censored. I suppose the only way to make a one-hundred-twenty-year-old play that was shocking for its time, shocking for this time is to take some risks. With a sadomasochistic flair, director Mark Brokaw certainly makes some bold moves...moves that his actors do a respectable job executing. If you're going to make some bold moves, may as well do them on Broadway.

There is something utterly charismatic about Sienna Miller who plays Miss Julie. Even though I was not in love with her portrayal of Miss Julie, I certainly appreciate the talent that this woman has, her clear commitment to the role, and her natural likability. The performance itself however, seemed to waver a bit. Marber's adaptation really grapples with the psychology of the characters, especially that of Miss Julie and John, played by Jonny Lee Miller. Unfortunately, S. Miller fell short of making her character identifiable. She does a nice job of toying with her sensuality and of playing the spoiled socialite card but when Miss Julie's sanity teeters, S. Miller teeters just a little too much and leaves the audience behind. If seeing someone play unstable and turn on a "crazy" dime is your cup of tea, then you'll be impressed. She does so with full commitment. If you prefer however, to see the wheels turning and truly empathize with someone in a predicament that makes one do crazy things or if you prefer the type of characterization that gets you to root for the bad guy against your better judgement, then S. Miller misses the mark. Time for me to point out the elephant in the room.

I really wanted to like S. Miller's performance. What with her very public ex, Jude Law performing down the street in Hamlet (come now, we all remember "Nannygate," to quote Ms. Miller, don't we?) and with him doing such a stellar job, I wanted her to blow my socks off. She didn't...although she definitely brought sex and a sense of likability to a very difficult-to-like character and proved that she has some acting chops. I can't help but feel that I'd like to see her play the role again in a few years. The only problem with that is Brokaw along with casting director Jim Carnahan explicitly wanted S. Miller for the role precisely for her youth. In both Marber's and Strindberg's scripts, Miss Julie is 25 years old. Carnahan shared in an interview with Vogue Magazine that they wanted to cast someone who was believably beautiful and young but a strong actress. (Frankly, I think an actress in her early 30's could appear just as young as the 27-year-old actress and the few added years of wisdom and deeper understanding of life would only add to the performance, but I digress...) Costar J.L.

Miller successfully takes the audience with him on his ride to insanity and poor decisions. When John declares his love for Miss Julie we believe him. When he takes it back we know he is defending himself or fooling himself, either one. Regardless, we feel for him. He cheats on his fiancee and yet we feel bad for him when Miss Julie toys with him. J.L. Miller humanizes his character so when John makes crazy decisions we, as the audience, get it - or at least we remain in the world of the play even if we don't understand why John does what he does (the only exception being the bizarre sixty-second pseudo-rape scenario toward the end of the play - I have no idea what that was - but now we are talking about direction). Spoiler Alert: If you are absolutely dying to see this play regardless of what I or any other reviewer say you may want to skip the next paragraph, I'm about to ruin another surprise. After Miss Julie and John engage in their affair, they decide to run away with each other to America. She wants to bring her bird. John thinks that's a bad idea. Since she can't bring her pet, she orders John to kill it. He does and then...are you ready for this?

She smears the dead bird's bloody stump all over John's face. Crickets anyone? Yeah, well that was the sound in the theatre too. Except maybe for my outburst of "Whaaat?" It definitely took me out of the world of the play. If that business is indeed written into the play by Marber, there has got to be a way to do it that makes one think, "What's wrong with this crazy Miss Julie? She's F-ed up." Instead I was taken completely out of the play and thought, "What was that about?" If Brokaw's intention was simply to shock, or maybe it was to jar the audience out of the play for some reason, then he succeeded. Lastly, Marin Ireland, who plays Christine, the wronged fiancee and servant, does a fine acting job. The scene where she discovers Miss Julie and John presumably having sex is wonderful, in no small part because the entire scene is done in silence. That being said, Ireland's accent is no bueno. I'm sorry, I can't let it slide. It's a shame because it's distracting and otherwise, she is a brilliant actress. Again, a situation where I really wanted to love the actress's performance.

She did such expert work in Reasons To Be Pretty (for which Ireland was nominated for a Tony). I was even willing to invent an excuse for her: maybe Christine is from The Borders? (The people from the border area between Scotland and England are notorious for a garbled dialect.) In the end, the muddled accent was just a little too distracting. I really wanted to like After Miss Julie. The poster is sexy, Sienna Miller is sexy, Jonny Lee Miller is sexy, Brokaw is a daring director, Marber has a reputation for creating delicious characters in difficult, sexually taboo situations (he wrote Closer and Notes On A Scandal), it's a story about a steamy love affair, a night that never should have happened. What's not to like about this? It sounds like a recipe for dramatic success. Unfortunately, this production just doesn't deliver. If you frequent the theatre, it's worth a discounted ticket but if you're saving up to see only one Broadway show this year...you may want to weigh your options. (After Miss Julie plays at the American Airlines Theatre on Broadway (227 West 42nd Street). This is a limited engagement through December 6th, 2009.

Performances are Tuesday through Saturday at 8pm with matinees Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday at 2pm. Performances will be at 7pm October 27 through November 6. It has a run time of 1 hour 30 minutes with no intermission. Tickets are $66.50-$111.50 and are available through Roundabout Ticket Services, call 212-719-1300 or visit .) Miss Julie Reviews & Ratings - IMDb IMDb 47 out of 67 people found the following review useful: How to Kill Strindberg from Spain 1 February 2015 Liv Ullman gets just about everything wrong in her slow, heavy, inert adaptation of "Miss Julie." The play needs white hot intensity; she kills its momentum with portentous silences. It needs the claustrophobia of its kitchen setting; she dissipates this by "opening it up" as you're supposedly required to do when filming plays, taking it down corridors and outdoors.

It needs an atmosphere of raucous midsummer revelry right outside the windows, with the revelers at one point invading the kitchen; she lets us hear them, briefly, but otherwise the three characters seem to be the last people on earth. Instead of merry folk dancing, which provides an ironic counterpoint in the original, we get a string trio playing tasteful Schubert adagios. Jessica Chastain is well cast and, when allowed to come to life, very good, as is Samantha Morton, but Colin Farrell is misdirected; his Jean ("John" in this version) lacks the charm and sardonic humor that would make the character compelling. For no good reason the play is relocated to Ireland, a setting Ullmann makes no use of. (I guess it's to justify the actors' brogues.) Strindberg sets a clock going right from the start, so that the proceedings carry tremendous urgency; Ullman drains all the tension out of it so it plods drearily.

The worst thing you can do in adapting any work is drape it in the deadening mantle of a "classic." There's nice decor, costumes and cinematography to gaze at, but don't let this be your introduction to Strindberg's electrifying play. Was the above review useful to you? 18 out of 24 people found the following review useful: Survival of the fittest from United States 10 May 2015 August Strindberg wrote his play MISS JULIE in 1888 and while it is often performed today by classical repertory companies, the story is strong and deserves the very frank and stage-like production that brilliant actress Liv Ullmann brings to the screenplay adaptation and directs with a sure hand. The story is set on Midsummer's Eve on the estate of a Count in Fermanagh, Ireland. Miss Julie (Jessica Chastain in a brilliant performance), the young woman of the title, is drawn to a senior servant, a valet named Jean (Colin Farrell also quite brilliant), who is particularly well traveled, well mannered and well read.

The action takes place in the kitchen of Miss Julie's father's manor, where Jean's fiancée, a servant named Kathleen (Samantha Morton), cooks and sometimes sleeps while Jean and Miss Julie talk. On this night the relationship between Miss Julie and Jean escalates rapidly to feelings of love and is subsequently consummated. Over the course of the story Miss Julie and Jean battle until Jean convinces her that the only way to escape her predicament is to commit suicide. While the acting and cinematography and production values are excellent, the aspect of Liv Ullmann's emphasis on Strindberg's reason for committing this work to the public  as one historian phrased it well, 'Miss Julie and Jean, as vying against each other in an evolutionary "life and death" battle for a survival of the fittest. The character, Miss Julie, represents the last of an old aristocratic breed about to die out. Whereas Jean represents one who is clambering upwards, and who is more fit to thrive because he is better able to adapt in terms of the "life roles" he can take on.

The play contains a variety of themes, partly because Miss Julie's actions are motivated by a range of factors and influences: her class, her desires and impulsive nature, her father, and the dynamic traumas of her family histories.' The musical score is brilliant  various combinations of violin, cello and piano with works by Schubert and Bach performed by Håvard Gimse, piano, Truls Mørk, cello and Arve Tellefsen, violin. The music is an integral part of the atmosphere. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, May 15 Was the above review useful to you? 11 out of 12 people found the following review useful: Compelling Performances of brilliant writing 7 May 2015 *** This review may contain spoilers *** (possibly Mild Spoilers) I am not a fan of Chastain at all, but she was well cast with the ethereal elegance she brings to Julie's madness, her seeming lucidity only when she is growling and snarling in anger and frustration at John (Farrell). Farrell is a chimera of resentment, hope, sociopath behavior and tender confession.

He moves from trying to stop the disaster he foresees, to active participant and then tries to deny his own desires. When he finally agrees to take Julie, to make a run for a new life with her, she cannot let go of the bird that represents herself, her privileged life... And the symbolism of John's response is brilliant; Farrell displays the complicated emotions at war with each other that his character feels with astonishing depth. Morton was brilliantly solid, her understated portrayal of the character making Kathleen all the more real amidst the madness. Unlike other critics, I found the "opening up" of the play into other areas and venues to be done very well. We step into Julie's 'garden' which is really as much in her mind as real, it's her view of life as she'd have it be. Kathleen is equally trapped as Cook and then in the small rooms of the house, as she is in her existence. Only John, who can see better things for his life, moves freely throughout the house, as he wants to do between the classes of Irish society.

The incredible depth of human psychology, the love hate relationships with each other, their own lives, the class system, is explored both in action, dialogue, and in the settings chosen for each part of the play. The viewer feels both sympathy and revulsion for the characters in turn. The nuances that these three actors brought to the characters, and the narrow focus of the film over the play, add to the intensity. Was the above review useful to you? 11 out of 14 people found the following review useful: Brilliant. from Australia 9 June 2015 Jessica Chastain and Colin Farrell are superb. Although the critics seem to hate this movie, lauding it to be nothing like they imagined the play to be, nonetheless, having not ever seen the play or read it, I had nothing to base my preconceived ideas on. Therefore, this was something of a masterpiece. Incredible performances from the actors, painful, and actually a treatise to the hideous mores and codes of its times, despite being adapted by Liv Ullman, the over-riding theme is astonishing when you discover that the original play was written in 1888, and depicts the absurdities of human belief systems and caste systems.

In this day and age, they would have had a rollick one night, said goodbye and avoided each other's eyes in the hallway whilst getting the heck on with their lives! A story of a very lonely, overly sensitive young woman who has no idea what life is about, and the sanctimonious serving maid who thinks that Jesus will save her, and how ultimately, a poor boy has a turmoil of stored hatred and vindictiveness toward the gentry, albeit rightly so, yet turns that into a crime that is inconceivable. An utterly brilliant work. Kudos to Liv Ullman. If you want action, no dialogue, and joy, this movie might not be for you. But if you want to take a good, long look at how evil the natural function of humanity is made by an unnatural society, this is a winner. Was the above review useful to you? 10 out of 14 people found the following review useful: Powerhouse work from Jessica Chastain from United States 5 February 2015 I had never seen her be this loud, this unabashedly theatrical. But, the character calls for it, and it all somehow works.

Farrell doesn't have to go as big, and yet he's the one that comes across as unconvincing. The film only really comes alive when it gives Chastain the space to be as loud as humanly possible. It's not a terrible film, but it just seems like an excuse for such powerhouse acting showcasing, and in that respect it's tremendously glorious to witness Chastain's work. It could've easily gone off the rails with many actresses, but she still manages to surprise me in what she can achieve. Again, it worked for me, but it won't for everyone. Several people will absolutely loathe her (really, any performance of this nature is bound to) but I can honestly say she is probably better here than in Rigby, if only because the material allows it. In that way it's a hard performance to analyze, it's basically "here, watch Chastain ACT!" without really caring if we get the character. But it worked for the 2 hours, mostly. Was the above review useful to you?

3 out of 3 people found the following review useful: Play Author: kosmasp 2 September 2015 I'm not familiar with the source material, but the movie version of it, will not be everyones cup of tea. It feels like a drag and the pacing is slow to say the least. The characters seem to be stuck at a place where it'll be hard to feel something for them. Having said all that, the acting is superb and if you like your drama to be slow paced, but filled with dialog to make you think about, this could be exactly the one you were looking for. It never did have the punch or the feeling that it could be something great to me, but that's always in the eye of the beholder and might feel different for people who know more about it (more familiar with source material) than myself. It also feels like it is way too long for its own good. While good, there are things that make this tough to watch ... Was the above review useful to you?

5 out of 8 people found the following review useful: Borefest 19 June 2015 *** This review may contain spoilers *** If you're having insomnia problems, this movie might be the cure by putting you right to sleep. I'm sorry to say I found this it to be an interminable borefest. The 3 main actors here (it's basically a 3 person movie) Jessica Chastain, Colin Ferrell, and Samantha Morton are all top-notch and accomplished performers, but the lines they have to speak came across to me as pretentious babble for the most part. Plus, the characters they are portraying are all mentally unbalanced in one way or another. Did they really have to kill a helpless pet canary with a meat cleaver or poison a dog to abort her possibly getting pregnant (she lived- thank goodness)? The great actress Liv Ullmann wrote and directed the film, adapted from an August Strindberg play. Perhaps this may have been better suited for the stage, or perhaps this particular Strindberg work is simply too dated for today's times. I imagine there will be a select few who will find merit here, but, for me, it was torturous to watch.

Was the above review useful to you? 1 out of 1 people found the following review useful: A Battle of Wills? 22 September 2015 *** This review may contain spoilers *** Miss Julie is a very compelling piece, that cannot be denied. The small, confined setting allows for this epic problem to play out in the most stressful way possible. And the performances by both Jessica Chastain and Colin Farrell are powerful in all of their subtlety and rancor. The two characters are always perfect juxtapositions; one with their innocence and the other with their malice. But which character is which? This is never made clear as they both seem to jump into one of the roles and back again. This leaves you more confused with the arguments that follow and the events that take place, and with questions that will forever remain unanswered. The problem that is the catalyst of the story isn't even, in my opinion, the act that takes place halfway through the film. No. In fact I believe it is the simple explanation that Farrell's character gives Chastain about love. Those conversations are dangerous at the best of times, and this just happened to be the worst of times.

He bewildered her at a time of innocence, and whether he was sincere or not is irrelevant. The blow was struck. The two then panic and bounce between what they should do after the fact, both trying to lay blame on the other, neither realizing that it takes two to tango. You cannot help but pick a side while watching. Someone, whether it was him or her, had to be the responsible one; Had to know when to stop. But neither did, and so someone must take on the role of the villain, because the world is black and white. At the end the loser is left to his somewhat cruel fate while the "winner" is left to bask in his victory and shy away from the guilt that will never truly relinquish him of his part in the role. The characters search for absolution the entire time, and even when they they've found it, they will not be completely absolved. For all of the power in this filmed play, I have to say that I didn't like the material or the characters. Sexism, hatred, and sleaze take center stage and leave all who are involved considerably diminished. The ending will infuriate anyone with a soul and leave you questioning the way society works.

5/10 Was the above review useful to you? Tragic, Beautiful, and Disappointing 14 March 2016 *** This review may contain spoilers *** Not having seen the play or being familiar with the story, I was expecting a romantic and sexually charged period piece as that's what the trailer implied. What I saw was a mentally ill woman being 'taken advantage of' (to put it mildly) by a man out to avenge his brother's death by playing mind games with her and ultimately absolving himself of any responsibility by encouraging her to take her own life. I was not prepared for a tragedy, and it left a sour feeling. The acting was intense and well done, the dialogue was poetic at times, and Colin's 'John' was a spot-on manipulating character. Jessica was outstanding in portraying existential pain and desperation to be free of it. It was painful to watch - which I'm sure is the point - but I would have appreciated knowing before watching that this is ultimately a tragedy and not -as labeled- a romance. Was the above review useful to you? Beautiful, Fragile & A Mess Of Contradictions.

31 August 2015 *** This review may contain spoilers *** From the works of William Shakespeare to more modern works, stage plays have always provided a rich source of material for filmmakers. August Strindberg's 1888 play Miss Julie has apparently been a particularity rich source, having been adapted for the screen more than a dozen times in little more than a century. While not being overly familiar with the play, and perhaps drawn more by the actors than the source material, I recently sat down to take in the latest film version of the play and discovered an interesting, if often contradictory piece of work. On the surface, the film is well acted. There's only really three performers in the whole film: Jessica Chastain as the title character, Colin Farrell as the valet John and Samantha Morton as the maid Katherine who is also John's finance. Chastainis perfect casting as Miss Julie, the daughter of a wealthy baron sitting at home alone on a midsummer's night in 1890 who finds her fragile little world thrown into chaos.

If there's any reason to watch the film it's Chastain who, with her red hair and green eyes standing out against her blue dress, goes on a remarkable emotional journey between extremes of happiness and sadness, authority and submissiveness, maturity and childishness, quiet contemplation and fits of anger before realizing that she is ultimately trapped by the world and situation she finds herself in. In a way, Chastain's performance sums up the entire film: beautiful, fragile and a mess of contradictions. Then there's Farrell and Morton. Of the trio, Farrell is the weakest in that his acting often seems forced rather than natural, making him at odds with his co-stars. Mot to mention an Irish brogue so thick you'll likely have to turn on subtitles to understand it which rather undermines the refined air that the character tries to put on and is meant to have (though that might be a deliberate move, it's hard to tell). That said, there's an undeniable chemistry between him and Chastain that makes their lengthy and at times unlikely encounters interesting to watch. Morton, the member of the trio with the least amount of screen time, comes across as an often silent and appalled witness to the events unfolding around her.

It's her quiet, understated performance that makes for a wonderful contrast with the sometimes explosive performance Chastain gives. Together, they make for an interesting group of performers who bring the film to life. What makes their performances interesting is the script, adapted from the original play. Ultimately all three of these characters go on the same journey and discover the same thing: that despite whatever actions they may take they're ultimately trapped in the world and roles they find themselves in. What they do with that fact is what defines them. There's more to it than that of course as sparks fly in not only a battle of class but also of the sexes as each tries to gain the upper-hand over the other with consequences that ultimately prove both disastrous and that have an almost tragic inevitability to them. Even as character's bounce back and forth between emotional extremes, it somehow seems believable under the circumstances as roles are reversed and hearts both laid bare and broken in the space of a single night. The results are incredible to watch...at times. Which brings us to the production. The direction of Liv Ullmann, and the editing of Michal Leszczylowski, has the film unfold not with the white-hot intensity suggested by the dialogue or indeed the performances often suggest.

Instead, the film unfolds slowly, never really building up momentum as it takes the viewer on its two hour journey. It's something that turns what could have been a fascinating, well paced drama into one that is as often infuriatingly static despite the emotions and tension building up between the characters. Making up for that is the film's visuals in the form of some beautiful cinematography from Mikhail Krichman as well as the sets and costumes of Mikhail Krichman and Consolata Boyle respectively. It's the combination of their work, and some gorgeous shots of the Irish countryside that makes the film visually interesting to watch when the direction and editing undermine performances. Yet they can't save the film from being at times the one thing it shouldn't be: dull. What are we to make of the film then? There's beautiful visuals and performances, including some of Chastain's best work to date in a career full of memorable performances. Yet the film is also treated with a fragility that at times undermines the drama unfolding within it as well as those aforementioned elements. It's an emotional drama that is played in a fashion that is contradictory to its nature and renders it at times utterly dull.

In the end, the film is perhaps too much like its title character: beautiful, fragile and a mess of contradictions. Was the above review useful to you? Page 1 of 2:

Question: Who wrote the play "Miss Julie" in 1888?
Answer: August Strindberg