1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 91: A dance to the music of time
“There was no way of stopping Widmerpool. He would have to be heard to the end.”
This synoptic remark is from Hearing Secret Harmonies, the twelfth and final novel of Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time, which is named after this painting:
The books have three hundred-odd characters who flit in and out of the narrative for a half-century and then – almost simultaneously – fall like flies. The last novel reports a death every five pages or so.
No other character makes such an impression as does grotesque, bourgeois Widmerpool.
It’s said that Quijote got away from Cervantes, that his saintliness usurped his creator’s satiric intent. So, also – as an object of horror – Widmerpool gets away from Powell. We track his ruthless career rise, his sordid love life, his paths of destruction. Blaze-like, he overwhelms Powell’s throng of aristocrats, activists, and artists; mystics, military men, and MPs; servants, spies, and scholars.
Widmerpool is the embodiment, one critic says,
Perhaps this is what fixes his gaze upon advancement and little else, until he cracks under the weight of his misdeeds.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
The 1997 TV series consists of four 100-minute episodes, each covering at least a decade. (They’re much too condensed.) Widmerpool, in all stages of life, is played by Simon Russell Beale. He begins as an overgrown schoolboy and turns into a baby-faced old man. As the years pile up, this spiritual teenager accumulates money and power, to the dismay of his social betters.
The most empathic of these – the tale’s narrator – is Widmerpool’s schoolmate, the writer Nick Jenkins (played in his prime by James Purefoy and in old age by John Standing). Nick is fascinated equally by socialites, Second World War enlistees, pederastic painters, and his parents’ servants. (A housemaid, nervewracked from unrequited love, sees ghosts and wanders nude into a tea party.) And, of course, Nick is fascinated by Widmerpool. SPOILERS AHEAD. Others in Nick’s orbit include the eccentric Uncle Giles (Edward Fox) and his companion, Mrs. Erdleigh, a spiritualist with unerring foresight. The great Nicola Walker, in an early role, is Gypsy Jones, a quarrelsome socialist pacifist who sleeps with both Widmerpool and Nick. (Widmerpool, desperate to maintain an appearance of respectability, funds her medical procedure.) Another flame of Widmerpool’s is the nihilist Pamela Flitton (Miranda Richardson), who awakens every man’s lust but Nick’s. He takes up with serial adulteress Jean (Claire Skinner) before settling down with wholesome aristocrat Isobel (Emma Fielding). Nick’s composer friend Moreland (James Fleet) marries the ex-mistress of the capitalist Sir Magnus Donners and then has a fling with Isobel’s sister; he ends up living with shrewish Mrs. Maclintick (Zoë Wanamaker), whose husband has committed suicide. I’m mentioning just a few of the story’s love affairs. These people are connected professionally as well as sexually. Widmerpool becomes Sir Magnus’s henchman; after Sir Magnus’s stroke, Widmerpool tortures Sir Magnus in his wheelchair by briefing him on administrative minutae. Even as Widmerpool rises in the business world, he spends weekends in the muddy countryside with his territorial regiment. Then war breaks out, and Widmerpool’s painstakingly curated military rank allows him to lord it over old associates who scramble to find places in the army. One of these is another former schoolmate, Charles Stringham (Pamela’s uncle). Once spoiled and dissolute, Stringham has reformed and enlisted as a private; this act of selflessness places him at Widmerpool’s mercy. Another schoolmate – Jean’s brother, the womanizer Peter Templer – also has his fortune changed by war and Widmerpool. I could go on. The web is vast. Widmerpool is the spider – a colonizer, not a spinner. (But when spiders mate, the male loses.)
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
These developments take decades. Widmerpool’s beginning is monied but modest. This scene shows Widmerpool and Nick as insecure young men.
The scene’s other characters are Barbara Goring, Johnny Pardoe, and – who’s the third? That’s the trouble. So many people appear just once or twice. Barbara is memorable because she pours the sugar. The others are just her hangers-on. In the books they and dozens like them serve a purpose not easily translated to the screen. Their names are recalled again and again, perhaps twenty or thirty times. One does get a taste of this, watching the adaptation, but on the page it becomes incantatory.
“Don’t be a chump,” a Guardian reviewer advises:
Karin watched with me and, after some time, was engrossed. But I supplied omitted material. I honestly don’t know whether someone with little knowledge of the books could enjoy this adaptation.
That’s not to deny that Beale, as Widmerpool, does much to repay the viewer’s effort. Think of Peep Show’s Mark Corrigan (David Mitchell) in period dress: only, a terror, not a loser.
This synoptic remark is from Hearing Secret Harmonies, the twelfth and final novel of Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time, which is named after this painting:
The books have three hundred-odd characters who flit in and out of the narrative for a half-century and then – almost simultaneously – fall like flies. The last novel reports a death every five pages or so.
No other character makes such an impression as does grotesque, bourgeois Widmerpool.
It’s said that Quijote got away from Cervantes, that his saintliness usurped his creator’s satiric intent. So, also – as an object of horror – Widmerpool gets away from Powell. We track his ruthless career rise, his sordid love life, his paths of destruction. Blaze-like, he overwhelms Powell’s throng of aristocrats, activists, and artists; mystics, military men, and MPs; servants, spies, and scholars.
Widmerpool is the embodiment, one critic says,
in an unusually pure form … [of] the power of the will: … obtuse, pompous, socially inept, and at the same time possessed of an almost demonic energy and an unstoppable urge to succeed.Embarrassment, that poignant English quality, is what distinguishes Widmerpool from, say, Donald Trump. It’s not that Widmerpool lacks crassness: it’s that he’s furtive about it. It’s not that he isn’t propelled by early experiences of domination and humiliation. It’s that he has just enough self-insight to be nauseated by his past.
Perhaps this is what fixes his gaze upon advancement and little else, until he cracks under the weight of his misdeeds.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
The 1997 TV series consists of four 100-minute episodes, each covering at least a decade. (They’re much too condensed.) Widmerpool, in all stages of life, is played by Simon Russell Beale. He begins as an overgrown schoolboy and turns into a baby-faced old man. As the years pile up, this spiritual teenager accumulates money and power, to the dismay of his social betters.
The most empathic of these – the tale’s narrator – is Widmerpool’s schoolmate, the writer Nick Jenkins (played in his prime by James Purefoy and in old age by John Standing). Nick is fascinated equally by socialites, Second World War enlistees, pederastic painters, and his parents’ servants. (A housemaid, nervewracked from unrequited love, sees ghosts and wanders nude into a tea party.) And, of course, Nick is fascinated by Widmerpool. SPOILERS AHEAD. Others in Nick’s orbit include the eccentric Uncle Giles (Edward Fox) and his companion, Mrs. Erdleigh, a spiritualist with unerring foresight. The great Nicola Walker, in an early role, is Gypsy Jones, a quarrelsome socialist pacifist who sleeps with both Widmerpool and Nick. (Widmerpool, desperate to maintain an appearance of respectability, funds her medical procedure.) Another flame of Widmerpool’s is the nihilist Pamela Flitton (Miranda Richardson), who awakens every man’s lust but Nick’s. He takes up with serial adulteress Jean (Claire Skinner) before settling down with wholesome aristocrat Isobel (Emma Fielding). Nick’s composer friend Moreland (James Fleet) marries the ex-mistress of the capitalist Sir Magnus Donners and then has a fling with Isobel’s sister; he ends up living with shrewish Mrs. Maclintick (Zoë Wanamaker), whose husband has committed suicide. I’m mentioning just a few of the story’s love affairs. These people are connected professionally as well as sexually. Widmerpool becomes Sir Magnus’s henchman; after Sir Magnus’s stroke, Widmerpool tortures Sir Magnus in his wheelchair by briefing him on administrative minutae. Even as Widmerpool rises in the business world, he spends weekends in the muddy countryside with his territorial regiment. Then war breaks out, and Widmerpool’s painstakingly curated military rank allows him to lord it over old associates who scramble to find places in the army. One of these is another former schoolmate, Charles Stringham (Pamela’s uncle). Once spoiled and dissolute, Stringham has reformed and enlisted as a private; this act of selflessness places him at Widmerpool’s mercy. Another schoolmate – Jean’s brother, the womanizer Peter Templer – also has his fortune changed by war and Widmerpool. I could go on. The web is vast. Widmerpool is the spider – a colonizer, not a spinner. (But when spiders mate, the male loses.)
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
These developments take decades. Widmerpool’s beginning is monied but modest. This scene shows Widmerpool and Nick as insecure young men.
The scene’s other characters are Barbara Goring, Johnny Pardoe, and – who’s the third? That’s the trouble. So many people appear just once or twice. Barbara is memorable because she pours the sugar. The others are just her hangers-on. In the books they and dozens like them serve a purpose not easily translated to the screen. Their names are recalled again and again, perhaps twenty or thirty times. One does get a taste of this, watching the adaptation, but on the page it becomes incantatory.
“Don’t be a chump,” a Guardian reviewer advises:
If you’re going to commit to this box set, you should first read Anthony Powell’s 12-novel sequence. It’s hard enough telling your Buster Foxes from your Tuffy Weedons, your Dicky Umfravilles from your Sunny Farebrothers, even when you’re steeped in this chronicle.Quite. (And, to my recollection, the witty Dicky Umfraville never appears onscreen, which is a pity.)
Karin watched with me and, after some time, was engrossed. But I supplied omitted material. I honestly don’t know whether someone with little knowledge of the books could enjoy this adaptation.
That’s not to deny that Beale, as Widmerpool, does much to repay the viewer’s effort. Think of Peep Show’s Mark Corrigan (David Mitchell) in period dress: only, a terror, not a loser.
