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Tarfumes.com - A Dance to the Music of Time
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List Price: $59.99
Our Price: $49.99
Your Save: $ 10.00 ( 17% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Acorn Media
Starring: Simon Russell Beale, Jonathan Cake, Nicholas Jones, James Purefoy, Paul Rhys
Directed By: Alvin Rakoff, Christopher Morahan
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 0054961970599
Format: Box set
Label: Acorn Media
Manufacturer: Acorn Media
Number Of Items: 4
Publisher: Acorn Media
Release Date: 2007-08-28
Running Time: 415
Studio: Acorn Media
Theatrical Release Date: 1997
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Editorial Reviews:
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Studio: Acorn Media Release Date: 08/28/2007 Run time: 415 minutes Rating: Nr
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: A Dance to the Music of Time
Comment: Spoiler....Disc 1-3 was excellent, HOWEVER, I was so disappointed to see that the actors did not age with the part, but the DIRECTORS REPLACED the main actors altogether. Make sure you get this fact into your head before you buy this series. In fact, I am sorry I bought it, and I wish I could throw it in the trash.
I will not share this series with friends of mine that I pass along my DVDs to, who appreciate my collection of BBC Period TV series/movies. There are much better one in my collection to share. Monarch of the Glen and House of Elliott, Wives & Daughters and a ton of others. I don't want them to be disappointed and angry like I me!
And I hardly ever bother sharing my opinion with others, buy you tell I feel very strongly about this series. I wish I would have read and checked out this series before I bought it. Some people like everything!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Applause
Comment: This film (TV) version of "A Dance to the Music of Time" is superb. A lover of Anthony Powell's great book could hardly ask for anything better.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Entertaining and Hypnotic Dramatization
Comment: This is a fine though flawed attempt to capture the substance of the 12-novel series by Anthony Powell, A Dance to the Music of Time. The series follows its narrator, Nick Jenkins through a large portion of the 20th century, from the '20's through the late '60's, and in so doing, paints a picture of Britain during those years which is absorbing and interesting.
The novels comprising A Dance to the Music of Time are a fascinating portrait of an era and included on lists of the 100 best novels of the 20th century. Hundreds of characters flow through the novels and the interwoven lives of the main characters as the years pass reveal ironies in their earlier relations which are by turns, fascinating, sad or hilarious. Following characters as they mature and change is one of the chief rewards of the series. The novels are an intensely satisfying reading experience and reward re-reading.
To attempt to condense the more than 1,000 pages of the novels into six or seven hours of the series without losing a good deal of the depth and nuance of the novels is probably hopeless. The best to be hoped is that a flavor of the works is preserved along with some of the main narrative threads, which is what the series achieves. The tv series also realized most of the major characters of the books well.
Several reviewers have complained of the final third of the series, but some of the richest and darkest humor of the series is to be found in the final three novels. The Pamela Widmerpool character, in particular, is not to be missed. The change of actor playing Nick Jenkins, the narrator, is somewhat disappointing, but was apparently done to age the character more realistically.
I don't know if this series is particularly intelligible to someone watching without having read the novels. My sense is that it might be somewhat confusing. There are several sites which give condensed reviews of the books, however, which would probably be helpful if you got lost.
Ultimately, a Dance to the Music of Time should not be missed. It is rich, varied and absorbing.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A DAnce to the Music of Time is a Human Comedy to make one sad
Comment: I have seen A Dance to the Music of Time at least twice during the last two weeks and I have found myself both enlightened and confused by it.
This is the type of British television series that I like but never quite
understand, even if I am an Anglophile.
If you like All Things British then this is for you as well as for me.
I am both entertained and saddened by the Human Comedy I have been watching.
I witness the stories of several characters from the 1920' until the 1970's.
I feel the passage of time and the lives of its people too. I can relate
more to the later chapters of this comedy-drama as the highly priviledged
people in it move from middle age to old age as most of us do.
I remember a quotation from 1972, which Bill Moyers quoted back then:
"We have gone from Youth to Decadence without an intervening Golden Age."
I think this quotation summarizes the experiences of the characters here.
They experience life just after The Great War in the 1920's with almost everything in life in front of them. Then they experience the vagaries
of experiences after youth and are not really encouraged by the passage
of time. There is really no Golden Age for any of them from the 1930's
to the 1970's, and many of them do not survive that far.
I feel a note of sadness in the end as nearly everyone in the story is
dead and I wonder, "What was all this for?"
The cast is excellent, but the story is hard to follow at times.
However, I am glad I discovered this series ten years after it was televised. I do not regret it, but I am mystified too.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Overpacked, But Full of Plums
Comment: "A Dance to the Music of Time," (1997) is a four-part British Broadcasting Company television serial based on 20th century English author Anthony Powell's 12-volume literary series of the same name: (the initial volumes have since been combined into four `movements,' as the publisher calls them.) The author always denied that "A Dance" was a roman a clef; still, even to me, many characters resemble figures well-known at the time, and more knowledgeable readers would probably recognize even more. Also, the narrator, Nick Jenkins's life, closely parallels the writer's.
Powell's written series must be considered one of the masterpieces of 20th century British fiction: it is little-known today, and doesn't get the respect it deserves, perhaps because, in addition to being closely observed and intricately plotted, it can be hilarious. Book and tv series more or less parallel Evelyn Waugh's "Brideshead Revisited," book and BBC-tv series, in their drawing room wit, the social class and lifestyles of their characters, and the between-the wars period of time in which they're largely based, but "Brideshead," of course, particularly the tv serial, is much better-known and admired; it's probably more enjoyable. The filmic "Dance" carries the burden of those 12 books, published over 20 years real time, more than 3,000 pages in total, at least 400 characters, in its relatively brief running time. Each book gets only around 40 minutes. Script was written by Hugh Whitemore, an able playwright and screenwriter, but if you don't already know the books, you will probably have trouble following it. It's got its advantages, however. Among other things, the Beeb threw a lot of money at the screen for "A Dance." It boasts a star-studded cast, wonderful clothes, jewels, cars and interiors, and was made on location. The big ballroom scenes feature not only crowds of beautifully garbed extras, but historically correct bands and orchestras making music to swoon for. Furthermore, as it was made for BBC4, the Beeb's experimental arm, it boasts the occasional full-frontal female nudity, too.
Part I begins with our narrator, Nick Jenkins, at what the English oddly call a public school, while we would call it private: Eton, shortly after the end of the first world war. We meet his two best friends, Charles Stringham and Peter Templer. Also Kenneth Widmerpool, outcast at the school, with whom they will continuously come into contact later. Jenkins is played by the handsome young James D'Arcy, who has only become a bigger star over the years. His Uncle Giles is played by Edward Fox: Simon Russell Beale does a remarkable job as Widmerpool. As Jenkins moves on to Oxford, we'll meet Allan Bennett as Sillery, one of the more powerful dons there.
In Part II, we suddenly meet James Purefoy as the somewhat older Jenkins; also, a 95-year old John Gielgud playing the best-known novelist of the age, the supposed-to-be 60 year old St. John Clarke. Zoe Wanamaker plays Audrey McLintock, a mover and shaker in the artistic circles Jenkins frequents. The depression has hit; many characters have moved leftward politically, some all the way to the Communist Party; Widmerpool has begun his irresistible ascent to power, prestige and wealth. World War II is casting its shadow forward. But, by and large, most of the younger characters are having enjoyable, busy sex lives, running off with each other's husbands, wives, and, perhaps, goats....
Part III finds us in wartime. The insufferable Widmerpool continues his rise in the world, and comes to dominate the show more and more. The war seems, to this viewer, to aid him in dispatching a couple of his old enemies. He will marry Stringham's beautiful but very "difficult" niece Pamela Flitton, well-played by the beautiful young Miranda Richardson. Jenkins establishes his literary career, and meets the girl of his dreams, Isabella, of a family based either on the well-known literary Longfords, or Mitfords: I'd guess the Longfords, but you'd have to know more than I do about these people to be sure.
Part IV is the weakest of the series. The makers have fooled around with Powell's timeline, trying to stretch things out to more contemporaneous times, and have also suddenly foisted John Standing, as Jenkins, and Joanna David, as Isabella, upon us: nor does Standing look much like his predecessor in the part. All parties concerned have a good time with the craziness of the 1960's; rebellious youth, hippies and swamis make hay. Widmerpool has achieved wealth, power, and prestige; he's been made a life peer - as has Sillery -- and chancellor of a major university. But has he achieved contentment?
If you can't get enough of this sort of thing that the British do so well, then here's something more to enjoy.
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