Pillars of Earth, The (Miniseries)
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A fun little series. DVD based on the book.
Summary
Well acted and beautiful, this miniseries based on a popular British[notes 1] book is backed by a solid story well told. It feels like a "bookish" story, which is a good thing. I wish more adaptations would try and preserve the original feel of books rather than "turning books into movies" which is something else entirely.[notes 2] Having not read the book myself, I cannot say how close the adaption is, but I would be surprised if it were not "pretty close".
If you like English history or period dramas, you'll probably like this. I personally wish the history were closer to something, but there's a lot of invention. I've read that "the history of Gothic architecture" is a strong and key theme in the book and I thought "how cool is that?" but, for the miniseries at least, the fictionalization feels too strong and I just don't get the historical feel. I see the bits about Gothic architecture in there, but they feel relatively stuck on. It's neat I guess, but they don't have anything to do with the story and are about as distracting as they are neat, so it's a wash.
But still, lots of fun and there is certainly a lot of attention to detail in the production. It's unquestionably romanticizing the period, but you can just imagine these remarkable stories could have been. Probably not all together in one time and place like they are in the story, but maybe individually. This weaving of stories for me was a little awkward at times, a little bit too much coming together and falling apart, too much pianissimo and crescendo.
A solid 3.5 stars.
Details and Notes
The original review was lost when a server crash took out a month's worth of articles. :(
