The Turn of the Screw (2009)

Wonderful character development!

A Masterpiece!

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Has everyone forgotten the adaptation of Turn of the Screw starring Ingrid Bergman and filmed for television in 1959? It was shown in the USA and on BBC in Britain. Bergman was brilliant ,of course!and the two children were also excellent. I have forgotten who played Quint or any of the other parts and shall search for it. My point here is: don't assume the most recent adaptation of anything is the best. Usually it is not - for example Far from the Madding Crowd 1967 is 100% better than the recent version.

I enjoyed this production very much. I don't think the frame distracted from The Master's tale at all but then I wasn't wanting a pure recreation of the original. As it was, we are left with ambiguity. I don't believe in ghosts or evil but like to suspend disbelief just to understand how it would feel. The performances were great, a credit to themselves and the director.

I first read Henry James' chilling ghost story at a young age and have seen different versions of it both on stage and film and so was very keen to see this latest version put forward by the BBC in their winter season.The key to the story, in my opinion, is the doubt on whose truth here is real. Indeed when I first read the novella in my youth, it never occurred to me that the ghosts weren't "real" and not possibly a figment of an over-emotional young woman's imagination. Re-reads and re-viewings of the piece have brought me round to this, I think, intended more ambivalent (and ultimately satisfying) interpretation so that I was disappointed that that this high-production-value version seemed to cleave so much to the former viewpoint, i.e. that the malevolent spirits were real - this evidenced by the ghosts "appearing" in the imagination, for example of the young doctor who attempts to understand and salve the troubled mind of the disturbed young governess.Another source of confusion and disappointment was the transposition of events to post-First World War England. If the lead character had been a young man, just back from and possibly their mind affected by the war, then a case for this change of context, could be argued. In every other respect though, the film plays as if in a 19th Century time-line thus throwing the narrative off-kilter. I could also have done without the sub-Lady Chatterley cavortings of both the governess in her imagination with her new employer (who, good looks apart and a self-confessed seducer of previous servants and governesses), hardly seems able to be responsible for her graphic fantasising, as well as the crudely physical liaison that the phantoms Quint and Jessell portray.The film takes this shock-Gothic outlook to extremes with scenes suggesting the actual possession of the children by their malefactors but it's all done in a very sub-"The Exorcist" way and in the end I felt it wrong to come down so conclusively on the side of the demons.The acting was mixed in quality, the children unable to portray the duality of their personalities convincingly and the actor playing Quint lacking menace entirely. However, Michelle Dockery, as the stricken governess, was convincing in both appearance and conviction, with the omnipresent Sue Johnston a sympathetic foil as the bemused house-matron.There were some scares deftly inserted along the way, punctuated effectively by well-crafted background music, but as I said earlier, the modernising of the story to include the nudity and violence depicted here, overpowered, to me anyway, the thin line between fantasy and reality that served the original book so well.A great story, lost somewhat in this particular re-telling.

Of all the programmes in this year's Christmas TV schedule, 'A Turn of the Screw' was the one that I was looking forward to most of all. Although not explicitly advertised as a "BBC Ghost Story for Christmas" that is exactly what it was: a BBC - ghost story - at Christmas. And with top director Tim Fywell at the helm, how could it possibly go wrong? Well, it did.Others might like to list all of the myriad small problems with this production but, for me, there were two major faults which rendered it almost unwatchable: firstly, the two child protagonists were neither enchanting nor engaging which made it impossible to sympathise, or care, about their situation. Secondly, the way that the governess either thought that she heard things, or thought that she saw things, almost every second of every scene of her time on screen meant that there was absolutely no build-up of tension or foreboding throughout the whole production. Ultimately, and disappointingly, it ended up being just a very boring and completely unsatisfying ninety minutes.Once again the true winter chills were to be found on BBC Four this year, with a re-run of the excellent 'Crooked House' and welcome screenings from the real master ghost storyteller - the other Mr. James.