Tom & Viv (1994)

Sick Product of a Sick System

Memorable, crazy movie

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Unlike this film adaptation of Michael Hastings' play, there was nothing straightforward about the characters that populate Tom & Viv. Well, with the honourable exception of Tim Dutton's Maurice. The cast of characters are all exceptional, constituting the creative exoticism of the 1920s. Inevitably this means the Bloomsbury Group, though the film is modest in its examination of those personalities themselves, using Ottoline Morrell, Virginia Woolf and Edith Sitwell et al as a backdrop & foil for the highly strung Vivienne Eliot, rather than out- and-out antagonists.It is Vivienne about whom this film rotates. She appears to be the life force that drives Tom Eliot on in his decisions and actions, if only through her spasmodic mood swings. It's a very difficult role for Miranda Richardson (who is excellent, perfectly cast) to grade; we need a sense of escalation but also to see that her post-menopausal self is significantly different from how she was before Tom. The result is a rich portrayal, dizzying and distracting from the couple's real dynamic. As a narrative I'm sure it's accurate. As drama it's less satisfying.Willem Dafoe is a nicely taciturn Eliot, with the same strong features as the poet, if not an obvious lookalike. The attention to design detail, especially in costume is quite excellent. Recommended as a broad-brush primer for this important period in TS Eliot's professional development. 6/10

Unlike many biographical films this one doesn't alter things so much from the historical record. It doesn't make one person more sympathetic than they were in reality, and, as the ending shows, it reaches not a grand finale, but a whimper. (Apologies for the nod to Eliot's most famous line – which he found tiresome too) This is a very sad story because the principals in real life were devoted to each other, but for a range of almost mysterious reasons to contemporary audiences, Vivienne's various maladies, mental and gynecological, are shrouded. Richardson carries this role well, and she almost owned the canon of disturbed women for a while in her career.The stand out is Dafoe as Eliot. Dafoe has the solemn, dignified, presence; the accent of period Englishness of a certain class and his American accent suppressed in the voice but mingled nearly perfectly to sound like Eliot. In addition Eliot's life, especially during these turbulent chapters were smothered, and to see Dafoe incarnate Eliot gives life to a man who was often an abstracted mind. This is a fine production in almost all respects although it may not have a wide appeal.

I was reminded of Ken Russell's Music Lovers, and was beginning to wonder "how many women marry men to associate themselves with success?"(Hillary Clinton). And how often does this choice lead to some form of dementia? Russell is one of my favorites and I LOVE some of his best (Music Lovers, Devils of Loudon, Tommy, Altered States & Gothic). But back to the subject- Do we know of other women who have attached themselves to (potentially) famous men who did so while being mentally unbalanced? I need to watch this film again and re-evaluate, but it seems that everyone may have neglected the real relationship issues in this. And like the afore-mentioned film, the relationship may have been totally one-sided.

Spoiler Alert! This is a film that improves with subsequent viewings. It represents only a small, limited portion of Eliot's personal and artistic life, as other posters have said, but the performances make the movie worth it. All of the performances are well done, but Miranda Richardson is extraordinary as a woman who sometimes struggles to keep herself under control and often loses.The film seems muddled in its presentation of Viv, however. The script has all of the usual mentally-ill-person-as-victim-of-society rhetoric--she's brilliant, a creative free spirit, etc.--and it puts in Mrs. Haigh-Wood's mouth a long speech to Eliot implying her disappointment that he isn't taking care of Viv despite her faults. At the end, the audience is indeed dismayed by her treatment. (And would it have killed Maurice to pick up a pen and write during those long years of her confinement?) But Richardson has been so convincing in her portrayal of an unpredictable force that cannot be controlled, even by herself, that there's a genuine sense of menace. Viv does threaten violence to others as well as to herself, after all, and her breezy dismissal of it as "well, we're alive--no harm done" doesn't help. Although the scene of her being remanded to the institution is sad, there's also a palpable sigh of relief.In short, lots of convincing, no-easy-answers suffering all round.