Follett’s World Without End

It was a time of poorly planned military adventurism, punitive taxation, and talentless heads of state demanding unquestioned obedience.  Fortunately, our times are nothing like England circa 1327, except for those last three points.  The Builders have erected the cathedral at Kingsbridge, but their descendants have fallen on hard times in the sequel to Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth.  The priory runs the town—badly—and the cruel French queen sitting on the British throne nurses a mysterious grudge against Kingsbridge residents in the four-part World Without End (promo here), which premieres on the Reelz Channel this Wednesday.

The fictional Kingsbridge has both a priory and a convent.  The former controls the city charter but the latter was entrusted with the purse strings.  The nuns are progressive, supporting modern medicine and dignified conditions for the common people.  The brothers are backward fear-mongers, who insist on smothering sick patients with dung.  People assume Brother Godwyn is a progressive, by virtue of his youth, but when he is elected prior, he proves to be an exceptionally ruthless Luddite.

As one might expect, Kingsbridge also has a bridge.  Unfortunately, it has become too narrow to facilitate traffic to the Fleece Fair, the town’s most important commercial event of the year.  The priory naturally looks to the knuckle-dragging Elfric to build a similarly inadequate replacement, but the commercial guild hires his innovative apprentice, Merthin, the disgraced son of the former Earl, violently purged by the Queen’s new tax collector, Roland.

Those taxes will be high too, even by the standards 2012 America.  Queen Isabella holds Kingsbridge in particularly low regard, partly because Sir Thomas Langley found sanctuary there, becoming a monk well regarded by both his brothers and the guildsmen.  Circumstantial evidence suggests he also murdered King Edward II in prison, on Isabella’s orders.  He is not talking about his past, but his presence remains embarrassing to certain people in power.

Langley’s arrival ignites all the scandals that will follow in Kingsbridge.  Merthin will pursue his star-crossed love of Caris, while her devious kinsman Petranilla schemes to protect her sociopathic son Godwyn.  Meanwhile, the Black Death and the Hundred Years War are wrecking a grim toll on the British, particularly in Kingsbridge.

A prestigious period piece co-executive produced by Ridley and the late Tony Scott, World is a throwback to the 1980’s style cast-of-dozens miniseries.  Sometimes it works on that level, but it is a maddeningly slow starter.  The production works best when focusing on the mystery surrounding the murder of Edward II and Isabella’s subsequent Machiavellian machinations. 

Indeed, amongst the sprawling ensemble, Ben Chaplin fares better than most as intense Langley.  He just looks like a man with a history.  Similarly, longtime MI-5 veteran Peter Firth knows how to chew the scenery as Roland, the somewhat reluctant Nottingham of Kingsbridge.  Indeed, his character has one of the richest development arcs of the series.  Also, look for 24 regular Carlo Rota (a.k.a. Morris O’Brien) as Caris’s not so fast on the uptake father, Edmund.  In fact, he is pretty convincing when facing the rough justice of the royal court.

Unfortunately, as the on-again-off-again lovers, Tom Weston-Jones (so appealingly hardnosed in BBC America’s Copper) and Charlotte Riley are rather colorless.  Cynthia Nixon is instantly unlikable as Petranilla.  Nonetheless, her vampy character is so anachronistic and blatantly on the make, it is hard to buy into her intellectually and Nixon never sells her on an emotional level.  Miranda Richardson tries to give it all high tone when appearing as Mother Cecilia, a sort of a Fourteenth Century Iron Lady, but World’s melodramatic inclinations are insurmountable.

If there is one thing that comes out loud and clear throughout End it is Follett’s antipathy for the Church.  Aside from Langley and his closest cronies, the brothers are uniformly depicted as superstitious misogynists.  Yes, there are plenty of documented excesses in its history, but this was also a time when the Church was single handedly preserving the wisdom of ancient western civilization.  Frankly, World’s anti-clerical bent gets intrusively heavy-handed.

There is something engaging about a big juicy costume drama epic, especially when it has enough time to sufficiently unfold every intrigue and double-cross. Director Michael Caton-Jones (whose credits include Scandal and Rob Roy) clearly understands that appeal.  However, the inconsistent cast and didactic point-scoring quickly become distracting.  Not really recommended for audiences beyond Follett’s diehard readers, World Without End airs on Reelz Channel, beginning this Wednesday (10/17).

(Photo: Copyright TANDEM COMMUNICATIONS)

Road Comedy: White Wedding

When Elvis and Ayanda tie the knot, it will not just be a wedding. It will be a microcosm of contemporary South Africa. The groom is Zulu, the bride is Xhosa, and the best man Tswana. There might even be some Afrikaner guests, who will be surprised as anyone to be there. However, Elvis has to get there in time for it to happen. Naturally, events conspire against him in Jann Turner’s road comedy White Wedding (trailer here), South Africa’s official 2009 submission for best foreign language Oscar consideration, which opens this Friday in New York.

Elvis is earnestly devoted to Ayanda, but for some reason he entrusts his safe arrival to Tumi, his aging playboy best man. Unfortunately, a run-in with a jealous ex sets in motion a string of complications that have them hopelessly lost and perilously late. It hardly helps Elvis’s stress level when Tumi insists on picking up Rose, a very white British hitchhiker. When they breakdown in a less than inviting Afrikaner community things look bad, but remember, this is a melting pot comedy.

Indeed, Wedding is a refreshing departure from many recent South African film exports, which tend to be either highly politicized or grittily violent. Instead, it offers a vision of middle class diversity and harmony. Frankly, it is kind of sad Wedding’s style of inclusive light comedy has been so scarce in South African cinema, but its domestic box office success should spawn a welcome new trend. Of course, the “get-me-to-the-church-on-time” storyline is about as predictable as one would expect, but Turner’s execution is rather crisp, never letting the film wallow in sentimentality.

A veteran of South African television, Turner is the daughter of the late anti-apartheid activist Rick Turner and the step-daughter of executive producer and best-selling novelist Ken Follett, who has unusually prominent billing for an EP. (Oddly, both Follett and Rick Turner’s most famous books happened to be titled The Eye of the Needle.) Still, Wedding was definitely a multiracial effort, co-written with Turner’s two principal actors Kenneth Nkosi and Rapulana Seiphemo, with whom she worked on a South African soap opera in the late 1990’s.

There is indeed a nice sense of rapport between Nkosi and Seiphemo. The former is appropriately earnest as the harried groom, while the latter is credibly rakish as the best man. In fact, Nkosi has some effective scenes chewing him out for his responsibility and commitment issues. Turner also handles the budding attraction between Tumi and Rose (played by an engaging Jodie Whittaker) quite deftly, acknowledging its significance but not belaboring the racial issues.

Despite some game performances, it is hard to be shocked by Wedding’s compulsively feel-good conclusion. Of course, most people do not really go to the movies to be surprised. They want that happy ending. Endearing in its way, Wedding opens this Friday (9/3) in New York at the AMC Village 7 and Empire 25.