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The Denver Post
January 21, 2001
'Mirth' cuts through veil of elegance Director Davies reveals cruelty, tragedy of period
By Steven Rosen, Denver Post Movie Critic,
Costume dramas' and 'period pieces.'

Among many filmgoers - and filmmakers - both those terms arouse cynical suspicion. They connote movies that too often emphasize fashion over passion; the dead past over the excitement and relevance of modern life. They rely on set decoration and costume design, rather than ideas and emotion. They're pretty, but dramatically flat and obvious.

But Terence Davies, whose 'The House of Mirth' opens Friday at the Chez Artiste Theatre, doesn't believe any of that is a given - certainly not for his film, an adaptation of Edith Wharton's novel.

'I don't really believe the past is dead,' says the eloquently impassioned Davies, during a recent lunch at Dazzle. 'I believe the past is alive because it informs our present and thus our future. So whatever period it is, it's not a dead period. It's always very much alive.'

The film is set among the wealthy and snobbish of turn-of-the-century New York. The women wear the most resplendent of frocks, and spend a great deal of time choosing their appropriate outfits and fretting about the appropriate conduct for others.

For the characters of 'House of Mirth,' much of life is about the social whirl revolving around Manhattan and its luxurious neighbors - with the occasional Mediterranean cruise.

Yet 'House of Mirth' does not flatter its characters like some 'costume dramas' do, even if they often look as if they've just finished sitting for a John Singer Sargent portrait.

Rather, it is about the way their prejudices and ugliness destroy a single woman, one Lily Bart, a beautiful if not-quite-young-at-29 socialite whose hope is to marry into wealth and security. Although used to the world of the rich, she is not, herself, part of it. She is dependent on a prickly aunt for her income - and fears 'the vagabond life of the poor relation,' in Wharton's words.

Forward and outspoken, but not devious or sinister, she is no match for her would-be prey. Her story is a full-blooded tragedy, devastating in its quiet and genteel way.

'The story is about the destruction of one person by an oligarchy,' Davies says. 'That's contemporary. It's got a lot of modernity in it. It is a tragic model - they just happen to be wearing funny frocks, that's all.

'I wanted to concentrate on the story and how cruel it is,' he continues. 'Although it is set in the belle epoque, I didn't want to concentrate on it as period drama. I think there's something dead about that.

'All great novels, no matter when they were written, don't fundamentally change,' he says. 'It's like a great film - it doesn't matter when it's made. That's why any great work of art endures - we reinterpret what we see. It's only the stuff that's contemporary that loses its relevance, and thus our interest, and dates quickly. Nothing dates more quickly than the fashionable.'

In his native England, the 55-year-old Davies has a much deserved reputation as an erudite artiste - a man whose life and work constitute an alternative to the crassness of popular culture. Indeed, the uncompromisingly visionary poignancy of his earlier, semi-autobiographical work about post-war working-class families in Liverpool - especially 1988's 'Distant Voices, Still Lives' and 1992's 'The Long Day Closes' - has earned him praise as one of cinema's finest directors.

' Perhaps the most emotionally and technically distinctive films in recent British history,' the St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia says of Davies' work.

Thus, there was sniping in England when it was announced Davies had cast Gillian Anderson, the flame-haired star of television's 'The X-Files,' as Lily Bart. 'House of Mirth' was a hard film for Davies to finance - it took him several years and nine separate funding sources to make the movie. In some quarters, it was felt he cast an American TV star to get that money. Others in the cast include Eric Stoltz, Laura Linney, Dan Aykroyd and Elizabeth McGovern.

'What does irritate me in England is when they say Gillian Anderson was cast for money - and she wasn't,' he exclaims. 'She brought no extra money at all! For goodness sake, get your facts right.

'The cast was those people I thought could do it,' he says. 'I'd been to see a lot of Singer Sargent portraits. Then her photograph came into the office and I said, 'That's a Singer Sargent face.' And they said, 'She's Gillian Anderson, she's in 'X-Files.' And I said, 'I don't know what that is because I haven't seen it.' And I still haven't.

'She was in London and we had tea together. She went back to America; I sent her the script. I then auditioned her for 11/2 hours. I said, 'I think you can do it, will you do it?' She said yes.'

So far the gambit seems to have worked. Anderson's performance, so measured and controlled at first but increasingly emotionally vulnerable as the pressures of life mount on Lily's soul, has been winning accolades from critics' associations. She is considered a likely Oscar nominee, as is Davies for his adapted screenplay. Linney, too, is winning attention for her sharp, malevolent supporting performance as Lily's nemesis, Bertha Dorset.

Davies' films are obsessed with light - the way it filters through windows and brings warmth and definition to faces and places. That's one reason he likes Singer Sargent.

'Not only was he a great painter of faces, but also of flesh and fabric,' he says. 'He's always been my influence, my favorite painter because of light falling through windows onto subjects. I find that ravishing.'

To Davies, who also has made an adaptation of John Kennedy Toole's 'The Neon Bible,' a film has to have a strong artistic vision behind it to be worth making. And he has clear ideas what constitutes a vision. It is emphatically not effects-driven movies that attempt to create or define pop culture - like 'Armageddon' or 'The Matrix.'

'They say nothing about the human condition or the human comedy,' Davies says of such films. 'I look at them and (see) the criteria laid down by the studio and star. That's fine, but don't call it a vision. Bergman has vision, Dreyer has vision, Bresson, Renoir.

'They worked within the commercial cinema, but they had a vision and you can tell the difference. Not many people have it.'

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