Gormenghast (DVD, 2001, 2-Disc Set)

Gormenghast in its VHS configuration was the thing that I sought when I first signed up for eBay back in 2000. I had read the novels through twice (this takes awhile!) and had been impressed by the slow moving, almost unconscious anthropomorphic nature of the settings and the blending of the actual people into the settings as if they were one--an extreme take on the entrenchment of custom and tradition in British society, colored by Peake's childhood memories of Tientsin, China. The entire cycle is slow-moving in deeds and thoughts; change does not come quickly. This said, it is impossible to adequately capture such a feeling in a 4 hour condensation of 2 very long books. However, there are other characteristics that are quite well done, such as the use of modern painting styles, what look like recreations of famous paintings in certain scenes, and a wonderful Oriental style that adds to the "otherness" of the realm.

The characters are like something out of Dickens, absurdly named and yet seriously motivated; they don't know how absurd they are. The reason no one catches on to Steerpike's machinations is because he is careful and clever beyond the ken of the slow moving stones of Gormenghast (stones including some of the human inhabitants!) Steerpike himself, played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers, is the only fast moving thing in the castle, and as he says in one scene, "it's almost too easy" to stir things up by using the weaknesses of the entrenched nobility against them. The only thing I found unrealistic (and yet fitting in the TV adaptation to add identification to the character) was the TV plot manipulation to make Steerpike really love Fuchsia, instead of maneuvering to make his insinuating entree into the level of the Groans through her. It made Steerpike more human, but it took away his larger tragedy and the thing that really made him more like a virus in the body of Gormenghast.

As for the supporting players, they are the cream of the crop indeed! No one could have gone mad quite like Sir Ian Richardson as Lord Sepulchrave, and Celia Imrie, replete with full body suit and greenery, radiates firmness, authority and yet she cannot think outside the box. It is only when the nebulous threat is identified that she lumbers into decisive action. Dr. Prunesquallor, played by John Sessions, is delighted with his own cleverness, but unlike Steerpike, he wallows too much in the game of cleverness, rather than putting it to use (until the end, of course). He does, however, have a keen intuition. I could go on about the characters and their distinguished portrayers, but it would take a rather long time. Suffice it to say they are up to the task--the mentally deficient Twins (Lynsey Baxter and Zoe Wanamaker), the Schoolmaster (Stephen Fry), the wonderful Irma Prunesquallor (a sinewy-necked Fiona Shaw), manservant Flay (Christopher Lee in one of his least verbose roles), Barquentine (Warren Mitchell); the only characters who seem a little off are Fuchsia and Titus the elder (Neve McIntosh and Andrew Robertson). Fuchsia's childishness is a little too forced, and the 4th episode Titus comes off as more of a slacker than a dreamer and "thinker outside the box" that he comes to be in the books. When he rides off at the end of the series, Titus seems more a malcontent than an explorer and seeker after truth. He seems to fall into action, rather than being a thinker who sees through the artifice and stagnation of the edifice that is Gormenghast.