The Pillars of the Earth Comes to the Screen

First, the good news: the TV miniseries, The Pillars of the Earth is not bad, and it's available as a rental. That said, I am not quite ready to give it an unqualified wow.

Well, let me break that down a bit. For those of you who do not believe you have the time to plow through 1000 or so pages of written text, this is an excellent series, well worth your time. For those among you who have read the book and may want to insist on intellectual purity on the part of the series, you will find the project was, as our high-school geometry teachers like to say, similar, but not congruent.

Actually, the first few episodes do not stray all that far from the novel, but, as the series progresses, more and more liberties get taken, sometimes in the interest of sensation (there is considerable sex, nudity and violence); sometimes just to speed things up. I think the book was by far the more interesting telling of the tale, but I am not going to sit in judgment over the filmmakers. They faced some hard realities that author Ken Follett did not have to deal with.

For one thing, once you've bought the book, that's it. You cannot push a button on a remote and turn it into a different book (and why in the devil would you want to?). Then too, Follett never had to pay his principal antagonist, Bishop Waleran, a thin dime, for example, but I'll bet the very capable Ian McShane, who plays the Bishop on the screen, cost the producers plenty.

Some of the omissions are huge. The murder of Archbishop (later Saint) Thomas Becket in 1170 plays a major part in the novel and is the only means by which the surviving people of Kingsbridge can rid themselves of the second-biggest antagonist in the story, William Hamleigh. It is entirely absent from the film.

Also, a few people get murdered with malice aforethought in the screen version, while they died from natural or accidental causes in the book. On the other hand, the miniseries does stay true to author Follett's premise about the White Ship disaster and the battle for rule between the daughter of Henry I (Maud) and his nephew (Stephen).

Speaking of those two, both Alison Pill, as Maud, and Tony Curran, as Stephen, turn in excellent work as the dueling pretenders to the throne. In general, this is a very well-acted production. I would not be at all surprised to see a number of the actors get nominations in their appropriate awards categories.

Ian McShane as the evil, troubled bishop and his rival, Matthew Macfadyen, as the good, but equally conniving Prior Phillip are both brilliant, particularly when playing against one another. Hayley Atwell does a superb job as the heroine, Aliena, and Sarah Parish, as the villain William Hamleigh's mother, is nothing short of disturbing. I mean that as a compliment, but, through her own ability and the manner in which the miniseries' creators decided to cast her role, her performance is very troubling, yet fascinating.

In the book, I always pictured Regan Hamleigh, the matriarch of that evil family, as some thoroughly unpleasant harridan, whom everyone, within her family and without, must consider a blight on their personal landscapes. Instead, Ms. Parish-an otherwise pretty-enough lady of 42-comes off as absolutely hot, a major facial blemish notwithstanding. While her lust in the novel seems only to be for power, in the screen version, you get the very unmistakable impression, she lusts even more after her son. Contrast that with the look of absolute boredom on her face in a scene where her husband, Percy, is exercising his marital rights.

Ms. Parish's appearance brings up my biggest problem with the production. The action, which begins in the year 1120, principally takes place over a decade to follow. Naturally, those who are babies and small children at the outset are permitted to "grow" by substitution of older actors, of course. On the other hand, none of the main characters seem to age a day. Mind you, this was the twelfth century, well before the age of Botox or any other plastic surgery. A ten-year passage of time should have played on the characters' appearance and, for the most part, it did not.

My goodness, if the modern art of cinematic makeup can change human beings into all sorts of monstrosities, surely the people in charge of that aspect of the series could have put a little age on the principal players as the story progresses. I can understand many of the plot revisions I referred to, for the reasons I referred to, above, but this was simply a case of laziness on the part of the project's creators.

Still, if you are willing to suspend your disbelief regarding the characters' appearance and are not too highly invested in the purity of the book, this will almost certainly prove to be a very exciting and entertaining series, well-worth your time.

Sources

Netflix, The Pillars of the Earth

Ken Follett, The Pillars of the Earth

Wikipedia

Imdb.com