Why so much hype?

The Worst Film Ever

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

This is the most confusing, self-indulgent and pretentious movie ever made.It looks like it was written and shot by the evil spawn of Fellini, Woody Allen, and Wes Craven.I defy ANYONE to explain what this movie meant and what all the sub-plots were.Vanessa Redgrave is fun to watch no matter what, but I bet she is ashamed to have made this movie.Dark, depressing, violent and indecipherable, this movie will leave you wishing you had believed this review.It could be a good object lesson in what not to do.Basing a film like this in Yorkshire is blasphemy.

I've always loved this movie deeply. I just watched it again for perhaps the sixth or seventh time. I fully agree with the Japanese reviewer that the mention of Nixon is in sympathy, not ridicule. His yearning to be loved by another, is very much meant as a parallel to the young and older Redgrave character - as well as to the young man at the dinner party.David Hare has a wonderful scene here that is very similar to the very end of Plenty - when we see Joely Richardson writing in her diary in 1947 or so (think of Plenty's flashback to Meryl Streep in 1944 or 1945 speaking to the French farmer). The scenes might be full of bathos - but gee, I was overwhelmed both times. This movie has much in common with other Hare ventures - movies like Strapless and Plenty, plays like Skylight and "Amy's View". Hare's deep sympathies are with the romantic, the compassionate, the sensitive, the foolhardy, the collective-minded and the lost. He is antipathetic toward the self-sufficient, the ambitious, the laconic, the individualistic, the successful. I only partly share his sympathy and his antipathy but he makes me appreciate his attitudes through dramas he creates with real living characters. Hare is sentimental in a nostalgic way, and can write wonderfully vivid, intelligent and lost protagonists. I think him a far more intelligent and better dramatist than such left-wingers as Mike Leigh or Ken Loach. Many of us will see much of ourselves in his protagonists' loneliness, our wonder at mistaken hopes from our past, and sense of our own frailties and faults as we grow older.Others speak of similarities to Pinter - I don't see them. Hare is more essentially romantic - even if he doesn't want to be - and I'd place him more with a Jacques Demy than with a Pinter-Mamet and their cold keen patterns of speech and behavior - though granted, he's more concerned with social and political background than Demy.This is essentially a sad movie about one who was once happy - and her wonder and self-realization about another sadder than she. This movie also started me off on two decades of strongly favoring Joely Richardson in any role - as I had always loved Ian Holm and Vanessa Redgrave. (I realized recently that among my several dozen favorite movies since the mid-1960s, about one quarter seem to have Ian Holm in them!). If you like movies like Sunday Bloody Sunday, Butley, Plenty, A Kind of Loving, Quartermaine's Terms - and I do - you'll love Wetherby. I love this movie.

(possible spoilers)I agree with the above comments almost entirely with the small exception of the importance that the 80's political scene played as any kind of thematic backdrop for the story.On the contrary, the WWII era, if anything, was to be the backdrop for the contemporary happenings within the plot.I think the above commenter is reading too much into the mention of Nixon in the film and possibly projecting his/her own political leanings - obviously anti-Thatcher/Reagan - onto those of David Hare, the writer and director. In terms of Richard Nixon, who is mentioned in an anecdotal way at the outset of the story, Ian Holmes' character appears to sympathize with the former president when discussing a rumour about Richard and Pat's early courtship. And Venessa Redgrave's character admits things would "liven up" in their pub were the former president to suddenly appear. These are not the words of people suffering from "negative progression" as stated in the above comment.The characters played by Redgrave, Holmes, Dench, not to mention the key character of John Morgan, are all in one way or another involved in academia. (though Holmes plays a barrister.) They live quite comfortably and somewhat happily - within the confines of the plot and theme of loneliness, and aloneness of course. Redgrave's country home would be an enviable house to live in by anyone's standards. To say that this is an environment of "Thatcher chaos", as the above commenter states, is quite off the mark, I feel. The story is about normal people, somewhat lonely, in the upper middle class regions of society living their lives, waxing philosophy and working at their jobs, when a young stranger (youth is an important aspect of the theme) appears and upsets their lives with his dramatic actions. This stranger's "behaviour" does not make them question their lives, nor does it need to. (They are all confident in their own beliefs and values.) It simply, as Redgrave hints in the pub, livens up the place. Breaks up the monotony. Changes the daily talk, the daily complaints to something a bit more meaningful.It is a common misconception to interpret films as a 100% reflection of the political climate of the time. This mistake has been repeated throughout the history of film criticism. One good example is the much repeated "red scare" explanation to Don Segal's Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Segal himself, claims the comparison is nonsense, and he was simply making a thriller. A scary monster movie with no monsters.Overall, Wetherby is an excellent film with noteworthy performances by the cast. Stuart Wilson, particularly stands out among them. So, as I've stated, I think the above commenter made an almost perfect review of the film aside from the perceived importance of the political background at the time of shooting. Politics, like it or not, isn't always at the source.

A Pinteresque landscape of a movie. Not quite upper upper class, but upper middleclass, educated, intelligent people, endlessly talking, and trying to "relate". An opening scene that jarred me: Redgrave describing the "sly" look of a student in a literature class. I responded to it as a average thirteen year old nerd would. "Please don't call on me, AND PLEASE DON'T DISCUSS MY LOOKS IN THIS CLASS, OR IN ANY PUBLIC FORUM. YOU'RE KILLING, AND EMBARRASSING ME, TEACHER!" This is a young Judi Dench, and Ian Holm no longer twentysomething, entering middle age. I wonder if they could forsee the international superstardom that would be theirs in a few years? The Richardson and Redgrave clan turns out yet another great contribution to the British stage in the delightful Jolley, Vanessa's daughter in real(not reel) life, playing, you guessed it Vanessa as a young girl. If you had any doubt why I rate London over Hollywood watch this movie. Even if you think it's boring, and, "they talk with funny accents" you can see that these people are artists and are so good the "art" hardly shows. It's not supposed to.