I was taken reluctantly to the Toronto screening of "Pandaemonium" expecting to see an old time movie about boring dead poets. Instead it is the most imaginative Brit film I've seen for years. Temple has used the difficult relationship between Wordsworth and Coleridge to give us quite stunning insights into creativity and addiction as well as friendship and love. The film has humanity and great beauty combined with a surging narrative that will enthrall both young and old as well as opening up a whole new world for them. I hated poetry at High School and yet I rushed to the bookstore for the products of Coleridge's fractured genius. The performances in all the main roles by four young stars of British Cinema could attract awards: Linus Roach as Coleridge, John Hannah as Wordsworth, Samantha Morton as Sara Coleridge and most surprising Emily Woof (late of the Full Monty) as the gifted but unstable Dorothy, sister of Wordsworth. In a key scene of the film Temple depicts with great flashes of humour all the back-stabbing, envy and bitchiness of an awards ceremony, just like the ones we know and love. "Pandaemonium" will be shown time and time again for many years to come, it begins a new genre of costume drama where the social and moral issues of the past are made vividly relevant to our present time.
Review of Pandaemonium
