The original "Browning Version", with Michael Redgrave, was note-perfect. This remake suffers in comparison. The main problem is that the Britain which was depicted in the original no longer exists. It was a Britain of sublimated emotions and understatement. The Britain of today - in which this version is set - is a much cruder and more obvious sort of place. Unfortunately the film makers tried to blend the two and it doesn't really work.
One example: the scene where the kids play a prank on the school bully. It wasn't in the original and it adds nothing to this version. It just jerks the viewer unpleasantly into the present when the movie should be trying to keep him in the quiet, more subtle and more interesting atmosphere it had succeeded in creating at other times.
On a positive note, the acting is generally very good, especially by Albert Finney as Crocker-Harris. Even though he is brilliant, he is at times misused. At one point, Crocker-Harris is moved to tears by the gift from Taplow, his most enthusiastic student, and the only one it seems who will miss him when he leaves the school. Finney's acting is fine. He plays the emotion well. The trouble is that the viewer is concentrating on evaluating just how well Finney is performing, rather than actually feeling the emotion. The correct way to direct this would have been to intimate briefly that Crocker-Harris is overcome by emotion but then have him turn away and perhaps have the camera pull back, is if it was embarrassed to be a witness to such a thing. In our imaginations we would have created the scene and would not have been kept emotionally distant from it.
This film could have been a masterpiece if all the discordant, modern elements had been discarded and it had concentrated on presenting its theme in a unified, coherent voice.
One example: the scene where the kids play a prank on the school bully. It wasn't in the original and it adds nothing to this version. It just jerks the viewer unpleasantly into the present when the movie should be trying to keep him in the quiet, more subtle and more interesting atmosphere it had succeeded in creating at other times.
On a positive note, the acting is generally very good, especially by Albert Finney as Crocker-Harris. Even though he is brilliant, he is at times misused. At one point, Crocker-Harris is moved to tears by the gift from Taplow, his most enthusiastic student, and the only one it seems who will miss him when he leaves the school. Finney's acting is fine. He plays the emotion well. The trouble is that the viewer is concentrating on evaluating just how well Finney is performing, rather than actually feeling the emotion. The correct way to direct this would have been to intimate briefly that Crocker-Harris is overcome by emotion but then have him turn away and perhaps have the camera pull back, is if it was embarrassed to be a witness to such a thing. In our imaginations we would have created the scene and would not have been kept emotionally distant from it.
This film could have been a masterpiece if all the discordant, modern elements had been discarded and it had concentrated on presenting its theme in a unified, coherent voice.