Salon.com > Parade's End

Rebecca Hall: “I thought it was brilliant to play a scene holding a douche’”

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 21:00:00 +0000

"Parade's End," HBO's five-part costume drama makes "Downton Abbey" feel like a Cliffs Notes take on WWI-era England. Based on Ford Madox Ford four-novel series and adapted by Tom Stoppard, the dense, opaque, high-minded mini-series follows Christopher Tietjens (everyone's favorite Sherlock, Benedict Cumberbatch), a good man living by an increasingly outdated code of chivalry, as he navigates uppercrust society, the war, and, especially, his toxic, bitchy wife Sylvia, played by Rebecca Hall. Despite all her period-perfect costumes, Sylvia is a thoroughly modern creation, an ancestor to all the "unlikable" women so en vogue on television right now, psychologically deep and disturbed, a scene-stealing, scenery-chewing monster who tests, but occasionally inspires, the audience's sympathy. (Compared to Sylvia, "Downton's" imperious Lady Mary is a total teddy bear.) Hall's performance is one of the reasons to watch and rewatch "Parade's End," despite the difficulty of the material: As Hall points out in the following interview, "Parade's End" is not the sort of television you can watch half-paying attention. Hall, an accomplished Shakespearean actress, co-starred in Woody Allen's "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" and Ben Affleck's "The Town." She'll soon be appearing in "Iron Man 3." She spoke with me about the mini-series, her love of Bette Davis, the importance of unlikable female characters, and douchebags (the object — not the personality type).

“Parade’s End”: So admirable, yet so unlovable

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 16:03:00 +0000

The HBO-by-way-of-the-BBC, five-hour miniseries “Parade’s End” began last night and continues through Thursday. Based on the four-book series by Ford Madox Ford — though, the fourth is largely ignored here — and adapted by Tom Stoppard, “Parade’s End” is a period drama set before and during WWI that is much more demanding than most period pieces (or than "Downton Abbey" anyway). It jumps around in time, into and out of dense conversations, between people with complex psychologies. Should your attention waver, you will likely be at a loss; though, should your attention never falter, you may be at a loss too. Like it’s protagonist, “Parade’s End” is more admirable than lovable.

Benedict Cumberbatch stars as Christopher Tietjens, a hero and a dinosaur, a virtuous and honorable man who hews to a code of gentlemanly chivalry, who slavishly observes the best practices of a proper upper-class English behavior just as the World War is annihilating and outmoding this behavior, often making Tietjens indistinguishable from a fool. He refuses to divorce his monstrous wife, Sylvia (Rebecca Hall), who has made him a cuckold and the father of a child who may not be his, because, “Only a blackguard would submit his wife to that.”

“Downton Abbey” for grown-ups

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 20:00:00 +0000

The popularity of "Downton Abbey," the British stately-home soap, has set some of the series' more bookish fans on a quest for Edwardian literature. Besides providing Maggie Smith with the opportunity to play a zinger-delivery system known as the Dowager Countess Violet Crawley, "Downton Abbey," in its more serious moments (which are admittedly few), examines a way of life on the cusp of profound change. Even if we're not living in a Jacobethan castle, we can sympathize with just how unsettled all those characters feel.

In a similar, if more elevated, vein, a BBC dramatization of the four Ford Madox Ford novels collectively known as "Parade's End" will arrive on American television at the end of the month. (HBO will air the miniseries beginning on Feb. 26.) The screenplay is by Tom Stoppard, and Benedict Cumberbatch, of "Sherlock" fame, stars. "Downton" comparisons will abound, though some viewers will be disappointed to find "Parade's End" lacks a mansion and wisecracking old ladies -- not to mention the complete absence of attention paid to the servant class.