Washington Square (1997)
Jennifer Jason Lee and Ben
Chaplin in Washington Square
This film adaptation of the Henry James novel on which it was based seems to capture its essence completely. The story concerns Catherine Sloper (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a 19th-century heiress whose father, Dr. Austin Sloper (Albert Finney), disapproves of the man she loves, Morris Townsend (Ben Chaplin). In a twisty plot, questions are raised about both her father's and her suitor's motives, and Catherine must untangle the connections between love and money. This provides fodder for Henry James' critiques of the shallowness and sexism of his society. Some find James' work stiff, self-important, and a bit dull, while others see him as the most astute social critic of his time, so your enjoyment of this film may be a matter of taste. But it's definitely a period piece done right, which is to say that it fully captures its era, and never stoops to anachronisms that would interrupt the viewer's sense of an older, crueler world.
- Cast: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Albert Finney, Maggie Smith, Ben Chaplin, Judith Ivey
- Director: Agnieszka Holland
- Running time: 115 minutes
- Speaker: University of Wisconsin-Madison Emeritus Professor of English, Joe Wiesenfarth
- When and where: the auditorium of the Wisconsin Historical
Society, 816 State Street, Madison, at 1:30 p.m. Sunday,
May 6, 2007.
Admission
to all the screenings is free to the public on a first-come,
first-serve basis.
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