# Wings of the Dove, The (1997)

### reviewed by
Charles Henderson

Along comes another adaptation of a great, Henry James novel, the second this fall, and as is the case of Washington Square which preceded it, we could endlessly debate the virtues of the movie, compared to those of the book. One might as well compare a photograph of Pablo Picasso, to a Picasso painting. Aside from the fact that both bear some relationship to the artist, there's not much more than the name, Picasso, to connect the photograph and the painting. The same applies to The Wings of the Dove. Don't expect a movie like this one to equate with the book. The Wings of the Dove is one of the greatest novels of a writer whom many believe is one of the very best American writers, perhaps the best novelist this country has ever produced. In his writings Henry James explored such issues as the conflict between cultures European and American, but as much as anything else his novels are about character. And his nuanced descriptions of character, together with the dialogue and narrative out of which his stories are built, constitute the essence of his work. His novels exist in the form of text; yet in the reading of the text pictures emerge, and are seen against the screen of the imagination which one brings to the reading.

With movies things are very, very different. The pictures predominate. The director (Iain Softley) and the cinematographer (Eduardo Serra) provide the visual images out of which flow a sense of place and story. And it's up to the actors by the tone and tenor of their voices, body language, and other visual cues, as much as through lines of dialogue, to suggest what is happening within. All of this is supported, especially in period movies like this one by costumes and sets that convey mood as well as a sense of time and place. This film is highly visual....from the lively street scenes of turn-of the-century London to the luscious interiors of English town houses and Italian canal houses and churches. Of course, visual images can have symbolic depth and power, just as words do, but they function on a different wave length altogether. For example, in one transition, a rather scary looking medical instrument in an operating room dissolves into a soccer ball that seems to descend from the heavens into the midst of a soccer game. In another scene the central characters, riding in gondolas illuminated by the warm light of oil lanterns, drift off into the distance, and into the darkness of a Venice canal. And in visual gestures such as these, the contrast between life and death, light and darkness reinforce what is happening within the lives of the novel's central characters.

Against this visually rich backdrop, the novel's three central characters play their parts: Kate Croy (Helena Bohnam Carter), the protagonist, who is torn between love of journalist Merton Densher (Linus Roache) and her need for social and financial security; the young, zestful and idealistic American heiress, Millie Theale (Alison Elliott) who is fighting for life in the midst of death. These three form a classic triangle, a configuration of love and hate, commitment and betrayal, friendship and deceit in which we see all that is both virtuous and sordid in human relationships combine and collide. In this complicated and perplexing set of relationships there is some evidence of what made Henry James a great novelist. James had a profound sensitivity for the moral complexity of human relationships; he understood that one cannot divide the human family neatly into tribes, with villains on the one side and heroes on the other. He knew that both good and evil can and do reside within a single life, and that for us all life is a struggle of life against death and darkness against the light.

I would recommend this movie for three reasons. First, the scenes of London and Venice are quite well done. You'll want to visit Venice soon after seeing this movie. Second, the actors all do a very credible job, with only a modest quantity of dialogue, suggesting and evoking some of the more complicated themes of the novel. And finally, this movie will give you a number of reasons to ponder your own motives and examine your own relationships with what may be an embarrassing recognition of how closely the desire for friendship and love can be related to the need for power. Four flames.

    Charles Henderson

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