Oscar and Lucinda
Australian director Gillian Armstrong directed this Laura Jones adaptation of Peter Carey's 1988 Booker Prize-winning novel. In a lengthy flashback, Oscar Hopkins' great grandson (Geoffrey Rush) narrates the family history that led to his birth. On an Australian farm, Lucinda Leplastrier was tutored by her intelligent mother, a woman who took part in the early feminist movement. Oscar's lonely boyhood in rural England was under the watchful eye of his preacher father. At Oxford to train as a minister, the adult Oscar (Ralph Fiennes) feels he doesn't fit in and develops a passion for gambling, giving his winnings away to the poor. Oscar and Lucinda (Cate Blanchett) meet aboard a ship; he's off to the outback to work as a missionary, and she's returning from London after buying equipment for her glass factory. As mutual misfits, they have an instant attraction and quickly grow close, developing a romantic relationship based on trust. However, the Rev. Dennis Hasset (Ciarán Hinds) and Lucinda are friends, sharing an interest in glass. Convinced they are in love, Oscar embarks on an unusual and difficult task, building a glass church for the reverend, an ambitious project to attempt in the remote wilderness. more..
Director: Gillian Armstrong
Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Cate Blanchett, Ciaran Hinds, Tom Wilkinson,Richard Roxburgh
It exchanges the narrative fluidity of the page for visual composition of such strong beauty that the slowness of the storytelling becomes its own eccentric strength.
Here there is a dry wit, generated between the well-balanced performances of Fiennes and Blanchett, who seem quietly delighted to be playing two such rich characters.
Richly imagined and resolutely unpredictable, this dark and profoundly optimistic paean to passion -- for glass, for horses, for the thrill of the moment after a coin is flipped but before it falls -- is held together by Gillian Armstrong's solid direction and by strong, if occasionally strident, performances from Fiennes and newcomer Blanchett.
The film version is gorgeous to look at and contains amusing performances from Ralph Fiennes and Cate Blanchett in the title roles. But it fails to get inside the minds of gamblers as Peter Carey so admirably did in his Booker Prize-winning novel.
But for an epic set up to trace two life stories, there's a lack of dramatic focus, and the leads fail to evince any particular chemistry as friends who come to have a deeper emotional connection.
Best Costume Design
Academy Awards (1998)
Best Achievement in Cinematography
Australian Film Institute (1998)
Best Achievement in Dialogue Editing for a Feature Film
Australian Screen Sound Guild (1998)
Most Promising Actress
Chicago Film Critics Association Awards (1998)
Best Cinematography
Film Critics Circle of Australia Awards (1999)
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