Where Angels Fear to Tread Movie Review
Where Angels Fear to Tread was E. M. Forster's first novel and it is filled with all the ambitious flaws of a 26-year-old writer who wants to say something important but doesn't quite know how to say it yet. His subsequent novels, A Room with a View, Maurice, and A Passage to India, reflected Forster's greater understanding of human nature, but when he wrote Angels, he was still struggling to understand people. Charles Sturridge's movie, sticking reverently to the text as it does, is therefore just as flawed as its original source material. Angels attempts to show how silly the British are to pre-judge the Italian culture, so we get 112 minutes of assorted twits thinking like fools and behaving like beasts. The wonderful Helen Mirren appears, all too briefly, as a rich widow who marries a broke Italian (Giovanni Guidelli). Judy Davis and Rupert Graves play Mirren's in-laws, who dash off to Italy to bring Mirren's Italian baby back to England, whether the father likes it or not. Helena Bonham Carter is on hand as a much-interested bystander and is the voice of reason in the film. A lot of melodramatic stuff happens in the film and there are plenty of discussions where people explain themselves and the world around them. 1905 readers probably read Where Angels Fear to Tread and hoped for better things from its talented young author. But today's Forster buffs and filmmakers seem to regard every Forster work, even this uneven effort, as a masterpiece. Where Angels Fear to Tread will not play well on video, as many of the sequences are darkly lit and hard to see. The soundtrack is also muddy, and some of Forster's elegant language is difficult to hear. That said, the cast, especially Davis and Mirren, is splendid, and you're unlikely to see a more sympathetic portrait of a twit than the one played by Rupert Graves.
1991 (PG) 112m/C GB Rupert Graves, Helena Bonham Carter, Judy Davis, Helen Mirren, Giovanni Guidelli, Barbara Jefford, Thomas Wheatley, Sophie Kullman; D: Charles Sturridge; W: Charles Sturridge, Tim Sullivan, Derek Granger; C: Michael Coulter; M: Rachel Portman. VHS, LV, Closed Caption