The Bloomsbury Group & Friends discussion
Out & About
>
Life in Squares [BBC]
date
newest »
newest »
Mod
Joe wrote: "The BBC is to explore the lives and loves of Virginia Woolf and her sister, Vanessa Bell, in a drama about the Bloomsbury set. Life in Squares is billed as an “intimate and emotional” drama spann..."
Any news about when this is on?
Mod
http://www.tvwise.co.uk/2015/07/bbc-t...
Mod
It's got Jack Davenport in it?
*DVR*
Mod
Mod
Mod
I'm wondering if this might Kickstart BG
Mod
I must admit, I work in a bookstore and I don't know a single person there who is into the Bloomsbury Group. It perplexes me. Some of my professors at my university, you and a few people I met through the LSW group on facebook and that's it. My inability to get any of my friends into BG is a major fail - there are so many potential avenues: literature, poetry, art, history, philosophy, sexuality, gender roles, feminism -- even economic theory (via Maynard) and political theory (via Leonard - which is how I got into BG).
Mod
https://bloggingwoolf.wordpress.com/2...
I know! How can there NOT be more folks aware of these incredible people!?
The LSW.. This?
https://bloggingwoolf.wordpress.com/2...
Mod
Mod
"Bloomsbury bed hopper or frigid? How TV's got my aunt Virginia Woolf so wrong: Great-niece reveals the author appeared far more adventurous than she really was."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/art...
Mod
I'm surprised I liked this as much as I did. The summary sketches of the characters and themes are succinct and impressively astute. The cinematography is beautiful. I do not think the sex scenes were gratuitous. They were exactly where they needed to be and said what they needed to say. I'm most amazed at the fact that chemistry is achieved between Vanessa Stephen and Clive Bell - the Bloomsbury relationship I have always been the least interested in. I'm looking forward to the next installment.
Surprise: Guy Henry playing the older Leonard Woolf! I was not expecting that. I feel like all my Christmases have come at once!
(I will probably be back to delete the exclamation points.)
(No I won't!)
Mod
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tv...
It appeared to me that Vanessa & Clive spent more time talking about a single Gainsborough painting than they did making love. But perhaps VN is privy to the other episodes I haven't seen.
But I can't imagine what it must be like to feel as if your famous relatives have been portrayed incorrectly by a disingenuous producer. It must be horrifying...
I agree the first episode is definitely more focused on the relationships rather than the cultural contributions made by the Bloomsbury Group.
Mod
How does the producer condense sexual ferocity ?.. Just like he did /does/will? The Group is defined by many as a early 20th century “Sex in the City” by others ( me included) as a Social Game Changer .. preverbal paradigm shift of society . That “semen stain” on Venessa's dress actually got more mileage then Lewinsky’s.
Oh .,and the Clive -Vanessa marriage deal was a knee jerk reaction by Vanessa IMHO as a bail out from the responsibility of dealing with Virginia and Adrain and escape from the pain of Thoby’s death
Hope this show does good to Roger Fry .. next episode hopefully.
Mod
Mod
Mod
Mod
This series started out clutching rather tenuously to the tracks but it seems to have now jumped the rails...
Everything is too rushed. This should have been a longer mini series. Important events are mentioned as asides. The improbable conversations are too expository and self-aware; they sound like summary statements read off the page of a Bloomsbury expert's critical analysis.
VW's mental illness is downplayed. I'm glad they're showing her as she was most of the time - a functioning human being. But her eccentricity, her "flights", for example, are entirely absent. When she overdoses on veranol, it seems random. When she's lying in bed, or talking about the birds, she doesn't seem ill - just stoically reflective - as if the real VW never went into hysterics or scared the living crap out of nurses and people who loved her.
They threw Roger Fry under the bus in favour of romanticizing sexy shirtless Duncan Grant. Bit of a disservice.
Little contention thusfar with the portrayal of LW (sigh of relief). They even had the hand tremor in there, extra points for that. But I wish they'd show he led a life of meaning of his own. He didn't just exist to be Virginia's nurse. He was a political theorist (amongst many other things) - but there's no mention of it. There's a scene where there's a political conversation at the dinner table to which he contributes nothing. In life, he often did sit quietly but that would have been a perfect scene to show he was, er, a political theorist. I also don't think he would have cried in front of his mother, whom he disdained for being sentimental... but now I'm being nitpicky.
There's quite a lot, stylistically, structurally, I dislike about this episode. But I won't rabbit on further. Nevertheless, I'm excited to see Jack Davenport and Guy Henry in character. I think they're both wonderful actors...
Mod
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/culture...
Mod
"Points have to be made concisely because there is a lot to get through... [When Thoby died] What Virginia actually did was to pretend he was still alive. But that was ghostly fiction, and this show’s central subject is honesty. This is feelingly developed in the small gestures of Vanessa’s unselfconscious bathing and breast-feeding, as much as in her acceptance of open marriage. Virginia, played with panache by Lydia Leonard, wants to say more than she’s allowed. 'Dear God, let me have a fantasy or a joke,' she might at any moment cry out to screenwriter Amanda Coe. But this would be against the wishes of Vanessa, who is keen for her to shut up... Life in Squares gives us, as yet, little sense of why Vanessa might paint in circles, or that Virginia will write novels with purple triangles more fascinating than most ménages à trois."
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015...
"My expertise meant that I could distinguish historical incidents and those that had been invented for dramatic purposes. I did spot anachronisms, faulty dialogue and occasional examples of weak characterisation, as well a baffling mix of settings... But these small jarring details don’t detract from the imaginative power of this series. It successfully gets inside the complicated emotions behind the unorthodox relationships within Bloomsbury, which is an impressive feat."
http://theconversation.com/life-in-sq...
"How the Bloomsberries maintain their lifestyles is another no-go area particularly if it involves legacies or vulgar conventional jobs; money talk is out, and the group’s dependence on servants (who should preferably remain silent if allowed on screen) has to be downplayed to further the impression of a pastoral community of liberated, classless bohemians living for art... Relative prominence (who gets most exposure, who is downgraded to a walk-on role) has little to do with cultural significance: indeed, it’s tempting to see the two things as inversely proportional... Bloomsbury outriders such as Ottoline Morrell and Mark Gertler have also popped up, as themselves or fictionalised. EM Forster, in contrast, has yet to appear even in a cameo, let alone as the subject of a biopic, but of the set has had the strongest posthumous screen career of all, as author of the source novels of Merchant Ivory’s A Room with a View, Maurice and Howards End."
http://www.theguardian.com/books/book...
"A series that is only three hours long cannot possibly hope adequately to tell the stories of so many distinct and complicated human beings and all their various creative contributions, both to each other and to our culture: such concision can only ever result in what amounts to a soap opera. How much better it would have been to focus on one or two characters, or on a particular story... We need proper time with characters, even those based on real people, to begin to care about them... It is hard to know whom a series of this sort is for. Those who are interested in the Bloomsbury Group have a thousand better ways to entertain themselves of a weekday evening... On the other hand, those who have no interest will, I think, be first baffled and then a little bored by this miniseries..."
http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2...
"If you knew nothing about the Bloomsbury group, a specialist subject largely confined to Mastermind, you will have struggled, like me, to find anything interesting or likeable about this cold lot who seemed intent on bedding their next conquest in what should have been called The Sex Lives Of The Over-Indulged."
http://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-r...
"Too often were the cast placed in aimless, jarring scenes that did them no favours. Meanwhile, every camera lens seemed to have been smeared in Vaseline, which was presumably meant to be erotic, but mostly just left me wondering if my contact lenses needed a rinse. Not ideal for a drama about a group of people with clear and piercing minds, no matter how blurred their relationships became."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tv...
Most irritating - and ironic - review is by the New Statesman:
"Why the Bloomsberries still fascinate the very people they would have despised."
http://www.newstatesman.com/2015/07/w...
Leonard Woolf was a socialist, prominent member of the Labour party and not only contributor but acting editor of the New Statesman, but nevermind...
But my favourite, by far:
"Personally, I’d bang any one of them for a half-share in Charleston and a set of those lampshades, but alas those days are gone."
http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-rad...
I did enjoy some of the performances and there are beautiful moments. But I can't say I would recommend this series. At no point did anyone even speak the words: "Hogarth Press". A few nods to culture thrown in haphazardly. I think the way the series panned Roger Fry sums it up. He organized the first exhibition of Manet and the Post-Impressionists - but it's him we can do without. Overall, it's about the relationship drama and the sex. Thank goodness the Bloomsbury Group has given us so much more than that. I'd hoped this series would give a larger audience the opportunity to appreciate this but I'm afraid it fails...
Mod
Bingo!
Mod
Whole heartedly agree
"Thank goodness the Bloomsbury Group has given us so much more than that."
I think they did a fair job on Julian's death and Vanessa's reaction to it.
Duncan's reaction ( or lack of it ?) to Angelica's discovery that he was her father was probably a bullseye . Duncan in real life was somewhat of a weany in regards to facing important personal life changing issues. He and Vanessa had much in common here.
Mod
Thanks :)
I think you have read Angelica Garnett's autiobiography? I haven't but want to.
All being said, I'd still rather sit and watch this of a monday night than 90% of what else is on telly.
Mod
"The familiar complaints touch on class, privilege and cliquishness, though the group was more diverse than this suggests. Often accused of self-indulgence in their private lives, they were in fact very hard working. In addition to writers and artists, the group included the famous economist Maynard Keynes as well as Leonard Woolf, who founded a publishing firm, laid out the blueprint for the League of Nations and advised the Labour Party on international relations. As a group they made a great bid for modernity – and this is one reason why the fascination with Bloomsbury endures, even though this group of friends first came into existence over 100 years ago."
Duncan Grant
http://theconversation.com/life-in-sq...
I am quite fond of this short series , but I do think it would have been better with 3 more episodes, as it was planned.It is interesting to make the whole series evolving around Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell relationship, and about Vanessa and Clive Bell's mariage, but it doesn't leave enough place for others characters. Lytton Strachey and Virginia Woolf are important characters, but Roger Fry doesn't seem to utter a word during the second episode. Leonard Woolf, well played by the two actors, is not enough there.
The third episode was quite lame and not as interesting as the two previous one.
The actors are all very good, especially Phoebe Fox as Vanessa Bell.
Mod
Hope this "Bloomsbury Kickstart" get's momentum . These amazing folks need more daylight
As I've read book about the bloomsbury group and books written by some of them, I knew who was Roger Fry, but I'm pretty sure that a viewer without any knowledge about the group didn't notice this character.He was indeed a man who shouldn't be ignored.
Nevertherless, I was very pleased that Vanessa Bell was the main character of this series, as she is usually overshadowed by her sister in a lot of biographies.
Definitely, it should have been longer. It was a little confusing the way they did jumps in time/flashbacks. And whoever uploaded it to Daily motion.com mislabeled the episodes, so I started watching it in the wrong place, only to realize it should NOT have started with Julian Bell going off to Spain!I did enjoy it, though, esp. as it gave me a bit of background about the Group, prior to my June '17 visit to Charleston House.
Mod
Yep , it was really good. Hope someone steps up and does a fully expressed account of these folks starting from Hyde Park Gate
Mod
Good news, possibly: "Life in Squares" is now available for viewing on Amazon Prime in the U.S.I'm looking forward to seeing it again, as well as my husband being able to get some sort of idea of what the Group was like. Although, he may find it confusing...
Mod
Mostly I was confused by the jumping around in time, and the different actors. At least he'll be able to see Charleston House etc. in a sort of "real way."
Mod
The Bloomsbury Group & Friends
Books mentioned in this topic
Duncan Grant: A Biography (other topics)Lytton Strachey: The New Biography (other topics)
Life in Squares is billed as an “intimate and emotional” drama spanning the first half of the 20th century.
Lydia Leonard and Phoebe Fox play Woolf and Bell in their younger years, as they escape the shackles of their Victorian upbringing and become founder members of the group of writers, artists and thinkers known as the Bloomsbury group.
The three-part BBC Two drama takes its title from the famous quote attributed to Dorothy Parker, that the Bloomsbury group “lived in squares, painted in circles and loved in triangles”.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tv...