Ohhhh!At last,Julia has found her way!At last she's Marple,a central character sleuthing in a very creepy thriller as a sharp bloodhound and not a sensible and sensitive schoolmarm overwhelmed by every other character and finding her path to center stage only when she arrives for sheer chance to a very convoluted solution.Here Marple,oyez,oyez,really investigates ,and she not simply hears blandly what other people have to say.Here you can see the light of understanding shining in her eyes when she finds the truth in Gina 's reflection in the mirror.Here you can watch her when she reenact a very astute murder plot before a stunned Alex Jennings. The movie is simply perfect.It's faithful,but it has its own personal way to be it so,as it demonstrates the very thrilling version of Edgar Lawson's attack to Lewis,very different from any other version,but very faithful all the same.Sarah Smart is the better Mildred ever seen ,and simply shines in her role.Emma Malin is a very great and subtly fascinating Gina.Elliot Cowan is a Brilliant Brit Brando .Nigel Terry is a particularly menacing Gulbrandsen.Penelope Wilton wipes away even Simmons and Davis as the Only Carrie Louise,and Brian Cox is a very different Serrocold,but formidable in his own way:Mills was such a gent,Ackland was a benign Titan completely dominating his candid wife.Cox instead is a fumbling, bumbling husband , totally confused by the events and desperately trying to keep himself in stride with his stronger and overwhelming Lady Bountiful.A very good and personal interpretation, very different from the Ackland's domineering Serrocold,but very acceptable all the same. And the music...at last Dominik Scherrer is returned himself.The desire to toning down background music ,answering to misguided requests of some fans,had reduced his scores to miserable shadows of the previous seasons.The music must not be obtrusive,of course,but it was a mixage problem ,a technical glitch not an artistical one.If you tone down too much Music and its importance and you destroy its own personal participation to the scene ,you reduce it only to Muzak,and it lose its own meaning.Here,Scherrer's score is again essential to build up a very creepy atmosphere in the queer and eery old Stonygates,helping the director to create thrills and threats,as in the marvelous beginning or again in the wonderful Dress Rehearsal,the best directed version of the crucial scene of the novel :people complaining against background scores simply don't remember how it was important the very domineering background score in the old Hickson series and how the very bland McKeown's scores reduced the impacts of a few of the last Suchet 's episodes (the new composer has instead found his own way with his many variations on the old Gunning's theme,and Three Act Tragedy shines at last the better score after the Gunning Era). So far,Mirrors is the best McKenzie episode.We can only hope that its model will be followed again by the series,returning it to the glorious, thrilling merriment of McEwan's age.But Crack'd let us to hope that it's really happening again ,and that Great Julia will be remembered ,at last, as a Great Jane!
Review of They Do It with Mirrors
