Sylvia in the movie is excellent, I think Stoppard and Rebecca Hall did a beautiful work. In the novels, Sylvia comes interesting and complex in the first volume, "Some do not", but then tends to "cross the line" so to speak and becomes clearly deranged and driven only by hatred. It is still a very interesting portrayal of an ill soul, but somehow less multilayered. Also, it becomes more and more difficult to understand why Tietjens should still stick to her and protect her, since he knows exactly that she is driven only by hatred. In the movie it is hatred but love is still there, as well. And RH was outstanding in her performance, so changeable in her moods and way of speaking you could never be sure when she is sincere and when she is acting. For example, I was quite taken in by her pleadings to Christopher in Rouen hotel (just like he was!): only on the second viewing I saw that the "incident" was well planned in advance and yet another way to humiliate her husband. 
Another excellent manierism was her lughter, in the surface derisive and cynical, but bordering on hysterical, a very good expression of her unstable temperament

As for BC looks, as I said, I forgot them about 15 minutes into the film. However, I can understand why Benedict said he would like to push his transformation further: he is still far too much handsome for Tietjens! 

For me, the most touching scene is when she is back from the noisy Christmas party, while he has gone to Yorkshire and for a moment she thinks he is back, so she is rushing to her bedroom calling "Christoper!" only to discover that it is "Hullo Central" waiting for her. If I recall well, there is no such a scene in the novel.  

The scene in the hotel is heart-wrenching. She is SUCH an incredible bitch here and yet Rebecca Hill manages also to slip a trace of what seems a real concern for Christopher. "He looks ill". Also, when she declares that she is a woman who "desperately" wants her husband back and that she would follow him if he as much as gave her a sign, you could almost believe her. 
Yet again, the dramatic potential of this scene comes out far better in the film than in the novel, where it is stated clearly that she just want to torture him.
However, there is also one big difference between novel Tietjens and BC Tietjens: in the novel it is told repeteadly that his face is "expressionless". In the film, it's quite opposite: we can see all his inner emotions and torments clearly reflected on his face. It is amazing how one wince can summarise something the novel needs a lenghty inner monologue to deal with. My favourite is the almost invisible wince in the car (II episode), when Christoper sees Sylvia looking herself in the mirror Drake gave her.

Oh, this is a wonderful scene (it is so exciting that every tiny detail in PE is so important and full of meaning). And in any case I think Macmaster and Edith Duchemin are the best secondary characters in the series, and Graham's & Duff's interpretation is outstanding.
Macmaster is a pitiful little vermin: he ows Tietjens everything: Christopher helped him with his career, gave him money, solved a problem that earned Macmaster the knighthood, run to help him when he was discovered with mrs Duchemin in Scotland (and ruined his own reputation)... and all this scumball does when Tietjens returns from the war is to give him a furtive hand wave through the window! Ugh!
But mrs Duchemin is even worse: I think she is infinitely more hideous than Sylvia, who at least is driven by passion of love-hatred towards her husband. Duchemin is hypocrite, spiteful and heartless "I was absolutely counting on the Germans!" (to kill Tietjens). She doesn't really evolve in the film: I think it more that we (audience) are first taken in by her pseudo-stoical endurance of her mad husband and only gradually discover the shocking truth about her true nature. It is probably the same for Macmaster, only he is too weak to disentangle himself from her influence and so he becomes a vermin, as well.

Hmm... are we two only lovers of Parade's End here on board? 
 

Well, Macmaster is not exactly a malevolent person: far from it. He is ambitious and weak: a very dangerous combination. He is genuinely fond of Tietjens in the beginning and still decent enough to feel ashamed for having achieved his knighthood basically be stealing Tietjens idea. Of course, Tietjens is quite generous about it, but at this point he understands perfectly what a pitiful vermin his friend has become. In the book it is said quite clearly "Tietjens hadn't been able to look at Macmaster's eyes... he had felt ashamed". Not for himself, of course, but for his miserable friend.
In the movie Cumberbatch is still able to look Macmaster in face, but during the conversation on the stairs he conveys beautifully the embarassement he feels. From this point on He doesn't expect anything from Macmaster therefore he is not at least surprised that the best his "friend" can do when Tietjens is back from war, broken and without a penny, would be greet him secretly from behind the curtain.
But the fact that Macmaster is weak doesnt' justify his actions: in the end he becomes a disgraced vermin, nonetheless.

I think the whole Macmaster-Duchemin subplot is also interesting because in a sense it is parallel to Tietjens - Wannop romance. They start, too, as two unhappy lovers "kindred spirits", she attached to a crazy husband and he wanting to rescue her. However, the "poetry" of their romance is a false poetry as becomes clear with time. It seems indeed that Tietjens despise toward poetry "your obese poet-painter talking about it (-love) in language like congealed bacon fat" is proved right!

The scene at the club is heart-breaking! 

Last edited by miriel68 (March 20, 2013 2:32 pm)

I think the parallel is decidedly there: why, both stories even start almost at the same point (Duchemin breakfast). Also, Duchemin-Macmaster plot has a direct impact on Valentine: initially she is very naive and thinks about their relationship as a "romantic love". How very revealing the dialogue between her and Edith, when Edith wants to get rid of a baby
Ms Duchemin: What did you think we were doing? - Comparing our beautiful souls?
Valentine: Well... yes! That is what I thought. And poetry! Oh, Edith! - your prince, your chevalier!
Ms Duchemin: That guttersnipe, shootin off like a tomcat in heat...

The dialogue itself is hilarious and the transformation of Ms Duchemin from etherical poetical "Muse" to a vulgar harpy quite spectacular, however it is also essential, I think for Valentine's growth as a person: she needs to understand better her love for Christopher and pass from platonic infatuation to understanding what does it really mean to truly "love" someone, once you get rid of all sentimental banalities inflicted on us by poets. She wouldn't accept his proposal of being his mistress for one night, otherwise, I think.
There is another, quite interesting scene in the movie (I cannot recall it in the books), which adds something to the Ford's taking on the tension between esthetic/ethic approach to life. (One needs to remember that Ford himself was catholic, so he probably felt this problem quite deeply): the ladies at Macmaster party observing that "... at times like this, one realises that no one has ever, ever captured grief like MIchelangelo in his Pietà". It is a kind of aestethisation of horrors of the war, in direct contrast with what Ford shows us in the 2 and 3 volume of Parade's End.
However, my impression is that he is especially fed up with prerafaelit art - Macmaster loves Rosetti, ms Duchemin has prerafaelits in her drawing rooms and of course Sylvia herself is rather like Belle-Dame-sans-merci!

I must say that when I first watchd PE I was so dazzled by RB performance that I scarcely paid attention to Valentine. She grew on me on second viewing and I must say she is very convincing and conveys her genuine feelings, freshness, honesty and personal courage very well, but nonetheless I think she is a little bit underdevelopped in the film, comparing to Sylvia and Christopher. It is probably due to the fact that it was more difficult to convert narrative material into dramatic one in this case, I suppose. 
One of my qualms is that we don't really learn what are her motives for being the suffragette: the first scene in which she appears is rather comical, or even slapstick-like (two suffragettes jumping and shouting and splashing red paint on Waterhouse) and I feel some more serious background  suffragette couse should have been given: in the book they are explaind in the conversation between Valentine and Christopher, when he understands that she is quite "serious" about the thing, but in the movie Stoppard had to cut so much that it was left out. Also, the fact that Valentine is Christopher's equal intelectually (and a better latinist as he is, as a matter of fact) doesn't register really. In fact, he is fascinated by her, because she is the only person he knows whom he perceveis as his intellectual match (it doesn't do any harm that she is good looking, of course, but that men to you). In the movie the stress is put more of her beeing authentic, sincere, idealist and honest, which makes her a different and may be slightly less interesting character than the bookish Valentine.

London! Lucky you  I haven't been to London for almost two year and I will go nuts if I don't come back soon.

As for Valentine and incest motive: I think it is a bit of nonsense and I am very glad they didn't bring it up in the movie. IMO Ford Madox Ford just lost it. The fact that the people would suspect Valentine being old Tietjens illegitimate daughter is plausible enough: in the world of Parade's End people (safe Tietjens family) do not do things out of sheer altruism: ergo, financial help for Wannop family would give cause to most sordid gossip. However, the incest hypothese is ruled out very clearly, not once but twice: first, in the conversation between Christopher and Mark (it is said that Tietjens family was in France when Valentine was born) and secondly, when it is told that Christopher's father was thinking about marrying Valentine himself. Surely he wouldn't think about marrying his own daughter?????
I really don't understand why FMF comes back to the same question yet again in "The Last Post". But then, TLP is not up to the level of the previous novels...

You are right in any case, they are both - Sylvia and Valentine a bit different in the movie. The difference is that Sylvia is MORE interesting in the movie than in the novel, and Valentine is LESS interesting in the movie.

Yes, RH (but Stoppard as well) is really outstanding. I found myself so taken by her ("there is something glorious about her" hehe) that I had moments I wished she and Christopher would come  together again. However, it also makes Tietjens's code of honour more understandable. In the novel he sometimes (well, increasingly) comes as a kind of masochist, because everybody, himself included, knows exactly that she hates and despises him. There is a beautiful fragment in "No more Parades" when Christopher thinks about his wife:
"He imagined Sylvia, coiled up on a convent bed. . . . Hating . . . Her certainly glorious hair all round her. . . . Hating . . . Slowly and coldly . . . Like the head of a snake when you examined it. . . . Eyes motionless, mouth closed tight. . . . Looking away into the distance and hating"
The fact that he obviously still cares for her (in the movie) makes his behaviour more touching and more human, in a way - it is not just the "parade", is is his inner struggle, as well: he hasn't given up on his wife, in spite of his love for Valentine.

The fallen Tree is indeed taken from TLP, as well as some other details about Tietjens last meeting with Sylvia etc. But TLP is so depressing and I felt kind of cheated, to tell you the truth - I think Christopher didn't deserve to end as a "dejected bulldog" after all his sufferings!