DVD review: "Any Human Heart"

Going into the Masterpiece Classic presentation of "Any Human Heart" on DVD, I had conflicting thoughts.

First up was that though I haven't read the book its based on by William Boyd, he is one of my favorite writers, with his last two thrillers, "Restless" and "Ordinary Thunderstorms," being two of the genre's best. And second, though as a Southerner I probably shouldn't admit this so regularly, I really can't much at all stand "Forrest Gump," so the story structure of "Any Human Heart," one man's life through most of the 20th century in which he rubs elbows with many famous people, gave me pause.

Thankfully, Boyd's story really borrows only that basic outline from "Gump," but with less overbearing sentimentality and a lot more, sometimes very dark, wit. Boyd's novel and the four-part BBC series presented here tell the story of "writer" Logan Mountstuart, with the quotation marks in place because though he accomplished and experienced many things in his long life, he only managed to write two novels.

Though the four-and-a-half-hour long series is a bit bloated by thoroughly unnecessary fantasy sequences that pop up throughout starring Mountstuart as a child, he's for the most part played by three very good English actors, Sam Claflin as the college-age Mountstuart, Matthew MacFadyen (who the ladies may remember from the version of "Pride & Prejudice" also starring Keira Knightley) as him in middle age, and the great Jim Broadbent as Mountstuart the elder.

Throughout Mountstuart's saga, however, it's the women he loved and lost that play the most important parts. As the story opens, Broadbent's Mountstuart, clearly in fading health, is putting back together the pieces of his life using his memories of the women who had made it memorable. Standing out in a large ensemble are the radiant Hayley Atwell as Freya, the real love of his life, Kim Cattrall as Gloria, who gives the series much of its soul, and an unrecognizable but very funny Gillian Anderson as the Duchess of Windsor, Wallis Simpson.

Anderson and co-conspirator Tom Hollander as the duke bring a comic edge to the story as Mountstuart, enlisted as a "spy" during World War II, mostly spends his time tracking down what happened to the former king after the story told in "The King's Speech," at least as Boyd imagines it. Often dark humor thankfully runs throughout "Any Human Heart," as when later in life Mountstuart, simply in search of cheap health care, ends up brushing up against Germany's Baader Meinhof gang and later, in his last romantic conquest, gets involved with a French woman more than a little confused about her ancestry.

But the beauty of "Any Human Heart" often comes not from these grand adventures (he also manages to meet Ernest Hemingway and Ian Fleming, who recruits him into the spying ranks), but in the failures that make for a well-rounded life. As Mountstuart manages to crap out on two marriages he was never terribly interested in and then get involved with his dead son's 16-year-old girlfriend (yes, he is more than a bit of a cad), it becomes harder and harder to cheer for him, but Macfadyen's layered performance makes you appreciate the man in whole, many warts and all.

In the end, though, it's Broadbent who both gives the story its arc and brings it home with tenderness, particularly in his scenes with Cattrall, ultimately making this well worth checking out when it hits DVD next Tuesday, April 5 (yes, I'm writing this a bit early because it doubles as a newspaper column that comes out on Friday.)

P.S.: One final note about editing: Though I didn't manage to catch this when it aired on PBS, I've heard that it was rather poorly edited, perhaps to remove some of the racier scenes that make Mountstuart's life so enjoyable, but this is the complete BBC version, so there's no need to worry about that.

Robert Rodriguez wants to wrack your nerves

Although he can make some seriously fun movies, Robert Rodriguez is also just a maddeningly uneven director in my book.

After making the purely entertaining "El Mariachi" and "Spy Kids" he felt the need to follow each flick up with a pair of thoroughly unnecessary and just increasingly bad sequels. "Desperado" - really just a useless continuation of "El Mariachi" - was just particularly irritating.

He also, however, channelled the spirit of Frank Miller's work perfectly with "Sin City" and made the easily more disgusting but still just insanely good half of "Grindhouse" with "Planet Terror" (I even found "The Faculty," certainly a lesser title in his filmography, to just be a lot of fun.) And now, after what seems like a very long break from working on movies of any kind, he's getting back in gear with something that could be as entertaining as any of those.

He will write and direct the "futuristic thriller" "Nervewrackers," and since the flick already has a release date of April 16, 2010, it seems very likely he will actually follow through on this one. Set in 2085, the story (according to Variety) centers on "a character named Joe Tezca who is part of an elite unit dispatched to quell a crime wave in a theoretically perfect future society."

Even if that does seem like a rather blatant ripoff of "Blade Runner," I suppose there are worse sources of inspiration, so for now I can only say welcome back, Mr. Rodriguez.

What's up with Ang Lee

I recently got around to watching Mr. Lee's "Lust/Caution" on DVD, and I have to say it made a surprisingly entertaining little spy flick. And he's just wrapped "Taking Woodstock," which as the title implies is a biopic of sorts of the life of Elliot Tiber, who was instrumental in the creation of the titular hippie fest.

That flick will be released in August by Focus Features, and Mr. Lee has now set his sights firmly on "The Life of Pi," which already has a script penned by "Amelie" director Jean Pierre Jeunet (who was originally slated to direct this too.)

I have to admit that the novel by Yann Martel, which won the Booker Prize and plenty of other acclaim, just left me a little cold, but I do think it has a lot of potential for an at least visually appealing film in these capable hands. The odd coming-of-age tale tells the story of Piscine "Pi" Molitor Patel, an Indian youth who survives the sinking of a freighter and ends up sharing a life boat with a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan and a Bengal tiger.

Plenty of people have fallen in love with the novel by Martel, so don't let my misgivings keep you away from this one.

Remember Agnieszka Holland?

I had almost forgotten all about the Polish director of "Europa Europa" and one of my favorite children's flicks, "The Secret Garden" (and - rather amazingly - three episodes of "The Wire" too), but this morning her name came up again on the French film site Cinempire, a daily stop for me.

It seems Holland is getting back in the game in a big way with an upcoming biopic about Polish super spy Krystyna Skarbek, also famous as Ian Fleming's mistress and allegedly the inspiration for the character of Vesper Lynd.

Skarbek, who took the nom de guerre Christine Granville, became a spy for the British and was celebrated for her sabotage efforts in Nazi-occupied Poland and France during World War II.

Interestingly enough, The Daily Mail reports that Eva Green, Vesper Lynd herself, is in the running for the lead role in this flick, which will be rather oddly titled "Christine: War My Love" and should start shooting in June.

Nothing but cool there, but now I have to unfortunately get ready for work. Sometime tomorrow or Friday, feel free to come back for a video presentation about the Oscars I'm cooking up with fellow Telegraph blogger Phillip Ramati (a k a The TV Guy). We pretty much agree about all the categories this year, but hopefully it will still be a bit of fun to watch (I'm even getting a hair cut for the occasion, somewhat of a rarity for me.)

And, even though it wasn't from an episode directed by Holland, I'll leave you with one of my favorite clips from "The Wire," in which Stringer Bell learns about and then imparts to his disciples the principles of macroeconomics. Peace out.