Emily Watson (Breaking the Waves, Hillary and Jackie) stars in this powerful, emotional story about the choice between love and loyalty. Based on George Eliot’s novel, The Mill on the Floss. As a child, Maggie Tulliver adores her brother Tom and desperately seeks his love and approval–but never receives it. While Tom grows up to be the kind of person the world approves of: dutiful and proud, Maggie becomes the kind of person the world judges harshly. A woman ahead of her time, brimming with intelligence and imagination, Maggie is difficult for her brother and the rest of her family to understand.Through her craving for intellectual stimulation, Maggie finds a kindred spirit in her childhood friend Philip Wakem. Though Philip feeds her mind, and eventually falls in love with her, Maggie finds her true passion is for her cousin Lucy’s fiancee. Now she is faced with a choice: follow her heart or her sense of duty.
A BBC/WGBH production for Masterpiece Theatre, the film was first shown at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival.
It’s her relationship with Philip that is the strongest metaphor for Maggie’s life and choices. Played with depth and grace by The Tudors’ James Frain, Philip is disabled with a hunchback, yet his intellect fires on every cylinder, and from their first meeting, Philip and Maggie form a deep bond. Philip’s physical disability mirrors Maggie’s own–of simply having been born in the body of a woman; each is limited by nothing but others’ perceptions. Watson’s Maggie, trembling with rage, realizes this and struggles daily, hourly, to make peace with the limitations imposed upon her. The film was shot in the sumptuous English countryside, and the beautiful expanses seem unchanged from Eliot’s day. And Watson, fairly glowing with inner radiance, shines against even the loveliest backdrop. –A.T. Hurley
Shown on PBS Masterpiece Theatre.