I enjoyed the acting and felt the actors did an excellent job in roles that were written for them to illustrate an aspect of the story's theme.
The main theme was to illustrate how provincial, snobbish, and useless rich Bostonians were in the early 1900s. Okay... how is that relevant to me almost 100 years later? When the movie was over I thought, "Who cares?"
Other story aspects are dated. For example, the poet Emerson. He was used as an example how Bostonian attitudes had calcified. He was treated with reverence by Bostonians and considered a rebel by a non-Bostonian. That much I got as the movie said as much, but not being familiar with Emerson's history, this didn't resonate with me though I think the story expected me to know more about Emerson. The movie did not encourage me to learn more about Emerson.
Another example of how dated this movie is in its mention of Freud. Freud's theories today are generally discredited and ignored and the movie treats them, and his mention of s-e-x, as titillating and important. But remember the movie probably came out before the Kinsey Report.
The main theme was to illustrate how provincial, snobbish, and useless rich Bostonians were in the early 1900s. Okay... how is that relevant to me almost 100 years later? When the movie was over I thought, "Who cares?"
Other story aspects are dated. For example, the poet Emerson. He was used as an example how Bostonian attitudes had calcified. He was treated with reverence by Bostonians and considered a rebel by a non-Bostonian. That much I got as the movie said as much, but not being familiar with Emerson's history, this didn't resonate with me though I think the story expected me to know more about Emerson. The movie did not encourage me to learn more about Emerson.
Another example of how dated this movie is in its mention of Freud. Freud's theories today are generally discredited and ignored and the movie treats them, and his mention of s-e-x, as titillating and important. But remember the movie probably came out before the Kinsey Report.