Sunday (March 27) night, we got to see the first two hours of the new HBO’s five hour miniseries, Mildred Pierce. Rather than writing out paragraphs of detailed review, which I will reserve for after the entire run is complete in three weeks, I want to list ten things, both good and bad, of note within the first two hours, in no particular order. Please feel free to add to the list if you think I missed something important, or debate why something is included.
1. Kate Winslet, who plays the title character, will win the Emmy. She just will, sorry, no contest. She is doing a fantastic job in a miniseries that is attracting attention and praise. There will be other actresses as good this year, but you would be hard pressed to find one better, and she will win.
2. I thought Mildred was supposed to be unlikable. Why hasn’t she been unlikable yet? Am I under a false impression? She has been shown with pluck and determinating, struggling to support her family, with only a trace of enabling her bratty daughter. Speaking of…
3. Young Veda (Morgan Turner) and the older Veda that will be showing up later (Evan Rachel Wood) are a perfectly cast pair. While Wood has not yet made an appearance, just thinking back to her run on True Blood last year will point to the fact that people are about to be blown away by just how similar the two are in looks and mannerisms. PERFECT!
4. Why is Melissa Leo talking in that annoying voice as Lucy? She just won an Oscar, and she already blew away HBO audiences with her fantastic turn in Treme. All she has been on MP is annoying.
5. Other than cheating on his wife, Bert (Brian F. O’Byrne) seems to be the perfect father, and he’s become a fine friend to Mildred post-split. I am having trouble reconciling those two different aspects. Which is kind of neat, because life is complicated, and this way he’s presented as a full man, rather than a caricature.
Source: Examiner.com
There was so much great filmmaking in Sunday’s Mildred Pierce finale that I could spend all morning appreciating it, but for illustration’s sake, I’ll let one example suffice: the scene where Mildred (Kate Winslet) and Bert (Bryan O’Byrne) eat at the new seaside restaurant and hear the voice of Veda (now an opera singer and played by Evan Rachel Wood) coming through the radio. Director Todd Haynes, his cinematographer Ed Lachman, and the actors are at peak strength. I love the shot over Mildred and Bert’s shoulders of the radio broadcasting the music (it has talismanic power), and the close-up of Mildred staring at the radio and listening to it, half the frame blocked out by the back of the radio. I love the long tracking shot of the stunned Mildred walking to the seaside. Most of all I love that final profile shot of Mildred staring out at the sea at night, after which the camera tracks right. The screen fills up with blackness that expresses the void Veda’s absence created in her mother; there’s also a concurrent sense that Mildred’s emotions are casting themselves out into the blackness, or onto the ocean, in a kind of cosmic reaching-out.
