Throughout the '80s and '90s, producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory were probably the foremost purveyors of highbrow cinema, often adapted from classic novels. One such example is "The Bostonians", from a Henry James novel. I've never read the novel - and almost certainly never will, given how long it takes me to get through books - but the movie is as solid as we would expect. It sounds as though Henry James treated his topics with subtlety, which would explain the depiction of what would've otherwise been a taboo topic in the 1800s.

Basically, the combination of the scenery, costumes, music and setting make this the sort of period piece that could only come from Merchant and Ivory. And because I can't resist, I gotta note the cast: Christopher Reeve, Vanessa Redgrave, Jessica Tandy, Nancy Marchand, Linda Hunt and Wallace Shawn.* In other words, it stars Superman, Julia, Miss Daisy, Livia Soprano, the cameraman during the Indonesian coup, and Vizzini/Rex/Young Sheldon's professor/the man who had dinner with Andre.

*Vanessa Redgrave later co-starred in an adaptation of Wallace Shawn's politically charged play "The Fever", co-starring Michael Moore and Angelina Jolie.

The Bostonians on the whole is not among the best Merchant-Ivory films, like A Room with a View, Howard's End and especially The Remains of the Day, nor is it anywhere near The Innocents, The Wings of the Dove and particularly The Heiress as among the best Henry James adaptations. However, while it has its problems it is not a bad film and does laudably adapting a difficult work (even for an author that is notoriously difficult to adapt like James).

Are there flaws here? Yes, there are. The changed ending is far too melodramatic and clumsily written as a (possible) attempt to make it accessible to modern audiences (maybe?),undermining any intellectual sensibility that the story or James beforehand show. While Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's screenplay fares very credibly mostly it doesn't come off completely successfully, the savage humour of the book is very toned down (in contrast to the somewhat lack of subtlety, pretty overt actually, in the writing of the Olive and Verena relationship, loved the tension between the two though) and sometimes absent which gives the film a bland feel sometimes, the characters are still very interesting and complex but lack the philosophical depth of the book and that final speech is so cornball and misplaced.

Merchant-Ivory films always did have deliberate pacing, but more than made up for it with slightly more involving drama and characterisation and more consistent script-writing than seen here, sometimes The Bostonians moved along at a snail's pace which made the blander, less involving dramatically sections almost interminable. And despite being devilishly handsome and with the right amount of virile masculinity Christopher Reeve seemed completely out of his depth as Ransom, throughout he is stiff and although his character is unlikeable in the first place there is very little in Reeve's performance that makes it obvious what Olive and Verena see in him.

However, there is much to admire as well. As always with a Merchant-Ivory film it is incredibly well-made, with truly luxuriant cinematography, exquisite settings and scenery and some of the most vivid costume design personally seen from a film recently. There is a beautiful music score as well that couldn't have fitted more ideally, and appropriately restrained direction from James Ivory, and while there were a few misgivings with the script Jhabvala actually adapts it very credibly. It's a very thought-provoking, elegantly written and literate script that has a good deal of emotional impact, it is not easy condensing James' very dense, wordy and actions-occurring-inside-characters'-heads prose to something cohesive for film but Jhabvala manages it with grace and intelligence on the most part. Again, pacing could have been tighter but the story is still very poignant and has a good degree of tension and emotion.

Best of all is how beautifully played it is by a very good cast, apart from Reeve. Madeleine Potter does lack allure for Verena, but plays with gentle winsomeness, intelligence and sweet charm. In the supporting roles, Linda Hunt is dependably very good, Jessica Tandy is moving in her performance and (in particular) Nancy Marchand's verbal cat-and-mouse-game helps give the film some of its tension. Along with the cinematography and costumes, one of The Bostonians' best aspects is the towering performance of Vanessa Redgrave, Olive is more sympathetically written here and Redgrave brings a real intensity and affecting dignity to the role which makes for compulsive viewing.

All in all, much to admire but also could have been better. 6/10 Bethany Cox

Poor Madeleine Potter. She's a faith healer's daughter in 1875 Boston, a speaker for the woman's movement, and everybody wants a piece of her. Her father, Wesley Addy, puts her on display at meetings and rakes in the shekels. Vanessa Redgrave, ardent feminist avant la lettre, wants to use her as a poster girl and also, maybe, bestow on her in muted form some of the love that dare not speak its name. The manly, mustachioed Christopher Reeve wants her for his own and would like to run away with her and turn her into a much-loved icon of delicate femininity who has nothing to say.

I had the advantage of never having read the novel so I can only comment on the raw film. It's a typical Merchant-Ivory movie -- tasteful, lavish, accurate to the period, and marvelously photographed. Some of the images at the Massachusetts beach are Winslow Homerish.

The plot is really too complicated and too subtle to describe in detail. It boils down to whether Madeleine Potter wants to represent a social cause or become a Southerner's housewife. It sounds worse than it is. The viewer is tempted to jump in with both feet because sexism is currently a social issue. That would turn Reeve into the domineering villain and Redgrave into a paragon of virtue.

I saw it less as a question of right and wrong than a clash of the two most prominent cultures on which the country was founded. The intolerant, profoundly religious, fiercely democratic New England Yankees and the aristocratic, gentile, highly stratified, caste-ridden, proud society of Southern planters. We've been fighting this same civil war since the Puritans landed in the Bay Colony and the cavaliers settled in Virginia.

Of course it's not THAT simple. Nothing is really simple. Reeve evidently loves Potter to distraction. Yet he's pushy too. Pushy even by the standards of today. He's a Mississippian, a veteran, a lawyer, who has migrated to New York. But he's not successful. His essays are routinely rejected by publishers who tell him his views are three hundred years out of date. We can imagine what those views are. When some elderly lady remarks that her experiences in the South weren't very pleasant, Reeve replies that it may have had something to do with her attempt to improve the lot of the "Nigra". And when Potter takes him to visit a hall at Harvard lined with the names of the Union dead, watch Reeve's expression.

Best performances aren't by the two lovers, but by Vanessa Redgrave, Jessica Tandy, Linda Hunt, and an ashen Wesley Addy with a crazy fright wig. Nancy Marchand is fine too. She was my co-star in the magnificent art house piece, "From the Hip." I helped the kid get over the rough spots in her performance.

Anyway, the film didn't strike me as so bad as some reviewers have made it out to be. It flows smoothly along. It would have flowed more smoothly if Reeve had been booted out of the picture half-way through, but then there would have been no picture.