The late American humorist Jean Shepherd once remarked that he admired T.S. Eliot, that you had to admire a man who would use those two initials his parents gave him as his name. It was like he was making a statement to the world.

He was no Emily Dickinson, he got acclaim for his poetry during his life, but I'm sure back in 1915 when this story starts Eliot didn't want fame or sought it. He wanted to teach, to write, and toward that end he found both his muse and love of his life.

And that's the person that Willem Dafoe is showing us when Tom & Viv starts. He's an eager, young scholar of no particular repute who is in love with Miranda Richardson as Vivienne Haigh-Wood. Father Philip Locke figures he's a fortune hunter, brother Tim Dutton likes him and they become close and mother Rosemary Harris is grateful that someone is taking her off their hands.

But they don't tell young Eliot about Vivienne's mental problems which grow more pronounced with age. Richardson earns Dafoe's love, inspires his poetry and tries his patience beyond measure. In the end she's put away in an asylum.

The real kicker though is a scene with an American doctor during the closing part of World War II when it is discovered that her problems could now have been treated medically. The doctors had it all wrong with her, but only recent advances in science have shown the error of their ways. By that time it's way too late for either Tom or Viv.

Tom & Viv got two Oscar nominations for Miranda Richardson for Best Actress and Rosemary Harris for Best Supporting Actress. Richardson is really fascinating to watch, a woman in the grip of something she cannot comprehend, but neither can anyone else. She lost to Jessica Lange for Blue Sky.

As for Harris, her final scene with Dafoe is what probably got her the nomination. She succeeds on so many levels, understanding her daughter, understanding why the marriage went bad, but still hurt at Dafoe's betrayal of her daughter. Harris lost to Dianne Wiest for Bullets Over Broadway.

Tom & Viv succeeds well in capturing the Great Britain of the two World Wars and the period between. The characters are sharply drawn and quite unforgettable in their way. Especially Richardson, this may wind up as her career role as an actress.

The Tom and Viv of the title are T.S. Eliot and his wife, Vivienne Haigh-Wood, played by Willem Dafoe and Miranda Richardson in an Oscar-nominated performance.

I always come away from bio pics about artists thinking that the people around the artist would make a much more interesting subject for a film, because the artists themselves are usually rather dull. It's refreshing, then, that this film focuses much more on Vivienne and her struggles with mental illness than it does on the life of Eliot. The film's not entirely successful, but Richardson earned her Best Actress nomination and she's given able support by Rosemary Harris, who plays her mother in couple of brief scenes.

Grade: B

I am not a doctor, but I I have been teaching psychology for 20 years,and what I think is that she had both a bi-poler disorder (manic depression) and also severe gynecological trouble. She mentions she was perfectly fine after she hit menopause, which says a lot. Remember Tom says she has manic highs and then bad depression? Maybe the bi-polar disorder was somehow caused by the hormone imbalance? What broke my heart is that he was so appalled by her bleeding on their wedding night, which in turn crushed and panicked her. Sorry fellas, sometimes we have no control over these things, and if you are married to a woman for any time at all-you just get used to the little jokes mother nature plays. We know that stress and loneliness only make mental illness worse, and hormonal problems worse too. She was very ill and violent, but I feel Tom turned cold and selfish toward her, which made all of her problems worse. Also remember she purposely misses the "monkey on a greasy pole" (catch the symbolism?) mental fitness question, after pleading at Tom with her eyes, but he just looks away.