#6 "Adam Bede"

Stats: 1991. Starring Iain Glen, Patsy Kensit, Susannah Harker. Not Rated. Based on the novel by George Eliot.

Background: I teach Silas Marner each year in one of my ESL classes. I was looking for a movie version when I came across The George Eliot Collection on Amazon.com. For just a few dollars more than I’d spend on Silas Marner, I could get the collection of five movies. Before tonight, I had never watched Adam Bede.

Reactions: This movie took a long time to get into. Perhaps it's the nature of George Eliot's work, as every movie based on her novels I've seen has been slow and difficult to get into.

While partially predictable--I could tell within the first two minutes which characters would end up together--this movie also had some unexpected twists (though if you've read the book, they wouldn't be unexpected). George Eliot wasn't afraid to tackle some touchy topics, and Adam Bede is no exception, as one character had an affair, became pregnant, perhaps went insane, and killed her baby. (Well, I think she killed it. At least she was convicted of killing it; my sisters were talking when she was confessing everything to Adam, and I didn't care enough to rewind and catch what I missed.)

My favorite line came at the end of the movie. Adam has just said goodbye to Dinah (Harker, best known as Jane Bennet in the 1995 Pride & Prejudice), who is clearly in love with him. He goes into the kitchen and tells his mother that it's too bad things didn't work out between his brother and Dinah because she would have been a good addition to the family. (There's a scene at the beginning of the movie where Adam's brother proposes to Dinah, she tells him she'll never marry, and we never see Adam's brother again.) Adam's mom looks at him like he's a moron, tells him Dinah loves him, and then says, "Only men have to wait 'til folks say things before they find them out." Adam's face lights up, and he runs out to find Dinah. Quite a commentary on men--it cracks me up!

Verdict: Keep