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Plot |
Captain Sir John Lindsay (Matthew Goode) travels home to England so that his daughter, Belle, can be taken care by his family, the Lord (Tom Wilkinson) and Lady (Emily Watson) of Mansfield. Needless to say his family is shocked to find that his daughter’s mother was black, but they agree to watch over her while Captain Lindsay takes his next naval assignment. Then the story jumps ahead at least ten years and Belle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and her cousin, Elizabeth Murray (Sarah Gadon), are still the best of friends. Shortly after this advancement in time Belle learns of her father’s passing by way of a letter given to her by Lord Mansfield. This solves a pressing problem for Belle, with her inheritance there would be no need to find a suitable husband, a tricky possibility at best for a girl without fair skin. Despite Belle’s station one suitor, of a good family, calls on her and Belle is intrigued by this offer. Meanwhile a substantial legal case has presented itself to Lord Mansfield that he must decide on. It involves a slave ship that has dumped its cargo because it was running low on drinking water and now is looking to be reimbursed by the insurance company. Belle finds the comparison of human beings as cargo detestable. This finding compels her to act. She is moved to peruse the papers in Lord Mansfield’s study and consult with an aspirating lawyer that she has grown close to. Lord Mansfield discovers her activities and confronts both Belle and the lawyer and they in turn placed a challenge before Lord Mansfield to trust in his heart and reason fairly. Belle too during the course of this film must make a decision on marriage and how is going to spend the rest of her life. |
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Character Development |
Lord Mansfield character does a lot of soul searching and becomes a different person that he was in the beginning for the film, though the film does jump ahead at least ten years so much of this development has to be imaged. This goes the same with Belle. She was just a little child one moment and then the next she is an adult with the prospects of getting marry and having kids of her own. Really this is not much time to development anything. If you take the time after the ten year jump I say there is about two weeks of time and that is being generous, so things are moving quickly. |
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Acting |
Even though everyone was believable in their roles and acted well no one had the presence of Tom Wilkinson. He just completely looked the part and made anyone performance shine who acted a scene with him, yet there was no mistaking Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s brilliance in her part. She was able to carry the film quite well. Certainly there was no over acting here, just degrees of emotions, which was very refreshing. Scenes moved with the causal ease of a stroll and didn’t jump about in editing. |
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Overview |
This was a wonderful production. If I didn’t know any better I say the film crew was sent back in time and this was just a documentary. At the end of the film there is a shot of the real painting of Dido Elizabeth Belle and Elizabeth Murray and it very much looked like the painting that was commissioned for this motion picture portraying the actresses that play them. The level of detail is impressive, from the sets to the customs and carriages, everything looked right. Sadly the story was a little dry, I felt it lull a few times. I thought surely they could have written some dialogue or something. It was as if the product team was only letting the scenery sink in and nothing more. And then the musical score was working overtime filling in here and there like it didn’t trust what the actors were doing, which was odd because the musical score was anything but rememberable. |
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