(1994) Vivienne Haigh-Wood (Miranda Richardson), a ballet dancer from English stock of exceptional breeding, at the age of 26, after a few months of courtship, eloped in 1915 with Thomas Stearns Eliot (Willem Dafoe), an American born in St. Louis with slender prospects, who had settled in England, hoping to be the ideal Englishman.

T.S. Eliot would become one of the greatest poets in the English language of the 20th century, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. This biopic, based on a play by Michael Hastings (who collaborated with Adrian Hodges on the screenplay), directed by Brian Gilbert, is actually Vivienne's story of holding on to her belief in Tom and his genius in spite of her being left alone.

Her brother Maurice (Tim Dutton), narrating the opening, establishes the conflict of misunderstanding from the beginning: while "tight little England was just what Tom wanted," Vivie had expected escape. Disqualified for military service, unlike Maurice, who goes off as a junior officer to fight the Hun, Eliot tells Vivie: "I want to live in Europe and write poetry."

The wedding night does not go well: Viv ("I disgust you") suffers from abnormal, excessive menstrual bleeding, sometimes two or three times a week. Unamused by Vivienne and Eliot's running off to get married, Charles Haigh-Wood (Philip Locke) quizzes Tom about his ability to support his daughter on two dollars a week from Harvard, a slim volume of poems published, and a contract for a series of lectures, while a war rages against the Kaiser. More sympathetic, Mrs Rose Haigh-Wood (Rosemary Harris) perceives how "eager to be like us" Tom tries to be.

The couple takes up lodging in the attic of their friend (and Tom's former teacher), the philosopher and mathematician, Bertrand Russell (Nickolas Grace) - "the most hated man in London" for his anti-war views. After struggling to earn a living teaching, lecturing, writing articles, and composing poetry ("a mug's game"), straitlaced Tom accepts a position at Lloyd's Bank while his free-spirited wife, insisting she unlocks the minds of Tom ("I can't do it without you") and Bertie, behaves outrageously with vulgarity in polite company and in public. Her manic/depressive fits and sulks veer from admiration (she assisted her husband as his first audience) and love to disappointment (accusing him of being conventional and boring) and anger.

Of his verse, which he called "smashed vase" for its fragmentary character (referencing numerous works of other writers), Eliot's poem "The Wasteland" is often considered his masterpiece, a depiction of the deterioration of civilization - it may also be read as the disintegration of a marriage, shards coming out of their lives. "Poetry is not an expression of emotion," he remarks to an audience during a reading of "Four Quartets," "but an escape from emotion."

With the publication of his fifth book and increasing critical acclaim as a poet and dramatist, Tom leaves the bank to work for his publisher, Faber and Faber, while his financial situation improves dramatically (having responsibility for managing, with his fraterus Maurice, Charles's estate), permitting purchases of a house and motorcar.

However, Viv's unstable personality has become a serious social liability. A medical specialist describes her condition as "a febrile disease of the mind," an affliction diagnosed among very bright young women who display symptoms of rebellion, failing to appreciate their social position: in other words, "moral insanity." The Anglican bishop with whom Tom (who will be baptized, join the church, and become a British citizen), feeling bereft of his wife's companionship, has been discussing religion advises: "You can't go on like this."

Everything seems to fall apart for Vivienne in 1932 when she discovers the letter, which Tom has intentionally left out for her to find, acknowledging his acceptance of the poetry chair at Harvard University. Among the awful scenes she makes is her threatening Virginia Woolf, who innocently greets her as Tom's wife, with a knife pulled from her handbag: "I am not Vivienne Eliot!"

Worried about scandal affecting his career, Tom legally separates from Viv, who is committed (without right of appeal), with the professional assistance of medical officer Janes, to the lunatic asylum of Northumberland House. Near the end of her life at the close of World War II, she replies to Maurice, just returned from Africa, asking about her visitors (few and far between): "I haven't seen Tom in ten years."

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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