Disappointed

Last night I started watching the movie The Woman in White. Admittedly, I had high expectations. But they were elevated and dashed in the space of one sentence!

I popped the DVD into the machine and soon learned I would be watching a Masterpiece Theater production. Hooray! In the next moment I learned the production would last only two hours. Gasp!

This story! In only two hours! How could they?

The answer is, they could not.

There is a lot in the movie that is nowhere in Wilkie Collins' story. Some, I can understand, are devices to move the story along. Other parts seem unnecessary and gratuitous.

I do so wish a four or even a six hour miniseries were made of the story. With all its espionage, villainy, identity theft, two hours simply is not time to explain. The movie left me unsympathetic to the heroine and hero and curious about the fate of the villain. And whereas the end of the book is just and fitting, the movie ends with an unsatisfactory emotion less than hope and barely more than a wish.

Wilkie Collins also wrote The Moonstone. I plan to look that mystery up next.