Search - Edwin on DVD

Pompous twit

Joseph Haschka | Glendale, CA USA | 11/11/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Admirers of the work of the late Sir Alec Guinness will perhaps find EDWIN satisfactorily droll.

Guinness plays Sir Fennimore Truscott, a curmudgeonly and recently retired High Court judge left to stew in his own pomposity on his country estate with his wife, Lady Margaret (Renee Asherson). Used to a lifetime of judging criminal behavior, Truscott can't let it go. His current obsession, presented in asides to the viewer as if giving evidence to a jury, is the case against his next door neighbor of many years, Tom Marjoriebanks (Paul Rogers), whom Sir Fennimore suspects of "rogering" Lady Margaret many years before in the garden conservatory. About the time she became pregnant with the Truscott's now grown son, Edwin, actually. It doesn't mollify Truscott that Tom is constantly at his wife's side helping out with kitchen and garden chores. And the Judge has a patrician contempt for Marjoriebanks, a common pottery maker. (Tom would say "craftsman of fine ceramics.")

When Sir Fennimore confronts Tom with his suspicions, the latter replies incredulously - but perhaps not incredulously enough - with observations about Edwin's artistic and sensitive nature. More akin to Tom's own, you think? In any case, Truscott now begins to doubt his paternity, and his indignation is further fueled. Unfortunately, the viewer never gets to meet Edwin, so one is left to Truscott's own mental contortions and dry comments.

My wife gave up about two-thirds in, bored by the slow pacing and/or too irritated with Truscott's aloofness. But, a keen Guinness fan after his superb role as Smiley in TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY and SMILEY'S PEOPLE, I kept a stiff upper lip. I was rewarded when Lady Margaret, a free spirit considered a "Red" by her disapproving husband, comes to the forefront of the stage near the film's conclusion, when she reveals herself to be an independent woman completely at ease with her life and capable of attachment to more than one man. When pressed on the matter, she calmly makes allusion to Edwin's real biological father, a revelation that goes completely over the head of her self-preoccupied husband, and which leaves both Truscott and Marjoriebanks muttering into their teacups about the mysterious nature of the human female.

EDWIN might be considered a cautionary tale about male retirees with way too much time on their hands, or about that facet of human nature which allows an individual to find emotional needs met by more than one individual. EDWIN is a low key but pointed reminder that even the most wise of men is incapable of recognizing the truth of the latter."