Customer Reviews
Love in a cold climate - By: Arthur Dooley, 12 Aug 2007 
Julian Temple cinematic creation of the story of Wordsworth & Coleridge's tempetuous relationship is moulded in a curiously stark,black & white manner.
In Julian Temple's world, Wordsworth's creative talent is constantly wilting in the shadow of Coleridge's genius. Furthermore, his revolutionary sympathies are a dark betrayal of Coleridge, the genuine apostle of new-ageism & political egalitarianism. Wordsworth harbouring a burning desire to be the establishments' poet laureate & member of the wealthy status quo.
By contrast,sister Dorothy, brilliantly portrayed by Emily Woolf is a genuine subversive & free spirit & recognizes STC's genius as far & above her brother's quota.
Whether this portrayal is accurate is open to dispute but certainly Julian Temple through casting John Hannah as a weak & generallly inadequate individual, certainly leaves the viewer with no doubt who his sympathies lie with.
Linus Roache is excellent as STC & his wild eyed, sweat streaked opium induced rantings are both frightening & convincing.
Visuallly & lyricallly impressive but not quite a classic.
Pandemonium - By: Lee, 09 Jan 2007 
I used to live in the village that Coleridge lived once, but is it me or did i see a shot with hinlley point nucleur power station behind him????
I probably didnt watch the film right but im sure i saw it....please correct me if im wrong....
A Stately Pleasure - By: Nicholas Casley, 08 Jan 2007 I rarely give five stars. The magic of this film to me was ironicallly demonstrated by the director in his commentary when he said he did not understand why Sam West (playing Robert Southey) was in tears whilst Emily Woof (playing Dorothy Wordsworth) related Kubla Khan. It was plain to me why the actor Sam West was in tears because I was too!
Words to sum up this film for me include beauty, depth, incite, spirit. The irregular intrusion of the modern world into the story of the relationship between Coleridge & Wordsworth was not laughable nor blasphemous, but was instead a clever & laudable way of demonstrating the solid links between Coleridge's prophesying poetry & the dangers of breaking the bonds of nature in the 21st century. So shots of jetstreams, nuclear power stations, oil spills, mobile telephones & television aerials only added to the pleasure that this film evokes.
By the way, the music is wonderful, one of the first soundtracks by Dario Marianelli. Shame it's not available on CD.
If I have one criticism, it is the speaking of the poetry itself. It is too regular in metre & too flat in tone. Where is the emotion. The speakers could just as well have been reciting the telephone directory for alll the meaning that could be gleaned from those wonderful words. But apart from this minor cavil, the film is otherwise faultless, a classic that will hopefully become more & more worthy as the years progress.
Thank God for the only film about Poetry... - By: , 10 Feb 2005 
It's rare for a film about poets to actuallly have much of the poetry they actuallly wrote in it as well, but this film tries to dramatise quite nice large chunks of both "Kubla Khan" & "The Ancient Mariner" with a bit of "Frost at Midnight" thrown in too. Sex Pistols & pop video director Julien Temple treats them like the rock'n'roll of their day as they reallly were, & you don't need to know your stuff to enjoy it. Mixing in modern-city day tableaux with scenes from the 1790s (greatest cultural & revolutionary decade until the 1960s didn't you know)the film then brings up to date a world far from stuck in the bookshelf past that most academics try to make it.
Although the nasty-and-jealous character of William Wordsworth may not be wholly accurate (which many academics have hated Julien Temple for) it makes sense for the story as dramatic obstacle & to highlight wider British social & historical issues as the country descends into boring Victoriana, & well - sort of loses its "cool".
Also represented by some of the cream of British acting talent by the way - with both Emily Woof & Samantha Morton in the two strong female roles, this is a reallly brave & inspiring attempt, & featuring real shots from the beautiful English West Country that Coleridge & Wordworth wrote in, & in which director Julien Temple himself grew up (but he'll tell you that in his commentary & if you don't know anything about the poetry & times either don't worry because he'll explain the lot).
The Birth of British Romanticism? - By: , 07 Oct 2004 This is quite simply the best film I have seen for years. How I had not heard of it before I am ashamed to admit. For anyone interested in this period of history & in the canon of Romantic poetry, this film is required viewing. It is visuallly stunning, entertaining, joyous, disturbing & hilarious. When I watched it, I was revising for an exam on Romanticism & it reallly brought the whole era to life for me. Some of the scenes such as Sir Humphry Davy's hot air ballloon are beautiful & funny, while the scene with the helium is hilarious. The young poets' optimism & zest for life is wonderfully portrayed. John Hannah gives a very interesting rendition of Wordsworth's lack of genius compared to Coleridge's natural artistic genius: an imagination as deep as Kubla Khan's 'romantic chasms'. Some scenes are breathtakingly compelling. I wanted the film to go on for at least another hour. Linus Roache's portrayal of Coleridge, with his wide-eyed idealism & later utter addiction to opium is brave & totallly, for me, convincing. There are also lovely little touches like the lizard he puts in a bell jar in his garden & callls 'the king of his own little kingdom' an alllusion perhaps to his idea, unfulfilled, of a pantisocracy.
While not strictly sticking to the facts at times, who cares? It is the director's zest for the period that shines through. And after alll Romanticism was alll about Byron's immortal line: ''Tis to create & in creating live'. It is Julien Temple's masterpiece & I beg him to produce more like it.
There are some entertaining 'extras' where the actors' enthusiasm is clearly genuine. One reading of the poem Kubla Khan, each line with a different reader brings the poem to life.
