Tom & Viv *** (1994, Willem Dafoe, Miranda Richardson, Rosemary Harris, Tim Dutton, Nickolas Grace) – Classic Movie Review 9027

Director Brian Gilbert’s 1994 British biographical romantic drama Tom & Viv tells the extraordinary story of the doomed marriage of American poet Tom Eliot [T S Eliot] (Willem Dafoe) and the English aristocrat Vivienne Haigh-Wood (Miranda Richardson). It was nominated for two Oscars: Best Actress (Miranda Richardson) and Best Supporting Actress (Rosemary Harris).

Tom and Viv meet in 1914 in Oxford where Eliot is studying, fall in love and marry in haste, eloping in 1915. But things go wrong right from the honeymoon when the sick and highly strung Viv, afflicted by gynecological and emotional problems, destroys their hotel room. Viv encourages Tom’s poetry, but they row when he takes a bank job to make ends meet as his poetry does not bring in enough money to live on.

[Spoiler alert] By the late Twenties Tom has landed a job at a publisher’s and has fallen in with the Bloomsbury set, but Viv has become an erratic social liability. Eliot and Viv’s brother Maurice (Tim Dutton) have her committed to an asylum, where she dies of a heart attack in 1947, unvisited for over a decade by Eliot, who wins the Nobel Prize for Literature the following year.

This tragic story of love’s impotence in the face of life’s adversity is inescapably depressing and there are no crumbs of comfort, certainly no Hollywood style uplift in a stark and rigorously told tale. In a controversial portrait, Eliot is made the villain of the piece, quietly but ruthlessly ambitious and finally uncaring, or at least caring more for his art than his wife.

Miranda Richardson as Vivienne Haigh-Wood in Tom & Viv (1994).

There is little fault to find, and much to praise, in the persuasive, emotionally charged performances, with ideally cast Dafoe and Richardson both equally impressive in contrasting performances and Harris outstanding as Viv’s capable but stern mother, Rose Haigh-Wood.

Tom & Viv’s genesis as a hit play by Michael Hastings is effectively concealed by the cinematic handling and there is a fine period production. But this is a stark, unrelenting piece with little entertainment value, and perhaps you feel you want to turn away.

Also in the cast are Nickolas Grace as Bertrand Russell, Geoffrey Bayldon, Clare Holman, Philip Locke, Joanna McCallum as Virginia Woolf, Joseph O’Conor, John Savident, Michael Attwell, Sharon Bower, Linda Spurrier as Edith Sitwell and Roberta Taylor as Ottoline Morrell.

Its US gross was only $538,534.

Tom & Viv [Tom and Viv] is directed by Brian Gilbert, runs 115 minutes, is made by New Era, British Screen Productions, Harvey Kass and IRS Media, is released by Entertainment, is written by Michael Hastings and Adrian Hodges, based on the play by Michael Hastings, is shot in Technicolor by Martin Fuhrer, is produced by Matt Samuelson and is scored by Debbie Wiseman.

Its UK release date was 15 April 1994 and its US release was 2 December 1994.

Dafoe and Harris appeared in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, sharing scenes in the first film, Spider-Man (2002).

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 9027

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