Review of The Gilded Age, an HBO costume drama from the creator of Downton Abbey
Julian Fellows returns with his dream project, a massive series about the rivalry of American aristocrats in the late 19th century.
The Gilded Age was the dream project of Julian Fellows, who adores the historical period of the same name. In 2012, NBC greenlit his creation, which at the time was a bit of a Downton Abbey prequel focused on the backstory of Cora Crowley, the daughter of an American industrialist sent to the UK to marry. During this time, Fellows managed to finish the phenomenon of "Abbey" and bring it to the big screens (the premiere of the second film will take place this spring), and also launched several other historical series on the air. The Gilded Age has not been on the shelf for all these ten years in its original form, so it managed to radically transform - from the prequel to The Abbey into an independent series; from the on-air soap opera for NBC to the prestigious costume drama for HBO.
Probably, this lyrical digression with the prehistory of the Gilded Age will seem superfluous to someone, but it nevertheless helps to form the correct first impression about it: you can’t run away from fate - this is really a series that is 10 years late, which in 2022 looks like relic of the past. Considered as an HBO brainchild, The Gilded Age is overly academic and safe, lacking complex narrative constructions and intrigue, and therefore boring and straightforward, and most importantly, it is insultingly simple: it is an uninterestingly filmed and devoid of directorial fantasy drama about talking heads in luxurious interiors. The high level of HBO here is given out only by beautiful costumes, location shooting with carefully drawn backgrounds, and Hollywood stars in the cast.
It becomes much more offensive for the series if it goes from fitting to HBO quality standards to comparing it with modern TV and streaming hits: “historical drama about the conflict of aristocrats” at the level of description sounds like a mixture of “Bridgerton” and “Heirs”. Even if we leave the last series aside, so that the Gilded Age has any chance, there is no escape from a head-on collision with the Netflix project. You can criticize him as much as you like for trying to create a 19th-century Gossip Girl with blind casting and ball scenes to Billie Eilish or Ariana Grande covers, but it looked dynamic, in one breath - the series wanted to be loved, hated and discussed. The success of The Bridgertons is, of course, not a reason to make costume dramas solely for the sake of postmodern pranks, but at least a reason to think about how to compete with it within the genre. Alas, the creators of the "Gilded Age" did not think about it.
However, in part this is not so important, because the series already has a target audience - a multi-million army of Downton Abbey fans. They should enjoy the drama, but with a few caveats. One of the reasons for the success of the British series was the cross-class cast of the main characters - the audience watched how the subjects and their noble masters live, interact, fall in love and quarrel. It was a modest series about the life of small people, far from the bustle of the city, who learned about the main news from the newspapers, whether it was the sinking of the Titanic or the First World War. The Gilded Age, on the contrary, is a large-scale series about an entire era and the life of the cultural center of that time, New York.Such ambition has mixed results: the creators are trying to build a multi-layered drama with a dozen story arcs about race, economic status, industrialization and the increased number of migrants, but instead it seems that more screen time should have been devoted to the central ideological confrontation. At the heart of the series is a beautifully played, well-written and simply rare for mass culture conflict between the old generation and the new, between tradition and innovation, between noble families and opportunists. Another thing is that it is simply not worth wasting time on boring secondary stories of cooks and shots of richly dressed people in beautiful interiors.
Such ambition has mixed results: the creators are trying to build a multi-layered drama with a dozen story arcs about race, economic status, industrialization and the increased number of migrants, but instead it seems that more screen time should have been devoted to the central ideological confrontation. At the heart of the series is a beautifully played, well-written and simply rare for mass culture conflict between the old generation and the new, between tradition and innovation, between noble families and opportunists. Another thing is that it is simply not worth wasting time on boring secondary stories of cooks and shots of richly dressed people in beautiful interiors.
This article was sponsored by Celine Leroy
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