the duchess

 

georgiana cavendish-the duchess of devonshire. wife of the 5th duke of devonshire and mother of the 6th duke of devonshire. i bought the dvd quite some time ago and i  just now had a chance to watch the movie. the costumes were decadent and the entire movie smelt of self-indulgence. the story was tragic, that of a woman who is trapped in her marriage to the duke, who’s family won’t let her abandon her responsibilities to bear him an heir and who is threatened to never see her children again. it was an awful time for women, georgiana knew of her husband’s infidelity and yet she could not do or say anything about it, until finally he slept with her best friend, who dramatically enough lived with them, so to top it all off, she lived with her husband, the cheater and his mistress, and had to turn a blind eye on the whole situation. (so boys-if you have a controlling girlfreind who is a bitch to deal with, like myself i am sure, know that it is just nature’s way of thanking you for mistakes of men from centuries past). when georgina wanted to have a lover of her own, of course, she was denied; the weirdest triangle (or square) i have ever seen to date, and the fact it was in the 18th century makes today’s celebrity and high society fade into the shadows. of course there are probably many vices the people of those times had that we are not aware of today, we can only watch  modern  interpretations of those stories, based on letters, writings and paintings of those times. i forgot how wonderful it was to lose yourself in a movie depicting a more elegant and exciting world, it is most fascinating to me to watch the making of these movies and seeing the sets being transformed into the beautiful places that we see on the two dimensional screen, i can only imagine how fun it must be for the actors to be around that and dressed appropriately to play the part. i went to amazon to see what other period movies i could watch that were similar to this one, apart from ‘marie antoinette’ (which is one of my all time favorite movies, mainly for the costume and design) and ‘the other boleyn girl’ there was nothing. apparently customers who bought ‘the duchess’ also bought ‘baby on board’ and ’employee of the month’. does anyone know of any fantastic period movies i can watch and die over, please do tell…

no offence, the duchess looks nothing like keria knightley, in fact she looks more like a man in drag. funny how these people led incredibly immoral, screwed up lives and somehow have gone down in history as influential, most of whom were incredibly ugly and just because had the money and the right connections could afford to make themselves stand out in the public’s eye. funny also how fame follows these people into the after life and we celebrate and drool over their livestyles even today… nothing really changes.