Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Cold Comfort Farm

Just watched Cold Comfort Farm a BBC 1995 film. I like British movies - a lot! I also watch British sitcoms and miss Are You Being Served. This summer I enjoyed watching From Larkrise to Candleford which was featured on our local PBS station on Friday evenings at 7 p.m. Or, if I missed seeing it on Friday, I could watch it on Saturday at 8 p.m.

I loved the contrast of country folk and the town people - their lives, their culture and as we say today "values". The earth-bound, pagan-loving, frugal Larkrise families "vs" the upscale villagers of Candleford finally resulted in having their lives intertwined through a central figure, the postmistress of Candleford - a happy meddler. In the "background" was a "knowing" that something big and possibly monstrous would change all of their lives forever - the railroad. The railroad train with it's huge steam-driven, puffing, screeching, fire-billowing engine! It brought with it the industrial age - transportation - an opportunity to leave the country, to leave the village and leave family and friends forever.  It was The End.

So, today's movie Cold Comfort Farm picked up (in my mind) where I left Larkrise to Candleford of Victorian times - of corsets and many petticoats to streamlined undergarmets - bras and such those of the early twenties.

The heroine  of Cold Comfort Farm moved to a "falling-apart farm" filled with horrid, grizzly characters who were to be "changed forever" by her presence. She saw it as an opportunity to gather interesting material for her own "Jane Austen" novels (why not?). She was orphaned, but quite able to take care of herself and those whose lives she touched. She was a "meddler" - a "take charge" person. She made it "her business" to show the country people (her relatives - cousins and a matriarch aunt) how life could be "completely different" if a person could see past limitations and self-imposed restrictions.

Many changes did take place without "murder and mayhem" (Thank God!).

It's a "happy-ending" film with a couple of "quirky" unanswered questions. Oh my! (Nothing like leaving things "up in the air".)

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