The Duchess

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The Duchess

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The Duchess

Keira Knightley, Ralph Fiennes, Charlotte Rampling, Aidan McArdle, Angus McEwan

A chronicle of the life of 18th century aristocrat Georgiana, duchess of Devonshire, an ancestor of Princess Diana who was alternately celebrated and reviled for her extravagant political and personal...( read more  read more... ) lives.

Id: 10887699

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The Duchess Recent Reviews
  • AgentLexi2132
    December 27, 2009
    AgentLexi2132
    ''You can't ask me to battle nature in my own heart.''

    A chronicle of the life of 18th century aristocrat Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, who was reviled for her extravagant political and personal life.

    Keira Knightley: Georgiana, The Duchess of Devonshire

    ...( read more)Ralph Fiennes: Duke of Devonshire

    The Duchess(2008) is based on Amanda Foreman's biographic book and is brought to life on screen by Director Saul Dibb.
    The story revolves around Georgina, who becomes the Duchess of Devonshire, married into a marriage of convenience and stature, laboured with the task of giving her husband the Duke a male heir.


    Keira Knightley is in her element as Georgiana and you can see she revels in it. Keira is at home in her depiction of the intelligent, beautiful Georgiana. Every scene she is in has life, depth and prosperity. Emotion and struggle effortlessly conveyed in her eyes alone at times.
    What struck me were her loveless marriage to Ralph Fiennes Duke and the many problems she faces.
    Ralph Fiennes plays a villain character very well in films in the past but in The Duchess I wouldn't class him as good or bad in conclusion. His Duke character in here simply has problem expressing his emotions and at times he beautifully acts out how insensitive he can be to Georgiana. His many faults and later affair with Bess, a friend of Georgiana, causes problems and even shows us of the mistreatment of women in this period. To me it's a fascination in a few hundred years; females have been given the freedom and right to do the same as men, and rightly so.

    Georgiana is a woman ahead of her time, comparable to great ladies like Elizabeth or Catherine The great in the form and way of strength, resolve and striking intelligence; showing she's not just a beautiful lady of Aristocracy but one who is mentally and physically perfect.
    I must admit her romance and deep love for Dominic Cooper's Charles Grey struck me to how tragic and moving the whole story is. The boundaries of protocol and what society expects of you is amazingly captured, showing real life to be a hugely fascinating and inspiration, as well as rival to anything fictional or fantasy based can offer us.

    Charles Grey and Georgiana by the River sharing a moment of intimacy struck volumes with me. A long lost feeling of a love not yet felt with her emotionless seeming husband. as Charles and Georgiana look into each others eyes you can see the love there.
    As they kiss and give into loves embrace, it's mind-blowing and even my eyes were unable to control the prospect of crying slightly.
    The love scenes were surprisingly really well executed in amazing subtle yet effective ways. Some scenes with Keira and Ralph were obviously awkward but they were intended to be. Keira's love scenes with Cooper are an effective contrast to the ones with Ralph, which are void of love, this importantly helps us to notice the huge difference there.

    The Duchess is simply a period masterpiece that may be predicted as being sad but it's not. It's positively radiant in all aspects. Costumes, locations, acting and the music and Score is in a class of its own. The Duchess is beautiful storytelling and a period film dream to put it effectively, a vision of a woman's life miraculously portrayed on the dazzling big screen.

    Ralph Fiennes provides a character who you love to hate, but redeems himself somewhat, Keira Knightley is the shining Goddess we all thought she would be.
    Dominic Cooper gets another amazing film besides History Boys and Mamma Mia under his belt and has convinced me he's a rising star.
    Ralph Fiennes making everyone laugh on various parts from the way he says things so unemotionally is perfect. I've never seen a Lady with her head on fire before in a Period film, but what made it even more memorable was the fact Ralph has to say ''Put out The Duchess's hair please!'', or something to that effect.
    My favourite part near the end; where we actually see a glimpse of Ralph's Duke's emotion was so moving for me. Where he looks out the window and says something like, ''How wonderful to be that free.'' For the first time he actually connects to Keira, and we see he is as mush a prisoner as she is in this world of Aristocracy.

    In conclusion The Duchess has humour, struggle, a moving score, beautiful cinematography, and an ending that concludes things in such a way; you will be moved, you will be happy and most importantly you will be satisfied and be left glowing from the experience.
  • limoradalloway
    June 27, 2009
    limoradalloway
    Her actual biography was what gripped me more than the script. The costumes were the second best thing about the movie.
  • JDFortuneFan
    June 14, 2009
    JDFortuneFan
    The Duchess is a beautifully costumed period piece. (The hats worn by female cast are 'to die for'!) The acting is average. The cinematography has some moments but nothing to earn raves. Rather than capturing the true extravagance and notoriety of the real Duchess of Devonshir...( read more)e, the film gives glimpses of the life she lived. The interaction between the Duchess and her children is the best performance by Knightley in The Duchess. Overall the film lacks the power punch and emotional impact of what a period piece should deliver.
  • LitelBluHli
    April 20, 2009
    LitelBluHli
    I thought Keira Knightley was wonderful in the film. The outfits were beautiful as well. It's a pretty sad story about Georgiana who becomes the duchess of Devonshire and has to put up with a lot of crap from her husband and his ways. Poor women, back in those days. Througout the...( read more) film, she tries to leave him, but somehow ends up back with him.
  • EarthlyAlien
    April 14, 2009
    EarthlyAlien
    "You can't ask me to battle nature in my own heart."

    The Duchess dramatizes a portion of the true story of a headstrong young aristocrat whose surname is Spencer. The lady, played by Keira Knightley with full awareness of the charms of a demure head tilt, is famous...( read more) for her glamorous beauty, her influential fashion sense, and her celebrity friends; the gentleman, played by Ralph Fiennes with exquisite nuance in a compassionate depiction of male inexpressiveness, is rich, powerful, and from a renowned British family. The lady is more adored by those around her than by her husband, a socially awkward older man more at ease with pets than with people; the gentleman remains attached, throughout most of the couple's long, incompatible marriage, to another, more worldly woman (Hayley Atwell), ignoring his wife's distress about the ménage.

    Photobucket

    If the name of Diana Spencer, the late Princess of Wales, comes to mind, then the makers of The Duchess can rest easy. They've made a delightfully gossipy, dutifully swanky costume biopic, but more importantly, they've accomplished their goal of making the unorthodox life of the 18th-century noblewoman Georgiana Spencer, Duchess of Devonshire, relevant to a 21st-century audience of filmgoers who cheer for romance even while armed with skepticism and copies of magazines reminding them how so many "fairy-tale marriages" go bust. The film is based on Amanda Foreman's marvellous biography "Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire."

    As it happens, Georgiana Spencer - Diana's great-great-great-great-aunt - married William Cavendish, the fifth Duke of Devonshire, in 1774 when she was 17 and he was 26. It was an era of impossibly tall wigs and tight corsets - and the women didn't have it easy either. But with Knightley in the title role, something interesting happens: the 23-year-old, Middlesex-born's sporty, modern-girl attitude, her Vogue-worthy eyebrows, and her athletic build (no matter how impressively those long limbs are encased in complicated gowns of satin and silk) lend an attitude of now-ness to a production that wants to be part historical biopic, part tabloid-relevant. The director, Saul Dibb, has a background in documentary filmmaking, and that shows in every frame of this film.

    Knightley is not a very deep interpreter of her roles (whether in Atonement or Pride & Prejudice, arguably the best work she's done so far), nor is she as "hip" as Kirsten Dunst and the rest of the in-crowd who cavorted in Sofia Coppola's fashion-forward Marie Antoinette with downtown élan. But that hardly matters in The Duchess. Playing a vivacious colt brokered by her savvy mother (Charlotte Rampling) to a very rich suitor whose chief marital demand is the production of a male heir - not so easy an assignment, as it turns out - Knightley grins or blushes becomingly. She reddens even more erotically when swooning for her own great love, the politician Charles Grey (Dominic Cooper). And that pink-cheeked simplicity works to the film's advantage. She's the people's princess.

    Georgiana is actually the least compelling character in this saga - certainly as played out by Knightley against the charisma that Atwell and, especially, Fiennes bring to their roles. Dibb, who shares screenwriter credit with Jeffrey Hatcher and Anders Thomas Jensen, has a nice eye for vignettes that convey the loneliness that can eat the soul, whether at dinner, in bed, or amid sumptuous displays of pomp and circumstance. Atwell, who plays Julia Flyte in the new Brideshead Revisited, creates an utterly seductive, independent-minded Lady Elizabeth Foster. '"Bess'" was one of English history's most colourful risk-takers, a divorcée who began as Georgiana's great friend, caused that same friend agony when she became the Duke's mistress, and then stuck around the mansion for more than 25 years beloved by them both.

    But it's Fiennes who owns The Ducthess from head to toe. He develops a beautiful, wordless vocabulary of hurt, frustration, sadism, lust, discomfort, arrogance, remorse, and unanalysed pain for his Duke. He speaks with his body what the script cannot formulate about what it's like to be a man apart. He creates particulars of time, space, class, and personality with one crook of a finger, one twist of a wrist. I call that nobility of craft; he's the actors' prince.
  • vzlaeli
    December 30, 2009
    vzlaeli
    Normalmente no me siento atraída por las películas de época, pero esta me cautivo.
    Es interesante ver como los tiempos han cambiado dramarticamente respecto a los roles que juegan los hombres y mujeres en la sociedad. Me dio rabia ver lo machista que podia llegar a ser en esa epo...( read more)ca.
    La fotografia hermosa. Cada escena era una obra de arte.
    Los vestuarios, razon por la cual gano un oscar en el 2008 te quitan el aire. Todos los aspectos tecnicos de la pelicula son perfectos.
    La historia es interesante y te atrapa.
    Lo que me molesto fueron un poco las actuaciones, y eso que Keira Knightley me gusta como actriz pero no se que paso en esta.
    En general una excelente pelicula.
  • williamsrae57
    December 30, 2009
    williamsrae57
    Keira played the best Duchess
  • electradelioncourt
    December 27, 2009
    electradelioncourt
    I'm addicted to the eighteenth century, so perhaps my opinion isn't valid. I have to say, though, that it was much better than I expected, I really don't understand why people hated it. It's quite an exact portrait of that society, and those years, as unpleasant as it may seem to...( read more) us nowadays. It's certainly irritating to watch it if you put yourself in Georgiana's place (silly girl, dreaming too much and letting others see it), but that's how that world was. In fact, in those circumstances the Duke could be a much worse husband than that... Keira Knightly was acceptable in the part, but Ralph Fiennes was totally amazing - despicable, actually....

    Were it not for the unhappy and realistic ending, it could have been written by Jane Austen ^,^
  • Chickyfoolu
    December 21, 2009
    Chickyfoolu
    Just beautiful. Big fan of period dramas and there is nothing quite like an English period drama.
  • Phonex
    December 2, 2009
    Phonex
    She was the Princess Diana of her day. In fact, she was Di?s 18th-century ancestor. Georgiana, née Spencer, the Duchess of Devonshire, was married to a man who did not love her -- the Duke of Devonshire, sort of a head honcho of dukes -- so she, wicked smart girl that she was, ma...( read more)de a life for herself, cavorting with playwrights and politicians, inventing her own fashions, and generally being all-around fabulous. Delicious in a costume-drama-y way that will delight fans of the genre while being as entirely lightweight as the enormous ostrich feathers on Georgiana?s hats, this comedy of propriety gives us a lovely, spunky Keira Knightley (Atonement) as the duchess and Ralph Fiennes (In Bruges) -- in a performance that is exquisitely amusing -- as the cold-fish duke. I?m sure, however, that we?re meant to take this all rather more seriously than it will let us, what with all the pouty angst about Georgiana?s thwarted love affairs, thwarted friendships, and other assorted thwartednesses. On the other hand, no flick that offers up paparazzi sketch artists can expect to be taken as solemn drama.
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