Mildred Pierce

It's 1930's L.A. Mildred Pierce (Kate Winslet) has been abandoned by her unemployed husband Bert leaving her with their young daughters Veda and Ray. She has been trying to make ends meet by selling her home-made pies. She is forced to take a lowly waitress job in Hollywood. Veda finds out and berates her for embarrassing the family. Mildred tells her that she's preparing to open her own restaurant. Mildred is sleeping with Bert's former real-estate partner Wally Burgan who comes up with a place to start the restaurant. Due to tax reasons, the scheme requires Mildred to divorce Bert. She begins dating polo-playing playboy Monty Beragon (Guy Pearce). He does no work but he gets an income from a fading fruit import business. While secretly away with him, Ray gets sick and later dies. With her waitress friend Ida Corwin's help, her chicken-and-waffles restaurants become highly successful. Mildred doles on Veda but she turns more and more rotten.

This is a five parts HBO mini-series based on the 1941 novel and most well-known for the 1945 film adaptation. For me, this is a tragic mother and daughter story. The drama only gets great when Evan Rachel Wood arrives in part four. The younger actresses who play Veda in the first three parts do their very best. It's not their fault but the drama is limited to a few interesting scenes. This is a failure of adaptation. The first three parts are too plodding and fails to grab the drama by its throat. The saving grace is Kate Winslet and her never-ending humanity. Despite the slow start, she keeps the story going and there is value to a more expansive exposition than the 1945 film. It would have helped to concentrate this five parter into a two or three parter.

Although "Mildred Pierce" was originally a novel, the story is familiar to most people as a glossy 1945 film noir in which Joan Crawford suffers in furs as her ungrateful daughter (Ann Blyth) steals her boyfriend (Zachary Scott). Strangely enough, the most engaging and gripping sections of this nearly 6-hour extravaganza of middle-class yearnings are not just the more heated of the mother-daughter battles but the painful struggle of the title character to find a job in a Depression-ravaged economy and a micro-examination of the frantic and messy business of running a restaurant, including the heartening camaraderie of the kitchen and wait staff.

There is much attention to the details of craftsmanship – pianistic, vocal, culinary, architectural, managerial and sartorial. When the movie concentrates on these matters it zips by, so sure is the treatment. The musical underscoring, always a key element in the evocation of the antique past, is too shrill at first but improves as the episodes unfold. For some reason Todd Haynes and his composer Carter Burwell have chosen to hammer us over the head at the start with a very loud jazzy piece, which is a bad idea because it obstructs the establishment of our acquaintance with the Pierce family. As the series progresses the musical elements are toned down. Mildred's theme song throughout is, appropriately enough, "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows."

The accomplished Kate Winslet flattens out her melodious native Britspeak yet again to impersonate a drab American housewife. How many such roles has she played by now? I've lost count. It's a consciously colorless rendering of an intelligent, strong and very feminine woman, but not the type of woman who would stop traffic or even try to. The supporting actors are the ones with personality texture: Melissa Leo as a good-natured neighbor and business partner, Mare Winningham as a tough but sweet co-worker (speaking with a "New Yawk"-style twang like one of those sassy blondes from 30's movies), Guy Pearce as the corrupt hedonistic boyfriend, Morgan Turner and Evan Rachel Wood as child and adult versions of Mildred's warped and snobby daughter Veda. Brian F. O'Byrne as Mildred's estranged husband is just warm and tender enough to evoke some sympathy.

The production is so meticulously produced and masterfully photographed that you can get lost in the visual details but the scale is too large for the smallness of the story.

This movie, recently presented in separate airings, was highly addictive. At first you think how can a movie based around a woman who makes great pies be that good but, IT REALLY WAS! My husband was hooked as soon as he saw the first episode I had recorded. It was PERFECTLY cast and all the performances were awesome! The setting based in the 1930's was absolutely gorgeous as was the music from back then. It made you wish you could go back in time, before technology, when things were so much simpler! The main theme of the story is universal to this day. This is one of those that if you are just channel surfing and you see it on, you just keep watching it over and over again. There is some nudity; but that aside, this is a a must see!

This is a good mini-series but has some flaws. But first I have to praise Kate Winslet and Evan Rachel Wood for their acting and chemistry (even if their characters nearly hate each other). But the thing is that the story gets sooooo stretched to fill the 5 episodes that from episode 3 on may feel a bit boring and kinda repetitive.

I get that we need to see Mildred's ups and downs but it just feels the same until the fifth episode. I haven't read the book yet but I think it wasn't structured to be adapted into a miniseries. Maybe a movie (I mean the one with Joan Crawford) but not a 5-hour series. Some dialogues are full of wit and deepness but, some feel very dull. Todd Haynes directed flawlessly but the scripts he co-wrote needed to be fixed or shortened.

Kate Winslet just nails every scene she's in and gives a powerful performance mostly in the scenes with young and adult Veda. The relationship between these feels so real even if it's a toxic one, a VERY toxic one. Kate gives us a character that has been beaten by life but, tries to go on and give her daughters a better life even if the world is falling down.

The sets and costumes are just brilliant. Anything you would expect coming from a period production.

It is a beautiful story and production, feminism at its best, but the writing needs some fixing.

Although the performances of Kate Winslet, Guy Pearce and Evan Racel Wood were all top notch in this 2011 remake, I preferred the original 1945 film. I just found the updated version to be too long. And it really didn't explain things as well as the 1945 version, such as the real reason why Mr. Pierce left his family. I know they make it seem like it was because he had another woman. But in the 1945 movie, it explained why he sought companionship with another woman. He was getting into a lot of arguments with Mrs. Pierce spoiling their daughters--especially Veda. And that's another thing too. In the 2011 version, it really didn't explain why Veda was a spoiled brat. But in the 1945 version, Mrs. Pierce said that she wanted to give the best things for her daughters. Anyway, another reason I liked the 1945 version more was because it had more style. I liked the film-noirness of it. I found the 2011 version to be all so typical and common. Nothing special. I don't know why they even bothered remaking this movie since the original was so much better. 5/10