Coming Through

Alan Plater's D. H. Lawrence film for television, "Coming Through", doesn't really come to life until Helen Mirren enters at exactly the half-way point. She oddly receives top billing (the opening credits) as Frieda ove Kenneth Branagh's Lawrence in the show, likely because Branagh's film and TV career was just beginning. But she brings out the best in Ken's performance here, and gives the movie much-needed warmth.

Plater worked as writer on two Lawrence movies I much admired: "The Virgin and the Gypsy" and "Priest of Love", but here he has saddled his story with an awkward framing device: the two Lawrence scholars talking about the "great man". Alison Steadman getting a cook's tour of the actual Nottingham locations he trod is awfully weak content competing for air time with Branagh & company enacting the man's life. It's all flatly directed and stuffy at times, without the flights of fancy and personal touch that a master like Ken Russell could impart to a biopic.

Interesting backstory of D.H. Lawrence and Frieda Weekley in the early 1900s is marred by a contemporary story of an adult female student in Nottigham who meets a male student. While the current couple talks about Lawrence (they basically add no insight or information) they flirt and talk.

Meanwhile, the real story shows a young Lawrence grappling with ill health and a boring teaching job when he meets the aristocratic Frieda who is stifled in a Victorian marriage. The two are drawn to each other but realize that any sort of liaison will mean she has to give us her three children.

The story ends in 1912, before the onslaught of World War I, as the couple have made their decisions. In a few year Lawrence would be hounded out of England because he could not serve and because Frieda was a German national and a woman who had abandoned her children. Eventually they would end up in Taos, New Mexico, where they would be free.

Kenneth Branagh is excellent as the young genius who tries hard to escape his working-class roots and write stories about truth and beauty. Branagh has an exceptional moment when he recites the poem "Violets." Helen Mirren is also excellent as the willful Frieda who dares to give up everything to love Lawrence. Older than Lawrence she acts as a lover and a mother figure.

In the contemporary story, we get Alison Steadman as a dowdy students and Philip Martin Brown as a guy on the make. They are totally boring and unappealing and intrude on the real story. My guess is that they are supposed to set the story of Lawrence and maybe act as a contemporary version of "a man and a woman." They fail at both.

Also good are Benjamin Whitrow as Fried'as aloof husband, Ernest Weekley, and Norman Rodway and Alison King as the Hopkins, as an avant garde British couple who spur Lawrence on to find his own truth in love. Hopkin was a leading intellectual of the day and his "open houses" combined robust discussions of politics, religion, art, and literature.

As good as Branagh and Mirren are, stick with 1981's PRIEST OF LOVE for the best biopic on Lawrence.

Hi, I agree with the first reviewer. I have actually watched this film several times; I own it. I do not regret buying it at all. Get the film if you like fine performances and if your are a fan of Kenneth Branagh's. His wonderful recitation of the poem "Violets" will not leave you disappointed and is worth the price. This is Lawrence's well known "dialect" poem and Branagh does it flawlessly...the words and the subtle expressions facially are terrific. How he does it is beyond me, and showed a real spark of brilliance in his early acting career. Helen Mirren is great, as usual. The film is worthwhile to see if you are an avid reader of D.H. Lawrence, and familiar with his real life story and his poetry. However, I would certainly agree that the secondary story (modern day) greatly paled with the actual Lawrence story, a pity really considering that this could have been a wonderful opportunity to reveal more about the great author and his life. I sometimes watch this film and fast-forward to scenes set in the past. There is some wonderful stuff there. Sometimes the repetition of the soundtrack, which is quite poignant and sad in tone, annoys me, but the acting is excellent...worth ignoring the soundtrack, which is not really bad. It is true that the film ends just when it could have become interesting...but it is just one segment in Lawrence's life and even had that time been explored more extensively it could have been a much better film. I still would recommend it to some.

There are 2 reasons to see this movie (and only 2). Really beautiful scenery, and wonderful acting by Kenneth Branagh. Other than these, I found the story underdeveloped, and the movie ended just as it was beginning to get interesting. We see some flashbacks of DH Lawrence's life. However, whereas the cover of the movie suggests that the focus would be on the relationship between DH Lawrence and a married woman, this relationship is not the focus of the movie. In fact, this is a movie that looks at DH Lawrence, without focusing. Therefore, one is surprised when the movie ends, but not sorry.