Priest of Love

I must say, this poignant drama about one of the greatest authors/poets, filled with wonderful, top shelf actors rmade my movie night. POL is an engaging if engrossing drama, which recounts the banning of DH Lawrence's books, and paintings, which at the time, went against what was acceptable, where Lawrence's work was sort of pushing, pornographic boundaries, which today, would be seen in a much more normal light. It's opening sees the grand trashing of one of his awesome sellers, by authority. DH Lawrence was the guy responsible for the notorious and raunchy Lady Chatterly's lover, which Lawrence based on his older wife, who on impulse, just took off with him, leaving her three children and hubby. The story is a little bit patchy, but really, it's the awesome actors which take away from that, and the story is an interesting journey of a liternary geniius. There are some wonderfully shot locations, villa's where Lawrence spent time, while his cancerous health deteriorated, where on occassions he was coughing up phlegm and blood, one scene, quite alertiing. You can't go wrong when you have actors of McKellen's, Suzman's, Gardener's, Keith's stature. Their all A1, there's actually no real competition, as they're just all perfect here, as is the less shown Gielgud, a police seargeant, who banished and seized Lawrence's works, where one gets the impression, there's a more personal attack, grudge. I actually found it hard to believe Gielgud's character's earlier profession, as he seemed much different. Keith, who once was the ambassador for the Continental soup ads in the 80's, as was the great Robert Morley, is just a delight as a sort of, floozie tag along wirth DH Lawrence and wifie. Her character was probably my favorite, in some ways, sad, and pitiful. I really liked this close trio, living for today, not tomorrow. Lawrence had some pretty violent moodswings, his anger exploding out of nowhere, where mostly, it was physically transferred on older wifie, Suzman. Some scenes, which you can see in the prieview, use that special atmospheric which truly gives meaning to the scenes. Trivia note- another of Lawrence's trashed books, Kangaroo, which we see as another hit for the author here, became an Aussie film, with Colin Friels, but sadly cinema wise, made more of a thud. Great period piece film for 1981, I suggest, you see POL. It might just entice you.

I've seen many films of D. H. Lawrence's works including "Sons and Lovers," "Women in Love," "The Virgin and the Gypsy," "The Rainbow" and "Lady Chatterley's Lover" and enjoyed all of them. I was surprised and disappointed by this one.

Christopher Miles did a wonderful adaptation of "The Virgin and the Gypsy" 10 years before he made this film. He certainly is a scholar of Lawrence and a talented filmmaker, so why was this film so charmless and seem so shallow.

I will give a couple of reasons: First, I saw the 99 minute recut of the film. I imagine/hope that the apparently lost original 125 minutes was less choppy and jumpy.

Second, Ian McKellan was a terrible choice for the lead. He simply was too much of a stage actor at this point of his career and he plays most scenes for the the benefit of the baloney.

Third, the beginning shows Lawrence having a nude swim with a homosexual lover. The rest of the movie is about his love affair with his German wife. It is just confusing and undercuts the rest of the movie as we expect him to run off and leave his wife for a man at some point.

Fourth, the movie portrays Lawrence as a one dimensional lone victim of censorship, surely there were other writers being censored at the time and many powerful people supporting his rights to freedom of speech. Making the censor a buffoon (played dully by John Gielgud) doesn't help, but seems to trivialize the issue.

Fifth, Miles may have been to close to the material. He wants to give us a lot of factual information about Lawrence, but the history lesson feels like a history lesson, and there is little dramatic tension. Janet Suzman as Frieda Lawrence seems to carry the weight of whatever dramatic tension there is.

The movie does have nice cinematography. However all the movies adapted from Lawrence's work also have great cinematography and much better characters and stories.

"Priest of Love" is a biopic about author D. H. Lawrence and his wife, Frieda. It follows them from World War I to his death in 1930.

"Priest of Love" is a rather superficial and dull biography. While D. H. Lawrence's work was very controversial in its day and resulted in some well publicized book burnings and his personal life was weird (to say the least), this film never piqued my interest. Perhaps it was the flat performances by the leads or the script. Perhaps it was because Lawrence wasn't a man whose life I would want to emulate. However, I think the main problem is that the life of Lawrence would best be summed up in a mini-series and condensing about twenty years of his life into a film is a tall order. So, because so much time passes, it comes off more like a Cliff Notes version of his exploits. My recommendation is that you instead read up on Lawrence and his life...you'll learn more and it won't be so dreadfully lifeless as this movie.

I remember this movie very well from 23 years ago. It came out at the same time as did REDS, which is coming out in DVD soon. Why not Priest of Love? The film details D.H. Lawrence's stand against World War I, his stormy relationship with his wife Frieda, his conflict with the authorities, his bisexual leanings. Ian McKellan is excellent, as is his co-star, Janet Suzman, as Frieda. In many ways, D.H. Lawrence was a powerful forerunner of that great prodigal student of Freud, Wilhelm Reich, with his writings on human sexuality and its fundamental importance to our psychology. This is truly a great movie, well photographed, from what I remember, dealing with still controversial, relevant topics for today.

First things first: I lived and worked in Eastwood, (D H Lawrence's home town) for ten years. I still pass through the area regularly as my wife's family live there. I always found it interesting that D H Lawrences best work is located in that mining (now ex-mining of course) area between Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. This film concentrates on D H Lawrence's life after he left the area.

The film is just a bog standard biopic done from the write by numbers playbook. It hardly ever come close to the real D H Lawrence. The facts and events are there, all the wandering around the world etc, but you only have to read Lawrence's collected letters to know that the picture given here is rather superficial It isn't helped by some amateur dramatics style acting, particularly from a way below par Ian McKellen and Janet Suzman. A pet hate of mine is the lazy generic Northern accent adopted by most actors doing D H Lawrence. Ian McKellen made him sound as though he was brought up in Yorkshire rather than Notts. Admittedly the Nottingham/Derbyshire accent is hard to do. Robert Lindsey does it well, but then he comes from Ilkeston.

The other thing missing in this film is a sense of D H Lawrence's wit and humour, which can be seen very well in his letters, short stories and some of his poems. I also didn't like the way the script writer (Alan Plater in his soap writing mood) somewhat lazily bought into the feminist critique of the 1980s. D H Lawrence, who wrote very sensitively on women's issues, is made to seem as though he was a male chauvinist. Again, a more careful reading of his works would have shown this to be untrue.

So, overall, a pleasant enough journey round the world with some nice scenery and some good support actors. As another reviewer has pointed out, a bit like a dramatisation of an encyclopedia entry.