This film is adapted from a novelised version of the Scott and Zelda story, seen from Zelda's angle for once - much in line with Christina Ricci's own feminist agenda, as she has explained to the media at some length.
It sheds an unflattering light on Scott, deservedly enough, because he was indeed an immature and incomplete character, whose drinking shocked even Hemingway. Yet Hemingway blamed Zelda for distracting Scott from a sensible day's work, although he did fall back on her extensive diaries for much of the detail in his novels.
But any political message is bound to be eclipsed by the sheer fun of a Roaring Twenties spectacular, based around the couple who essentially invented that decade (in Scott's own phrase, 'The Jazz Age'). We start at the fag-end of the Great War, with 20-year olds writing their Last Will and Testament, as they await the fateful crossing to France. Posted to Alabama, Scott meets Zelda, the local county belle, spoilt and wilful, who is rather casually doing her bit for the war effort. There is a believable portrayal of a respectable Southern home, where Zelda's father, played with deep conviction by David Strathairn, tries to keep her in order, while "Well-behaved women don't make history" is flashed-up on the screen, as though it was coined by Zelda, which it wasn't.
We have to conclude that Zelda's fame as Scott's muse will always outshine any other role she may have hoped for (novelist, artist, ballerina), and Ricci fills the role as well as anyone could, despite being twice the age of the girl she plays. The title comes from Scott's declaration "I love her, and it is the beginning of everything". This may not seem to mean much, though it is true that he might never have got his first novel into print (third try), if Zelda had not stipulated this as her first condition of their engagement.
The puzzle remains as to why Amazon decided at the last moment to cancel this promising series before its second season (September 2017).
