Truth, lies, secrets and mysteries
Dec. 12th, 2018 08:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessMrs Wilson 3/3
The trouble with watching a show based on a real-life story that mundane colleagues are watching too…is ‘spoilers’ (I feel obliged to use the quotation marks, because after all, the Titanic sank, people.) (And yet, I’m grumbling about being spoiled.) So, I was spoiled for a very late reveal in the story and distanced from the dramatic impact it had on a character, which slightly tainted the viewing experience for me. And that is why I’m spoilerphobic.
Said spoiler was the fourth ‘wife’ with the son who really was still a child, just as Alison had decided that Alec really hadn’t betrayed his country, at least. We’d seen her be depressed so long, here was that ‘chink of light’ and then boom! And her sense that at least he’d chosen her and their sons after the others dissipated. He had cheated on her. (Too.) Although he died in their bed, lived mostly under her roof and came back for her in Cumberland.
I liked the complicating flashbacks to Alison, at her wits’ end with him in prison, no money coming in and two sons to feed, leaving him and considering a separate life. (That scene of her outdoors.) Her mother’s doubts, now vindicated, although at the time, Alison had just left him, not divorced him, so the situation was complex – and Alison’s decision ultimately. And Alec couldn’t let her/them go – probably feeling he’d given up too much, and loving them in his own way.
And it was her mother’s legacy that gave them their nice suburban home.
In the modern day, Alison reached out a little to her sons, after the previous rupture, and they reminded her that they were her sons too. As for the investigation, she had two main sources – both of whom were former intelligence officers, so they could have been lying, although the letters would have been a lot of faff to create. I was glad she tried to find other sources, like at the courthouse (has the building been demolished and they couldn’t find a lookalike?) The note at the end of the episode, saying the family still isn’t clear what he did (the state won’t release the info sixty years and more after the event, which causes all kinds of eyebrow dancing!?) explained why this was never clear in the show.
Although, again, I’m going to admit that Killing Eve-inspired suggestions about what Fiona Shaw’s character was up to came to my mind. I wonder which show she filmed first and if she and her agent had a ‘hmm, a bit similar roles’ character. Obviously, actors famously don’t control when their work appears, but still.
The stuff about the importance of the house he claimed as his offered a satisfying dramatic insight into Alec – the birth of the writer, the trauma of the Somme that he sought to escape. I’d have liked more information about his actual childhood, myself. I was also confused about his life as an author – I’d presumed he was publishing books from the time he was in pre-Partition India until he died, but was he? What about that published persona and the women who thought they were his wives? Of course, it was established that he was an accomplished and persuasive liar, so why would they go down that route – and the mid-twentieth century was different in many ways: women’s status, access to information etc.
I thought that the fact Ruth Wilson was playing and honouring her grandmother came through in the later scenes about Alison coming to peace and telling her sons (with one of them now a father, about time, too, I felt). Earlier, I’d been dubious about the priest’s advice in the previous episode – and I suspect Alec had not been entirely honest in confession. I was chary of the attempt to compare questions about the existence of God to Alison’s increasing doubts about a husband she had learned was so fallible that he wasn’t properly her husband, but that scene where she took her vows was numinous. And, fair play, she had to convey a character from her twenties to becoming a (relatively young) grandmother.
And then to see the sons now – and see from the dates that they met just in time for them to meet Michael – and the massed ranks of the descendants just emphasised that it was a true story.
ETA: An article from a member of the family filling in some more details
The trouble with watching a show based on a real-life story that mundane colleagues are watching too…is ‘spoilers’ (I feel obliged to use the quotation marks, because after all, the Titanic sank, people.) (And yet, I’m grumbling about being spoiled.) So, I was spoiled for a very late reveal in the story and distanced from the dramatic impact it had on a character, which slightly tainted the viewing experience for me. And that is why I’m spoilerphobic.
Said spoiler was the fourth ‘wife’ with the son who really was still a child, just as Alison had decided that Alec really hadn’t betrayed his country, at least. We’d seen her be depressed so long, here was that ‘chink of light’ and then boom! And her sense that at least he’d chosen her and their sons after the others dissipated. He had cheated on her. (Too.) Although he died in their bed, lived mostly under her roof and came back for her in Cumberland.
I liked the complicating flashbacks to Alison, at her wits’ end with him in prison, no money coming in and two sons to feed, leaving him and considering a separate life. (That scene of her outdoors.) Her mother’s doubts, now vindicated, although at the time, Alison had just left him, not divorced him, so the situation was complex – and Alison’s decision ultimately. And Alec couldn’t let her/them go – probably feeling he’d given up too much, and loving them in his own way.
And it was her mother’s legacy that gave them their nice suburban home.
In the modern day, Alison reached out a little to her sons, after the previous rupture, and they reminded her that they were her sons too. As for the investigation, she had two main sources – both of whom were former intelligence officers, so they could have been lying, although the letters would have been a lot of faff to create. I was glad she tried to find other sources, like at the courthouse (has the building been demolished and they couldn’t find a lookalike?) The note at the end of the episode, saying the family still isn’t clear what he did (the state won’t release the info sixty years and more after the event, which causes all kinds of eyebrow dancing!?) explained why this was never clear in the show.
Although, again, I’m going to admit that Killing Eve-inspired suggestions about what Fiona Shaw’s character was up to came to my mind. I wonder which show she filmed first and if she and her agent had a ‘hmm, a bit similar roles’ character. Obviously, actors famously don’t control when their work appears, but still.
The stuff about the importance of the house he claimed as his offered a satisfying dramatic insight into Alec – the birth of the writer, the trauma of the Somme that he sought to escape. I’d have liked more information about his actual childhood, myself. I was also confused about his life as an author – I’d presumed he was publishing books from the time he was in pre-Partition India until he died, but was he? What about that published persona and the women who thought they were his wives? Of course, it was established that he was an accomplished and persuasive liar, so why would they go down that route – and the mid-twentieth century was different in many ways: women’s status, access to information etc.
I thought that the fact Ruth Wilson was playing and honouring her grandmother came through in the later scenes about Alison coming to peace and telling her sons (with one of them now a father, about time, too, I felt). Earlier, I’d been dubious about the priest’s advice in the previous episode – and I suspect Alec had not been entirely honest in confession. I was chary of the attempt to compare questions about the existence of God to Alison’s increasing doubts about a husband she had learned was so fallible that he wasn’t properly her husband, but that scene where she took her vows was numinous. And, fair play, she had to convey a character from her twenties to becoming a (relatively young) grandmother.
And then to see the sons now – and see from the dates that they met just in time for them to meet Michael – and the massed ranks of the descendants just emphasised that it was a true story.
ETA: An article from a member of the family filling in some more details
