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Tom and Viv [1994] Willem Dafoe

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Tom Viv (1994)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111454/

Tom Viv is a 1984 play by British playwright, Michael Hastings, which tells the story of the relationship between the American poet, T. S. Eliot, and his first wife, Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot. They were married in 1915 after a brief courtship, and separated in 1933 though they never divorced.[

In 1994, a film by the same name was directed by Brian Gilbert and starred Willem Dafoe, Miranda Richardson, Rosemary Harris, Tim Dutton and Nickolas Grace. It was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Miranda Richardson) and Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Rosemary Harris).

Willem Dafoe ... Tom Eliot
Miranda Richardson ... Vivienne Haigh-Wood
Rosemary Harris ... Rose Haigh-Wood
Tim Dutton ... Maurice Haigh-Wood
Nickolas Grace ... Bertrand Russel
Geoffrey Bayldon ... Harwent
Clare Holman ... Louise Purdon
Philip Locke ... Charles Haigh-Wood
Joanna McCallum ... Virginia Woolf
Joseph OConor ... Bishop of Oxford
John Savident ... Sir Frederick Lamb
Michael Attwell ... W.I. Janes
Sharon Bower ... Secretary
Linda Spurrier ... Edith Sitwell
Roberta Taylor ... Ottoline Morrell

Like Bette Davis, whomshe often resembles, Miranda Richardson brings a relish to her acting -- a way of attacking her craft with such vigor, panache and nervous intelligence that she seems to leave a blazing vapor trail in her wake.

In Tom Viv Richardson finds a part thats perfectly tailored to her tart, extravagant talent. Playing Vivienne Haigh-Wood, the doomed wife of poet T.S. Eliot, she gives a performance thats every bit as impressive and vivid as the ones she gave in Damage, The Crying Game and Dance With a Stranger, the 1985 film that introduced her to U.S. audiences.

Tom Viv is a love story turned to tragedy, a tale of two mismatched people: one, disciplined and brilliant, who achieves great distinction as a writer; the other, mercurial and tortured, who struggles to define herself in her husbands shadow.

Adapted by Michael Hastings and Adrian Hodges from Hastings 1984 London stage play, Tom Viv opens in 1914 when Haigh-Wood, the daughter of wealthy British aristocrats, marries Eliot (played by Willem Dafoe), an effete Anglophile poet from Missouri who wants nothing more than to be a part of tight little England.

It doesnt take long for the lovers to see the flaws in each other. Formal, emotionally parched Tom is a virgin with no taste for sex. Vivienne, plagued by a vile hormonal problem that plays constant havoc with her menstrual cycle, is addicted to a number of wrongly prescribed medicines that throw her emotions out of whack.

In his 1984 biography, T.S. Eliot, Peter Ackroyd describes Vivienne as bright and vacious, but given to wide mood swings and an instinctive sharpness of wit which was close to cruelty. She was clearly a burden to her parents, a proper, upper-middle-class Edwardian couple (played by Philip Locke and Oscar nominee Rosemary Harris).

Little surprise, then, that they see a potential stabilizing force in their new son-in-law. At first, Viviennes father is appalled: Eliot has no prospects for suitable employment or income and has sold only 200 copies of his published poetry. His manners are so impeccable, however, that he charms Viviennes mother, who believes that Tom loves her daughter, demons and all.

Indeed, Eliot was so effective at impersonating a real, tweedy Brit -- at dressing and speaking in the British style, at holding his emotions in check -- that he fooled people into thinking he was British by birth. When American critic Edmund Wilson met him, he called Eliot a completely self-invented character. Another dubbed him a company of actors inside one suit.

Brian Gilbert, who earlier made the Sally Field drama Not Without My Daughter, directs Tom Viv with a chasteness and formality typical of British biographical drama. Like Eliot, his approach is fastidious, refined, a bit bloodless. He has a juicy story to tell, however, and a tremendous cast to play it out.

The real value in Tom Viv isnt the picture it gives of a womans descending spiral into madness, but the way it demonstrates how Viviennes madness is exacerbated by medicine and defined not only by the times she lived in but by the tight, meticulous man to whom she was married.

Played by Dafoe, who uses his mysterious, reptilian face to good advantage, Eliot comes across as a shrewd, chiseled, highly controlled pig. Hungry for social status and career recognition, and pained by his wifes troubles, Eliot is ultimately willing to sacrifice her for the sake of his reputation.

When Vivienne acts out in public and humiliates Tom with her childish outbursts, or when decisions have to be made on how to manage her, Eliot gets a grave, inconvenienced look. Its a look that has less to do with his concern for Vivienne and more with the threat she poses to his professional standing.

Tom Viv tends to sympathize with Vivienne and suggests that the same qualities that enabled Eliot to become a Brit -- to dissimulate his American roots and reinvent himself as a pillar of British intellectual society -- were the same qualities that enabled him to cut himself away from his wife and authorize her committal to a sanitarium.

For years, the story of Eliots first marriage was shrouded in silence. It was only when Hastings began the research for his play, and spoke to Viviennes younger brother, Maurice Haigh-Wood (played in the film by Tim Dutton, who also narrates), that the truth emerged about Vivienne: She remained in the sanitarium 11 years, even after she had recovered from her ailments, and neither Eliot nor Maurice ever petitioned for her release.

Although he likened his years with Vivienne to a Dostoyevski novel, Eliots greatest work, The Waste Land, was largely inspired by their marriage. Later in life, he was married to a much younger woman, Valerie Fletcher, and remarked that this second union, along with his childhood, were the only happy times in his life.

Amazingly, Vivienne remained faithful to Eliot. Theres a scene in Tom Viv when a doctor visits her at the sanitarium and suggests that Eliot had done her a cruel disservice in allowing her to remain there. Indignant, she defends her husband as the greatest poet in the English language, a person so fine, he should be living among kings, covered in raiment.

Richardson seems to understand her character almost implicitly, and captures the complex, sad truth of Viviennes life: that she needed to believe in her husbands goodness to survive; that in that belief she found courage, and peace.

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