I'm not sure it's possible to express a spoiler here -- the film just doesn't have any truly dramatic moments outside of one dueling scene, and even that is pretty uninteresting. It's amazing that someone decided the story needed over 270 minutes to tell. There are many scenes that are totally unnecessary to the story and many more that could have been shortened.
There's a point where we see a couple get together, and we expect passion, fireworks, some real emotion. Alas, it is not to be. Way too many scenes are filmed from quite a distance, as if to say, "let's disengage ourselves as much as possible from this". The main effect is to prevent us from seeing the acting going on -- watching several people talking from such as distance, it's hard to tell what anyone is supposed to be feeling.
And the pacing. This film is glacially paced, and taxes even the most patient of us. There better be a payoff, but it never comes. I made it to the end, and I can honestly say that I felt like I had wasted my time. There just isn't enough going on in this costume drama to care. About the only good thing I can say is that the production values are not too bad, although it seems that the budget must have precluded much location shooting -- we see coaches going by the same landscape over and over throughout the film.
Summary: limp, boring soap.
There's a point where we see a couple get together, and we expect passion, fireworks, some real emotion. Alas, it is not to be. Way too many scenes are filmed from quite a distance, as if to say, "let's disengage ourselves as much as possible from this". The main effect is to prevent us from seeing the acting going on -- watching several people talking from such as distance, it's hard to tell what anyone is supposed to be feeling.
And the pacing. This film is glacially paced, and taxes even the most patient of us. There better be a payoff, but it never comes. I made it to the end, and I can honestly say that I felt like I had wasted my time. There just isn't enough going on in this costume drama to care. About the only good thing I can say is that the production values are not too bad, although it seems that the budget must have precluded much location shooting -- we see coaches going by the same landscape over and over throughout the film.
Summary: limp, boring soap.