Tom Kuzniar

Based on the reviews and reactions of others, I know that writing this review and formulating it the way that I am going to, may automatically give me the label of a racist. Well, I'm still going to take a risk and hope there are some souls with similar sentiments. I did not like this series for two reasons. First of all, the storyline is complex and confusing. As someone in this forum has said before: "It ain't Jane Austen". No, it ain't. Not enough wit, lots of characters that come and go, interactions that are brushed over, and characters that are cliched. There is no rhythm in the movie. Just speaking proper English with a British accent does not do it for me. Then, and this is my main problem with the movie, the cast. I understand how important it is to be all-inclusive in casting members of the minorities. The producers and director of this movie seemed to have forgotten, however, that the main reason people watch a movie is that they want to be transfixed, transported into the movie, to experience the personages and relationships as they were happening at the time when the story was taking place. The visual aspect of a movie is therefore as important as the storyline. If this was not, it would be much easier and cheaper to make a movie with actors sitting around the table and just reading their lines, would it not? I am sorry, but I cannot believe the story of Britain of the Regency era if such a multiracial cast. Why? Because in the Regency era, there were NOT so many members of minorities in Britain's high aristocratic circles. The aristocrats were, for the most part, white. Therefore, while I understand the reasoning behind the introduction of current diversity standards in film making (to address the long-standing problem of underrepresentation of minorities and "color-blindness" of the industry), I also think that thoughtless and automatic application of these diversity standards hurts the shows by making them unbelievable. Whom you cast (sex, age, race) DOES matter. If it did not, one could hire anyone for any role. Could you hire a young Asian American actor to play the role of George Washington? A mixed cast of White, Asian and Black actors to play slaves on the plantation and a Black actor as an owner of that plantation? An ethnically mixed crew as nazi concentration camp prisoners? An elderly female actor as John Malkovich in "Being John Malkovich"? I do NOT think so, not without making the audience very confused. I think that there ARE many movies that SHOULD have a more diverse cast because they represent the general human experience, and the decision to do so should be based on the setting of the movie. In a costume movie, with that much attention to the detail "de l'epoque", casting such an ethnically diverse cast was a mistake.