WHAT I'VE BEEN WATCHING - THE PILLARS OF THE EARTH

I read the book and...

 When I read it, not long ago, I liked this story very much  because of  my love for historical fiction, but also and above all,  because it is the story of  men who dreamt to achieve something extraordinary, something sublime, something which would let them beat Time. I know there have been plenty of  literary heroes whose deeds went through and beyond Time, but,  in this special case the heroes are humble people,  poor-but - talented creatures achieving very high goals. A master builder and his step son, Tom and Jack, dream of getting high, as high as the top of a gothic cathedral. The  older of them will not see his dream come true, but the younger one will. What a great epic story!

The key idea of literally building a new church has its symbolical correspondence in Prior Philip's dream of building a new higher Church at a spiritual level. His complex character, with a strong , not-flawless,  personality, is so humane and touching.

 After many years from the huge success of Ken Follet's book, The Pillars of the Earth was made into  an eight-part  TV miniseries.



... then watched the TV series

I read the novel only last summer  (my review) just as a preparation for watching this period drama  which debuted in the U.S. on Starz and in Canada on The Movie Network/Movie Central on July 23, 2010, which had its UK premiere  on Channel 4 in October 2010 and which was even on Italian sallite TV (Sky )  in a 4-part version (each episode lasting about 2 hours) .  The series has been recently nominated at the 68th Annual for 3 Golden Globe Awards.

I found the first 4 episodes (2 in the Italian version) a bit slow and not as gripping as the rest. The story starts captivating you later on. You must familiarize with the numerous characters, especially if you haven't read the novel,  so , maybe,  the slow rhythm is just useful.

The cast is amazing and , though with an exaggerated tendency to turn every little fact into a sensational show  (which is so typically US style but not always indispensable, learn from British BBC) the series is  good period drama.
We often see books turned into movies and many of them become butchered somewhere during the process of cramming hundreds of pages of story into a two-hour film. I'm convinced any attempt to turn Pillars into a big screen movie would’ve been disastrous. Even the best of screenwriters would have trouble figuring out a way to condense the story that much. A mini-series format was definitely the  right way to go with a story that focuses on numerous, interlocked subplots such as Pillars. 

 So, a good book has been made into an ambitious, moving series. There are many changes to the plot of the novel, but the story remains basically the same. My impression was that the screenwriters made the story-lines and their intermingling with the historical background much clearer and easier to be followed than in the book : this can be interpreted both as positive - no complexity -  and as negative -stereotyped interactions and more easily  foreseeable twists.

I particularly liked Rufus Sewell as Tom Builder, Eddie Redmayne as Jack and Matthew MacFadyen as Prior Philip which are among the "good ones", those with flaws but lots of virtues and qualities. The bad guys, the villains are rather cardboard baddies, monodimensional. Waleran Bygod the Bishop and  the Hamleighs , are depicted with  no attempt to give their sadistic tendency to wickedness any inner reason, nor a plausible motivation - apart for mere greed- nor  a possibility of redemption. William and his mother, Waleran and his allies are pure evil and represent the medieval corrupt, wicked, wild  thirst for power.They are the driving force of the events but own no nuances nor facets. As usual ,  in the constant war of the good against the evil , the latter will  fail  and won't get  to lasting power, as usual, they get  the right and well-deserved comeuppance in the end. !This means ... all's well that ends well ...  Too foreseeable ?  But I like it so much when it is like that! Well...there have been rare occasions in which... but that's another story.

Differences between the book and the series

The miniseries plot differs from the book in many ways. Several events are omitted: the dispute between Henry II and Thomas Becket, which results in the martyrdom of Thomas Becket by several of Henry's knights in Canterbury Cathedral; Prior Philip's role in Becket's canonization and Henry's subsequent penance; Jack's travel to Toledo in Spain, where he is a guest at the house of a Christian Arab trader.

Moreover, some themes exist in the series that are not mentioned in the book: William Hamleigh has an incestuous relationship with his mother, Regan.

Several events have been changed or added: in the book, Johnny Eightpence is a half-wit monk, not an outlaw who confessed and entered the monastery; in the book, Philip does not mention to Regan that Aliena and her brother are hiding in the castle; rather, William spied on her continuously and arrived at the castle before his parents to rape her; the initial hanging of Jack Shareburg was replaced by burning at the stake, preceded by torture and removal of his tongue.

If you are interested in more differences between the book and the series you'll find a long list HERE.

If you want to know more about the cast click HERE. For further information,  have a look at the OFFICIAL SITE. If you haven't seen it you can buy the DVD HERE or HERE.