The decor and costumes are gorgeous. Unfortunately, the filmmakers seemed to have made the decision to settle for making a beautiful film, while they could have made a great film.

I didn’t have an issue with the acting – I think everyone did solid work. At the end of the movie, I literally thought, “Hmmm, I wonder what the real Georgiana Spencer’s life was like?” Turns out, it is fairly close to the movie. Having to live with her husband’s mistress, the affair, the illegitimate child… It’s all true, a matter of historical record. With a plot like that, it’s hard to pinpoint where the filmmakers went wrong.

I think the main problem of the movie was that it never feels authentic. The audience is never allowed to believe that this is anything more than actors playing dress-up. Georgiana Spencer was a very modern woman – she was very active in politics a full century before the fight for suffrage even began. Unfortunately, the film decides to focus more on her appearance than the fact that this woman, like many intelligent, wealthy women of her time, was the leader of a salon where the brightest minds of the day came to debate the issues. The film leaves us with no sense of Georgiana Spencer as a woman of her time. Despite taking place during a time of great upheaval (war, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution) – anytime the subject turns to these matters, the music swells and the camera’s attention goes elsewhere.

What you are left with is the soap opera. The characters deal only with problems that are familiar to modern audiences. If you look at any of the great historical epics (from Gone with the Wind to Elizabeth), you always feel as if the characters are part of their surroundings and affected by the times in which they live. You don’t get that feeling from this movie.

This has been done before and done much better. What is the motivation of these characters? The romance between Georgiana and Grey was stilted. I felt little sympathies for the characters. Why was G so popular? What about her disgrace? In the end, I just didn’t care. In a movie like this, there should be someone to root for. I didn’t care if the lovers hooked up because I didn’t feel anything between them.

I like Keira Knightley, historical films, and classic romance stories. This film had potential, but there was obviously a need to fit in too much information and not enough time to do it in. Bring true emotion in to this film… let the viewer marinate in it, and you have a great film.

Well acted. Beautifully set. Wonderful costumes. Poor direction. No heart.

I tried to give this movie an honest effort, but maybe I couldn’t get over my negative feelings about Keira Knightley’s abilities. Once again, I found her acting shallow for the most part and at best melodramatic. The costumes were beautiful and the locations gorgeous, but even the talented Mr. Fiennes unusually flat performance couldn’t save Ms. Knightley as other actors have done for her in other films. This movie just couldn’t seem to decide what it wanted to be and it felt disjointed and bumpy the whole way through. The characters just never felt fleshed out for me. Beautiful to watch, but enormous costume and location budgets do not a movie make.

The Duchess

This seemed more like a tv movie than a film. The costumes were great, I’m fans of the actors, but it was missing something. Maybe it was the corny captions at the end, and I was annoyed how the film ended too. When did G die? How? What else did she do with her life – apparently she was a huge fashion designer but spent no time designing anything? Lady Bess’ life seemed more interesting and worthy of a story imo.

I can’t rate this movie ‘not worth watching’ because the costumes alone are worth it. Apart from those and the rich interiours I didn’t like this movie much. The story doesn’t flow, it just strings random events together without any background or introduction (Why is Georgiana so popular? What got her involved in politics? What made her decide to accept Charlotte? When did William get feelings for Bess?). And for the romance part, I was underwhelmed, there wasn’t much chemistry between Georgiana and her lover.

I won’t watch this again, however I will gladly admire the costumes again here

Wow, I was very much pleasantly surprised! I didn’t expect much and actually only started watching this film for the beautiful costumes, but in the end got so much more! I’m not too fond of Keira Knightley but I think she did a fairly good job as Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire.

Surely, the film itself didn’t hold many historical events (as such) but all the characters had depth, the relationships between different people were built gradually but still firmly. The biggest problem in most films today is that most relationships between characters are too rushed which makes them seem unrealistic or not too believable. I do understand not everything can be shown when so much has to be fitted in to approximately two hours, but I still think the relationship-development between characters is one of the fundamental parts of good film-making and thus shouldn’t be compromised too much.

When a film’s genres include Romance and Drama, one can’t expect anything more than just that – romance, drama, relationships, even tragedy. And that’s what The Duchess is about, too. It’s not supposed to be a historical dramatisation of the real Georgiana, and when kept that in mind, this film is very enjoyable and touching, I could almost see myself watching it again at some point!

I’m not a huge Kiera Knightly fan, but I was pretty impressed by this movie (but maybe it was easy to enjoy knowing I only paid $0.75 at the dollar theatre) :)

This movie at times is heart wrenching. There are a lot of interesting themes at play here and it’s quite beautifully portrayed by all of the actors. I can see how maybe the male dominance theme is a bit heavy handed, but it’s not far fetched for this time period.

Worth a watch.

I thought there might be a romance angle to the movie but it was the dominating theme. It must be the fact that I’m a male that I didn’t thoroughly enjoy this movie as my wife surely did.

I expected more of a historical angle to the movie but that’s what I expect from great period-based films. Ralph Fiennes does do a great job playing the heartless Duke.