The Impressionists

This is a well-produced BBC docudrama miniseries that may or may not be coming to PBS, but for which I will try to arrange a screening during the Monet exhibition at the Clark this summer. Lovely to look at and respectful of fact, with the actual locations and paintings very well repesented, this program is precisely aimed at a middlebrow viewer such as myself, who knows enough to verify the veracity of the narrative and brings enough antecedent interest to care about a less than gripping narrative, but doesn’t know enough to be thrown out of the story or driven to debunk. As a film on its own merits, it may not be more than pretty and well-informed, but as a cultural travelogue, it’s hard to beat. None of the actors was immediately familiar to me (except for the delightful Amanda Root of Persuasion as Monet’s second wife), which contributed to the film’s air of you-are-there reality. Even with my limited background, I had to ask where is Pissarro? and what about Morisot and Cassatt? -- but as presented through the reveries of Monet at Giverny in 1920, the series does sketch in the stories of Manet, Degas, Renoir, and Cezanne in a relatively true-to-life group portrait, giving an honest impression of the Impressionists. (2006,dvd, n.) *6+*