I love Hawthorne's novel. And this miniseries is VERY faithful to the novel. But if what you're looking for is a faithful rendition of the book, don't waste your time with this...JUST READ THE BOOK. This film is pointless: it brings absolutely nothing new to the tale, and it's not at all interesting to watch. The actors evidently have no idea what to do with the script; perhaps they have trouble expressing feeling with archaic dialogue, or perhaps it was because of incompetent direction. The director plods through most of the film with basic camera shots (there's nothing wrong with that, of course, so long as what you're watching is interesting [which in this case it is not]); at a few scattered points, however, he makes an attempt to do something artsy - like when Dimmesdale whips himself and when Hester is standing on the scaffold in the nocturnal scene - but these shots not only look out-of-place with the rest of the film but one gets the impression that they were put there just to show off rather than to really say something. Perhaps they (and the rest of the film) would have come off better if the production values had been more than nil, which I can only assume they must have been.
Review of The Scarlet Letter
