Buddenbrooks

Written as though the original tone and plot are unimpeachable, with even the dialogue closely paralleled to the text, this twelve-hour presentation has little soul and no joie de vivre. Viewing this at a remove of 45 years, the direction, cinematography, and set design present little original or incisive; the acting choices remain staid and unpersuasive with little remarkable, even in the heightened moments of conflict. Obviously made for television and, likely, proposed as a teaching aid for younger readers of the German original or its translations, I fear that the four-CD series would offput anyone from reading far into the far better novel.