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Snoozy Shades of Gray

Effie Gray married John Ruskin, who was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era. As portrayed in this latest telling of the famous story, it is an absolute mystery why she did so, unless it was to achieve higher standing in the social community of England.

I'm not sure if this has been explained better anywhere else, but this telling had me scratching my head. There is zero chemistry between them, which eventually gets explained, but not knowing what went on in either of their brains makes all of this seem pointless, and boring to boot.

Dakota Fanning plays Effie and we first meet her after she has married the older Ruskin (Greg Wise) and it's quickly apparent that Effie is already unhappy with the marriage. It's difficult to blame her. He is as cold as humanly possible, is pompous to the nth degree, and has no readily visible attractive qualities whatsoever. The only people capable of eliciting any humanity out of him are his parents, and they aren't exactly the warm and fuzzy types, either.

Effie is sickly most of the time, with the possibility lingering that perhaps it's Ruskin's mother that is causing her to be persistently under the weather. A temporary respite is granted to her when she accompanies her husband on a trip to Venice. He is not interested in any of the social engagements available, leaving Effie alone with a dashing young Italian gentleman who is very interested in her. She is also enamored of him, but runs away before anything can come of it.

Back home she is tempted by John Everett Millais, her husband's assistant. Once again, she struggles to resist and succeeds, even though her husband has still not consummated the marriage. Why that is, is still our best guess.

The central problem with the portrayal of this oft-told tale is that it is difficult to sympathize with Effie. Maybe it's our modern moralities that make us want to get up and scream and tell her to get out of the marriage, or perhaps it's not particularly good acting. I'm not sure, but I am sure that I don't care, and when you don't care what might happen to the main character in a drama, you really don't have much at all.