Pandaemonium *** (Linus Roache, John Hannah, Samantha Morton, Emily Woof) – Classic Movie Review 1699

Director Julien Temple is in his element in this imaginative and worthwhile 2000 British biographical drama as Frank Cottrell Boyce’s intelligent screenplay tells of youthful friendship and betrayal between two world famous poets at the time of the French Revolution.

Linus Roache and John Hannah star as the young English poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. Samantha Morton and Emily Woof co-star as Sara Coleridge and Dorothy Wordsworth. Samuel West also stars as Robert Southey, with Andy Serkis as John Thelwall, Dexter Fletcher as Humphry Davy and Clive Merrison as Dr Gillman.

Coleridge flees the big city with his wife and baby to set up a self-sustaining Utopia and William and his sister join them. The two poet friends then get down to work, in particular on their collaboration on the Lyrical Ballads and Coleridge’s writing of Kubla Khan. The pressure of work and the taking of opium start to destroy Coleridge.

Roache won the Best Actor award at the London Evening Standard British Film Awards. The film was shot on the Quantock Hills, near Taunton in Somerset.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1699

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