Sons and Lovers, the 2003 ITV television production of D. H. Lawrence's most celebrated novel, was reportedly the first adaptation of the novel that was based on the recently restored text, as well as the first cinematic attempt to illustrate the realistic depictions of Lawrence's sex scenes, which were vital to understanding the author's intentions. While there are certainly many such scenes in Sons and Lovers, and while they may offer some titillation factor for the curious, ultimately, it's a self-defeating focus that sheds little new light on the original work. Other problems dampen Sons and Lovers's impact, including a tad-too-tidy production design and a rather desultory approach to the material.

Lawrence's largely autobiographical novel tells the story of Gertrude Morel (Sarah Lancashire), a naive, sensitive girl who marries Walter Morel (Hugo Speer), a handsome miner working in Eastwood, near Nottingham. At first finding joy in being married -- particularly her pleasurable sex life -- Gertrude comes to realize that being married to Walter is not what she bargained for. A drinker, Walter spends most of his time in the local pub with his co-workers. When home, he's uncommunicative or worse, violent. Living with his openly unfriendly mother, Gertrude finds out that Walter doesn't even own the house they live in; he rents it secretly from his mother. As bills pile up, Walter refuses to stop having sex with Gertrude, further burdening the family with more children. Gertrude realizes very quickly that any kind of life she may have imagined for herself has quickly come to an end.

As Walter becomes more of a pariah in his own home, Gertrude turns her love away from him, and onto her sons, particularly oldest William (James Murray). Handsome and charming, William quickly becomes a surrogate for Gertrude's unfulfilled desires, and their relationship is extremely close. So close, that it affects William's attitudes towards other women. Unable to find happiness with the beautiful but shallow girl he meets in London (where he now works), William becomes ill and dies. Gertrude then transfers her longings and disappointments on her younger son Paul (Rupert Evans), a talented artist who works at a stockings factory as a clerk. Her clinging emotional hold on Paul becomes quite strong, as well as uncomfortable -- so much so that it too affects how Paul sees other women. Two women vie for his affections: Clara Dawes (Esther Hall), an unhappily married suffragette who eventually offers herself completely to Paul, and Miriam Leivers (Lyndsey Marshal), a local farm girl who loves Paul but who is unable to give herself sexually to him.

Reading a novel like Sons and Lovers is an interior experience, with the richness of the language and descriptive passages resonating within the reader's imagination. Necessarily, most cinematic adaptations of famous literary works run upon the stumbling block of translating those descriptive passages into valid filmic sequences. Translating the work literally, by using narration or having characters repeat whole passages of dialogue, still doesn't give the viewer the interior experience of the mind that the novel did. And if the filmmaker can't take the language of the novel -- the set pieces of story, if you will -- and compose them into equally artistic cinematic techniques, we're usually left with just the melodrama of the novel's plot.

That's what happens with this long, long TV adaptation of Sons and Lovers. Told in a monotonous, head-and-shoulders TV-style form of composition and direction, Sons and Lovers fails to capture any of the depth of the novel because it can't translate Lawrence's literary form into cinematic terms that equal Lawrence's intentions. While it may have seemed daring for the filmmakers to attempt the rather racy sex scenes Lawrence describes in his novel, the end result is more clinical than artistic, with much heaving and panting, a flash of nudity here and there, but with little ultimate impact. The repetition of the acts also works against their intent, until the second half of Sons and Lovers almost starts to resemble a bedroom farce. It's as if the filmmakers left in all of Lawrence's "naughty bits," and threw out the "art."

It doesn't help that the material is handled in such a boring, staid manner. There's zero life in this TV movie. Actors deliver lines as if submerged in water, with blank stares somehow substituting for real emotions. The sense of unrelieved realism that Lawrence strived for in this Freudian autobiography is missing from Sons and Lovers, as well. Forget the fact that Lancashire, a good actress I remember fondly from Coronation Street, curiously never seems to appear any older as the years supposedly fly by. This is a pretty clean little house and street for a coal mining town. When Gertrude complains about living in such a dirty little flat, the viewer is somewhat non-plussed, as the director has shot the charming little house in warm, glowing colors, with set decoration that looks freshly scrubbed and painted. There's only one shot of any coal miners in action, at the very beginning of the film, and it hardly sets the stage for letting the viewer feel like they're experiencing stunted, anxious lives lived in a dirty, dangerous mining town. So all we're left with in Sons and Lovers are good actors playing out a fairly familiar melodrama, with some occasional sex scenes thrown in to keep our attention throughout the long running time. Lawrence's "art" was left behind in the coal pits.

The DVD:

The Video:
The widescreen, 1.78:1 video image for Sons and Lovers looks good, with hefty color values and blacks that hold for the most part. I did notice occasional compression issues, but nothing major or distracting.

The Audio:
The Dolby Digital English 2.0 stereo mix is adequate for this dialogue-driven film.

The Extras:
There are no extras for Sons and Lovers.

Final Thoughts:
Failing to translate D. H. Lawrence's literary voice into cinematic terms, Sons and Lovers becomes a long, drawn-out historical period piece that substitutes melodrama for art. It's unconvincingly staged, as well, with a neat, tidy (and therefore false) little view of what it was like to live in a coal mining town. The R-rated sex scenes may provide some interest at first, but they quickly wear out their welcome, because ultimately, there's no point to them. A rental might suffice if nothing else is available.

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