Subscribe
Jobs
Cars
Real Estate
Apts
Classifieds
Shop
During her long career, Maggie Smith has been many things to her fans. Electrifying as a charismatic schoolmistress in her best actress Oscar-winning role in “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.” Hilarious as the vain actress with a bisexual (at best) husband in “California Suite.” Heartbreaking as a middle-aged Irish spinster in “The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne.”
But “Capturing Mary,” a British drama premiering Tuesday on HBO Signature and subsequently airing on HBO on Demand, may be a first: a Maggie Smith movie that will totally creep you out.
You won’t get more than a hint of that in the opening scenes, as Smith’s meek Mary Gilbert talks her way into a once-grand mansion overseen by young caretaker Joe (Danny Lee Wynter), who offers her tea as she spills the story of an encounter she had at a posh party there half a century ago, when Mary (played in flashback by Ruth Wilson) met an older man (David Walliams, “Little Britain”) who led her into the wine cellar and told her something that left her undone.
“The idea came from the fact that when I was young, I remembered the power that the old had over the young, whether they were schoolmasters or theater critics who reviewed my plays and would take me out and play sort of dark games with my head,” director and screenwriter Stephen Poliakoff says.
Although the story builds slowly, it achieves a devastating impact in which Wilson’s performance as the vivacious young Mary meshes seamlessly with Smith’s shattering portrait of an alcoholic in decline.
“Stephen’s writing carries you, as it always does, but he was absolutely mean to me, because most of it is voice-over, and I thought, ‘Ah, well, I can do this.’ But he made me learn all of that, which was an absolute nightmare,” Smith explains. “I understand why he did that, because a lot of voice-over can sound very flat, and you can tell it was added later, and this certainly wasn’t. But it was a lot to learn. And it’s because he’s a fiend. An absolute fiend!”
