“There are a great deal of a great many kinds of love.”

The above is one of the many poetic musings we find in the writings of Lytton Strachey, a writer who is not as well-regarded today as he was a few decades previously, but where his work is still adored by many who find beauty in his words, especially in how he captured the human condition. This observation in particular bears a lot of relevance to today’s discussion, which is not about his work as a writer, but rather his domestic life, a great deal of it spent in the countryside, where his companion was the affable and talented Dora Carrington (although her preference for her last name over her sentimental and weak first name meant she is rarely referred to by anything else), with their relationship undergoing enormous challenges, especially in terms of how they defined it as something between love and friendship. Their experiences have been condensed into an incredibly beautiful film written and directed by Christopher Hampton in his directorial debut. Taking the majority of his inspiration from the non-fiction biography Lytton Strachey: A Critical Biography by Michael Holroyd, as well as a range of other sources, including writings by Strachey himself, the film examines their relationship from their first fateful meeting to the end of their respective lives, which were both cut short due to illness and tragedy. Hampton, an extremely gifted storyteller who has made incredible contributions in every conceivable medium available to him, is a terrific choice to tell this story. He proves to be quite a remarkable filmmaker, which is quite a surprise in comparison to the many playwrights who attempt to step behind the camera, not realizing the effort it takes to bring these stories to life. The result is a film that is both visually and narratively quite beautiful, while still being quite provocative in a way that honours the subjects.

Neither Strachey nor Carrington fashioned themselves as particularly conventional people, and they worked laboriously to separate themselves from the Victorian era, remnants of which still lingered heavily amongst English society, particularly in their literary circles. These were artists who had anecdotes about personal encounters with the likes of Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster, as well as other individuals who defined culture at the turn of the 20th century. Considering the unorthodox nature of their lives and the relationship that defined a large portion of it, Hampton made sure that this film was similarly unconventional, without being too abstract. Carrington is told in six chapters, each one covering a few years in the lives of the two central characters, following their initial meeting, the various experiences they had together and individually, as well as their final moments, focusing on the various trials and tribulations they encountered over the years, as well as their untimely deaths, which came quite close to one another and thus only further proved that they were inextricably tied together. Certainly not the first film to take such an approach, Carrington develops these events in a way that feels like chapters in a book, not only in terms of how Hampton structures the film and organizes the various events into different parts that are collected by tone and intention but also in the kind of atmosphere that is evoked. There is a tendency to view period dramas as inherently stuffy, and when they become about writers and artists, there is a further degree of coldness usually associated with it, almost as if viewers expect these films to be targeted at a more erudite audience. Hampton is certainly not against a solid period drama, but even his most serious works tend to be quite experimental in form, and in Carrington, he is not against some well-placed moments of levity, or restructuring the scenes to be slightly more abstract, evoking a sense of mystery and elusiveness in a story that benefits from a more actively engaging approach.

One of the benefits of being an established writer is that even when stepping behind the camera as a director for the first time, they can still request prominent collaborators to help them bring the narrative to life. Hampton had worked in film and television in addition to his groundbreaking work on stage, so he essentially had carte blanche to choose actors, many of whom would likely leap at the opportunity to participate in what was almost immediately a very exciting project. The central roles in Carrington were occupied by Jonathan Pryce and Emma Thompson, both at the peak of their careers and constantly doing terrific work. Pryce was known more as a stage actor, and his work in the theatre is reflected in this performance, where he plays the larger-than-life Strachey with such incredible wit and nuance, that we struggle to imagine any other actor being able to oscillate between eccentricity and somberness without a moment’s hesitation. Thompson is similarly quite adept at handling the many challenges that come with playing a character as complex as Carrington, and while it is quite a subdued performance, she manages to find ways to define the character in even her more quiet moments, where something as simple as a fleeting expression or brief movement makes it very clear what this character represents. Both leads are exquisite, and both are doing career-best work, which is doubly impressive when we consider how difficult it must have been to inhabit the minds of these people, who were ambigious in the sense that they exist through their work, and thus have to be developed in such a way that honours their creativity but also finds the human beings in between them, a daunting task but one that both Pryce and Thompson, as well as many of the supporting actors, seem more than willing to embrace.

In bringing these performances to life, we find that Hampton had intentions much broader than simply creating a dramatic retelling of the lives of its two central characters. He tends to use both Strachey and Carrington as narrative motifs, pawns designed to help him explore several deeper themes. One of the reasons their relationship has been viewed as being so incredibly fascinating was because of how fluid it was, and how they tended to avoid categorization. Through the knowledge we have of their interactions, it was clear that they engaged in some kind of companionship, although the exact nature of it is not clear, and these ambiguities are used by Hampton to set the foundation for this story, which draws on the vague elements of their lifelong friendship to show how they were symbiotic without being entirely dependent on one another. The film aims to explore identity, which it does with a lot of incredible complexity, especially considering it was working with few definitive facts and instead relied on overly poetic ruminations more than any concrete information that pointed towards the nature of their relationship. Changing the title to simply Carrington (rather than reflecting both protagonists) is especially odd considering the film was inspired by a biography of Strachey, but it starts to make sense when we realize that what Hampton was doing was neither an account of both characters, but rather the story of Strachey as seen through the eyes of the only woman who truly loved him, and who was coincidentally the only woman who he loved in return – considering he was a well-documented homosexual, and she also very likely identified along the queer spectrum (although this side of her identity is not explicitly stated quite as much), this carries a very distinct meaning and one that the director ensures he is examining with as much honesty and integrity as he could, paying tribute to these people and how they chose to live their lives, despite its extreme lack of conventions.

There are many angles from which we can look at Carrington, and Hampton’s insistence to avoid making it a one-dimensional biographical drama is clear from the start. At its core, this film is a wonderful exploration of the lives of two exceptionally gifted artists, whose work is often viewed in isolation and cited as a product of their genius, with very little discussion about how they influenced one another and essentially helped inspire their companion’s best works. It’s a very different kind of biographical drama – it isn’t too different from the many similarly-themed films we often receive, but yet it still feels like it is approaching the subjects quite differently. One of the reasons is that it is almost as interested in creating a very distinct image of the world as it is in telling the story that takes place within it – there are more than a few moments in which Denis Lenoir’s cinematography leaves us entirely spellbound, the level of intricacy and sweeping scope of many of his shots proving that Hampton is as much about telling a story as he is about visual composition, every detail being beautifully conveyed on screen. The score by Michael Nyman also sets the tone and helps establish a very specific kind of atmosphere, from which the director can develop a number of ideas, each one well-placed within this film. Carrington is a film in which the dialogue feels poetic but still has an air of authenticity, and the overall experience is one of immense complexity and profound honesty, each new detail being striking and moving in a way that we may not always expect. It is a shame that Hampton has not directed much in the years that followed – there were a few projects that came about in subsequent years, but they didn’t have the audacity of Carrington, a film that demonstrates an almost intrepid sense of complexity into a story that only benefits more from a group of artists more than willing to take on the challenges, knowing that the result is going to both honour the subjects and explore their life in a truly intriguing manner.