Besides the obvious lush visuals of an Ivory production, something about The Bostonians was breathtaking. Maybe it is remembering what Christopher Reeve used to look like-dynamic, larger than life & so alive! Maybe it is because I kept thinking that if Gary Cole played the role that Reeve played as Sheriff Buck from American Gothic, the ending would make sense to everyone! Maybe because there were so many unlikable characters & I still wanted to know what would happen to them. Maybe because people used an important issue like feminism as an excuse to feel important. Maybe because I couldn’t decide whether I thought anyone but Madeleine Potter should have played the role of the central character or if the point was that she was somewhat of a blank slate for other people to project (there was only one scene where she showed steel–when she turns down a drink otherwise she seemed too flightly to be taken seriously as a speaker). Definitely because Linda Hunt got to play a normal woman & I liked the idea that despite Ransome’s dated thinking, they were clearly friends & equals. How despite Ms. Chancellor’s pleas for equality, she was a bit of a tyrant. I do think that the description is a bit misleading.