Of all the Strauss operas, this fantastical, strange and humane fairy tale, first presented in Vienna in 1919, is the longest, the most musically elaborate, the most philosophically resonant and the most daunting to stage.
By centring her narrative on the humane and free-thinking Thomas Cromwell, who believes in kindness, tolerance and education, Mantel has found a way to reconfigure the tired tale of Henry's lust and what it led to.
Ira Sachs, best known for his intimate, humane New York stories, has a fascination with tales of transition, both in the city setting and in the relationships that unfold there.
From this bleak sounding premise, an engrossing tale of resilience emerges - frank, unsentimental, yet warmly humane.
I guess that's part of the deal, yet the tale as a whole, though filthy-mouthed, is lenient and humane.
After all these depressing tales, the second half of the film ushers us into a nirvana of humane and caring treatment supposedly provided to the citizens of Canada, France, Britain and even Cuba, a needlessly provocative choice that detracts from the main message.
Although many lab chiefs are humane and generous mentors, and most are at least fair and reasonable, some, as anguished tales make plain, comport themselves as workplace tyrants whose workers fear that they would jeopardize their professional futures -- and often their right to remain in the United States -- by asserting their workplace rights.
And while we like to think it's stories as subtle as Ulysses or humane as Middlemarch that drive civilisation along, in fact what quickens the popular imagination are simpler tales of goodies and baddies, in which the baddies are always someone else.
Altman is a wonderful movie-director and a humane man; but, on this evidence, he has little respect for writers or the intentions behind Miller's satiric tale.
