bob the moo In the 19th Century, poets are the rock stars of their time – using drugs, living on the edge and revered by many for their creative influence. At a rally where he protests against the war with France and slavery, Samuel Coleridge meets the young William Wordsworth, who idolises him and joins him in his "revolution". When Coleridge flees the city with his wife and baby to set up a self-sustaining Utopia of their own, William and his sister join them. The two friends get down to work, although the writing process starts to destroy Coleridge from the inside – although maybe it's the opium? I taped this film because the title and cast caught my interest but, whenever I read what it was about I thought twice because it sounded like a dull historical film about characters I didn't know a great deal about. Despite this I decided to give it a go and see if it was any good. From the very start the film interested me with its strange visuals and interesting characters. The actual plot is not so easy to get into, but the relationships are well written and there is always something going on. I do not know the "real" facts behind these characters so I will not go down the road of picking at this film for what definitely contains a great deal of artistic license (the film ends on the London Eye) but in a way it is the license that makes it more interesting. With this, we are able to enter the experience rather than just the story; it also allows for plenty of interesting touches. I laughed quite a bit to read reviews ranting about errors in continuity, with some shots having modern things in the background – perhaps they didn't reach the end of the film to see that this was deliberate and became more frequent as the film went on (why review it if you haven't seen it all?). The precise meaning of this was lost on me other than it being about Coleridge being ahead of his time or timeless in his vision, but it did make the film interesting. The characters of Coleridge and Wordsworth are both interesting and it is they that make the story worth sticking with.This is not to imply it is brilliant because it isn't, but it is enjoyable, interesting and different enough to keep me watching. The direction is a bit too forced at times but it does have some nice moments that are original if not cohesive. The cast do well to help inject a certain amount of humour, wonder and drama when any or all of them are required. Roache gets all the "wonder" stuff and is pretty good but he has the film stolen from him by stealth as Hannah delivers a great performance. Wordsworth starts out idolising Coleridge and following him, but then gradually turns to destroying his work etc – this transformation is very well done by Hannah, who works the extremes well but does the transition better. Support is as strong as you would expect from Morton, Woof, Serkis and others but the film belongs to the lead pair and the director.Overall this is not a brilliant film but it is an interesting one. The narrative is difficult because the director tries hard to make it obscure and difficult to get deep into, but the general delivery features an interest character story told with humour, drama and good acting. The interesting (if a little pretentious) direction is always interesting even if it can be a little alienating at times. If it sounds boring and "not your sort of thing" then you'll be the same as me – in which case you should give it a try anyway, but I do wonder what fans of Wordsworth and/or Coleridge made of it.

Jody Schiesser (mythago-3) Pandaemonium is one of the better films I've seen in a long time. Some of its themes are much like the ideas (ala Hassan i Sabbah & assassins & hunger for paradise) that have attracted me lately. It is about the poets Wordsworth & Samuel Taylor Coleridge (who wrote "Kubla Khan"). The exploration of the creative force, mingled with the seeking to see deep into reality is amazing (Coleridge tried to do it with opium, and both succeeded and kind of destroyed himself in the process). The movie is based on real history but I think it took some liberties to make it a more powerful story. Coleridge also wrote "The Ancient Mariner," and that poem is incredible, I've even more taken by it to see it so lushly explored in a visual sense in how the idea and language came to Coleridge. There's some really funny parts too, like a time when they eat datura and almost fall up off the world (or their perceptions convince them they are about to, and then they start playing with it, realizing the joke, but still pretending that they can fall up.) There's a scholarly literary study on Coleridge published in 1927 called "The Road to Xanadu - A Study in the Ways of the Imagination" by John Livingstone Lowes, a brilliant book, and I wonder if the filmmakers got many of their ideas and details from that book.

Charles MGH This movie does a good job of demystifying poets and poetry, and conveying the temptation and wastefulness of drug addiction. Ultimately, though, it's an unnecessarily complicated film with a drifting moral center and a real lack of focus (some will attribute this to its desire to recreate the opium mindset, but that's a cop-out). The splintered sympathies and victimized viewpoints make it hard to care about any of the characters. A waste of solid acting.

Craig Larson I saw the movie on DVD and really enjoyed it. I guess I thought Wordsworth and Coleridge were more friendly than this (and maybe they were) in reality. The film sure is biased towards Coleridge. Wordsworth comes off very badly--he gives up on his revolutionary principles, marries a shrewish wife, and seems only interested in how he will be viewed by posterity. Wordsworth goes to visit Coleridge and to collaborate with him, but can't seem to put a single word to paper. Then, suddenly, _Lyrical Ballads_ is finished and published and filled with Wordsworth's poetry! The performances are excellent, particularly Linus Roache as Coleridge and Emily Woof as Dorothy Wordsworth. I was reminded of a similar film, _Haunted Summer_, which portrays the meeting of Percy Shelley and Lord Byron. The film is a bit odd at times, with jet trails moving across the skies of the 18th century, but it does a great job of getting at the creative impulse, showing the feverish bouts of imagination that gave rise to Coleridge's _Rime of the Ancient Mariner_ and the fragment _Kubla Khan_ (interesting that it shows an interruption by Wordsworth as the cause of STC losing his train of thought). Also, the scene with frost forming on the window while Coleridge cares for his son Hartley, leading to one of his more memorable early poems, is a standout. This film is well worth your time and isn't the boring, stodgy take on biography that some might be fearing.