World Without End

As a grandiloquent, soap-operatic midcult production, The Pillars of the Earth deluded viewers with its illusion of complexity and fatefulness. The loose sequel, World Without End, is solely a cash cow capitalising on the unfortunately understandable success of the first book/series, though it is primarily an almost forbidding exploitation-style tabloidish work that its creators didn’t try to dress up in such an illusion. With artlessness bordering on the aesthetics of allegorical chariots and wrestling, the plebs are presented with a spectacle serving as impotent spitting of venom at those evil villains from the ranks of the powerful men who repress the happiness of ordinary people. The degree of superficial depiction of the characters and their conflicts slips into caricature, when the main villains’ hands are so often covered in blood that it borders on mass murder. If the whole thing didn’t pretend to be so serious, it could be fine camp, but this is simply the narrative equivalent of The National Enquirer. Just as that publication cannot be mocked for its disarming straightforwardness, neither can World Without End.  (05/04/2013)