Vanity Fair screenplay by Matthew Faulk, Mark Skeet and Julian Fellowes, based on the chef d’oeuvre by William Makepeace Thackeray, the magnum opus sists in the 114th place (the book, not the film) place on The Greatest Books of All Time site…you find more than five thousand reviews of books from this list, and films from The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made and other compilations on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html though I am not sure if it is worth it

 

Vanity Fair screenplay by Matthew Faulk, Mark Skeet and Julian Fellowes, based on the chef d’oeuvre by William Makepeace Thackeray, the magnum opus sists in the 114^th place (the book, not the film) place on The Greatest Books of All Time site…you find more than five thousand reviews of books from this list, and films from The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made and other compilations on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html though I am not sure if it is worth it

 

 

9 out of 10, though the book is a 10 out of 10

 

Becky Sharp is one of my absolute favorite characters, especially as she we find her in the original Vanity Fair https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/06/vanity-fair-by-william-makepeace.html, or at least, I must say the way I saw, imagined her when I was younger, some decades ago, wishing to meet a replica of her

 

Notwithstanding this caveat, I must say that Reese Witherspoon has offered a splendid performance in the leading role, despite the fact that the critics only gave this a Metascore of 53 out of 100, much under rated in my opinion

Becky Sharp has a mountain to climb, for she is born poor, and if that is a major obstacle today, when children of the rich tend to have a much better chance to succeed, at the start of the nineteenth century, this was a handicap that almost nobody could surmount, one could not become rich, even if very talented

 

However, Becky Sharp is from another league – and world, she is fiction, and as we look at the world, she is the opposite of MAGA, if you ask me – and she manages to change her status, she has an astounding Emotional Intelligence – studies https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/07/positive-psychology-by-kate-hefferson.html show...

that EQ is more important – I think I have read that twice as relevant – than IQ, only the heroine has both, she is so capable that she comes out of the most challenging, impossible situations, and yes, she is ruthless at times

 

After school, Becky stays with the family of her friend, Amelia Sedley, and she hopes to marry somebody suitable aka wealthy, perhaps Amelia’s brother, Joseph Sedley, who will travel to India – the land (British then) that is so enticing, she wants to experience new things, they offer her a spice that would send her down in tears

Becky Sharp is resilient, courage, determined, strong, she does not submit, even if we could imagine what the eating of the pepper felt like -after this episode, the main character has to go to work as a governess, in the service of baronet Sir Pitt Crawley, played by the outstanding thespian Bob Hoskins, with incredible humor

 

When she arrives at the house, the heroine tells the man who opens the door, who looks like a pauper, to take the luggage and tell the master that she has arrived, but the fellow replies that she just did, meaning this creature is really the baronet, who becomes so attached to this overwhelming figure, an inspiration

She takes the house, well, mansion really, upside down, and then they receive the visit of the rich sister, Miss Crawley, ho falls for Becky, while the family waits and hopes that the elder woman dies, so that they can inherit her fortune – she has a favorite, Captain Rawdon Crawley, a dashing, if not that smart young man

 

This is where Becky Sharp miscalculates – spoiler alert maybe – in that she becomes the protégé of the rich spinster, the latter even talks about her nephew running away with someone, but when she finds that Becky married the one for whom she had some incestuous affection (maybe) she is outraged and throws the heroine out

‘Learn to fail or fail to learn’ that is something Harvard Professor Tal Ben Shahar https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-pursuit-of-perfect-by-tal-ben-shahar.html repeats in the lectures you find on YouTube

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – I am on Goodreads as Realini Ionescu, at least for the moment, if I keep on expressing my views on Orange Woland aka TACO, it may be a short-lived presence

Also, maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the benefits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’