Tom Stoppard

This was the first time I felt as involved in film as in working in theatre. My immersion in Parade's End from the writing to the finishing touches took up the time I might have given to writing my own play but, perhaps to an unwarranted degree, I think of this Parade's End as mine, such was the illusion of proprietorship over Ford's characters and story.
—Tom Stoppard, from the Introduction

Tom Stoppard's

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In this surrealistic nightmare vision of a "perfect" future where technology reigns supreme, a daydreaming bureaucrat who is involved with an underground superhero and a beautiful mysterious woman becomes the tragic victim of his own romantic illusions. This is the original 142 minute director's cut edition of the film assembled from both the European and American versions.

Set over a tumultuous ten-year period in the early 20th century, this five-hour miniseries tells the story of an honorable Englishman coping with his growing disillusion at the end of a privileged era and the beginning of a new, egalitarian society. As the comfortable certainties of Edwardian England begin to give way to the chaos and destruction of WWI, nobleman Christopher Tietjens puts principles first by marrying Sylvia, a pretty, manipulative...

"At the twilight of an empire, Anna Karenina ... the beautiful high-ranking wife of one of imperial Russia's most esteemed men ... has it all. But when she meets the dashing cavalry officer Vronsky ... there is a mutual spark of instant attraction that cannot be ignored. She's immediately swept up in a passionate affair that will shock a nation and change the lives of everyone around her"--Container.