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.

The DVD came to a full stop. I went and found THE poem, Kubla Khan, went back to my television, and watched Pandaemonium again. As I am writing this, I have just finished watching for the second time. This movie has changed the way I experience language... As Dorothy said to Sam; "You are writing about things I have thought about" (something close to that, i'll have to watch again). This movie expresses the power of the word. It's an unbleilevebly tight script.As English is my secong language, my lingustic instincts never allowed me to understand poetry. Or so I thought. Watching this - just watching! how passive- I have experience something so powerful, so incompaassing. I first picked it up for John Hannah (because of him, this french girl's developed a fetish for scothish accents)but the actors are all so perfect.... without having that horrible perfect thing actors can sometimes have. (I just split an infinitive) I am blown away. see, when you learn a new language such as I have when I was about 15, you learn a new set of self-expression rules; you can actually express things that cannot be express any other way. and you can even start to FEEL your native language doesn't permit you to. (I just ended a sentence with a preposition) same goes the other way around. and this movie, has made me understand what new thing can be expressed. merciValery P. from Montreal

I knew some of Wordsworth's poems from reading, and a few of Coleridge by repute. This film was a very enjoyable and wonderfully acted experience from which I learned, as well as laughed and sighed. Now I want to read more of both, and return to the north-east of England again.

If I had wasted another 1-1/2 hours of my life, I'm pretty sure I would have rated Pandaemonium (2001) a 1/5. It's that bad.The movie purports to tell the stories of the young Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, considered the fathers of the English Romantic literature movement. This happens to be an area I studied as my major in college. Pandaemonium bore so little resemblance to the actual stories that it might as well have been a film noir.Inept acting and stupefying camera tricks add to the general mess.Whoever is responsible for this piece of junk decided to represent STC and WW as extreme late 18th-century hippies, which insults their memories as well as that of hippies. Unlike some of their later colleagues, such as Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, STC and WW were conventional men with superb literary gifts. The movie further cultivates the myth of STC as a drug addict, a facade he maintained to add mystery to his reputation.Unlike some bad movies, though, Pandemonium's not even fun to watch.Run, do not walk, away.