The Choice is a 2016 American romantic drama film directed by Ross Katz and written by Bryan Sipe, based on Nicholas Sparks‘ 2007 novel of the same name about two neighbors who fall in love at their first meeting.
The film stars Benjamin Walker, Teresa Palmer, Maggie Grace, Alexandra Daddario, Tom Welling, and Tom Wilkinson.
Principal photography began on October 13, 2014, in Wilmington, North Carolina. Lionsgate released the film on February 5, 2016.
Travis Shaw is a vet, living in small coastal town Beaufort, falls in love on his first meeting with Gabby Holland, who moves in next door. Gabby is a med student who is in a relationship with a fellow doctor.
~~GRAPHICS SOURCE~~
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Travis Parker and Gabby Holland set off into an interesting journey of life as neighbors and then young lovers. Travis Parker is a happy man with wonderful friends, great occupation and an enviable life. He thinks his life is already full of joy and happiness – then Gabby Holland moves in the house next door.
And what blossoms is an emotional and inspiring love story. It is a story about overcoming barriers to be with your loved ones. It is about pure and intense romantic love, trust, strength, and the choices we can make to show them.
Travis visits Gabby in the hospital after she is put in a comatose state after getting into an accident. Gabby has not woken up and the doctors say she probably never will. The choice Travis has to make is whether to take Gabby off life support or to send her to long term care where she may never wake up. He decides to take his chances and move her to long term care. Three months later, Gabby wakes up from her coma and moves back into their house.
Very little is known about Dido Belle’s life in the Mansfield home. The film centers on Dido’s relationship with an aspiring young lawyer and is set at a time of legal significance as the potential ramifications of the Zong massacre become apparent. Lord Mansfield’s ruling on this infamous case, in England’s Court of King’s Bench, became an important step in bringing an end to slavery in England.
Dido Belle, the illegitimate mixed-race daughter of a Royal Navy officer, is brought to England by her father and left in the care of his uncle, Lord Mansfield, the Lord Chief Justice, at his estate of Kenwood House. Though the social mores of the time make her an outsider, Dido is raised by Mansfield as an aristocrat alongside her cousin Elizabeth.
Dido’s burgeoning relationship with a young lawyer, John Davinier, meets with the disapproval of Mansfield who considers the match beneath her.
At the same time Mansfield is deliberating on a slavery case (Gregson v. Gilbert) which will advance the cause of the abolitionists.
The new movie “Belle,” which claims, like so many such efforts, to be based on actual events, is a novel work in that it takes on a topic not regularly treated in period drama, that is, the necessarily fraught place of a free black woman in proper British society in the late 18th/early 19th centuries.
Directed by Amma Asante from a script by Misan Sagay, “Belle” tells the story of an illegitimate mulatto child, daughter of a Royal Navy man, who’s raised in affluence, lavishly educated, and rather condescendingly doted upon by the extended family her father foisted her upon.
Once the girl, named Belle by her father but called Dido by her uncle and aunts, reaches adulthood (at which point she is incarnated by the lovely and capable young actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw), her marriage prospects seem unusual. Good thing she’s got a guaranteed income, something her white not-exactly-sister Elizabeth (Sarah Gadon) does not, for reasons that a thorough reader of Jane Austen novels could probably guess at correctly.
As it happens, Dido’s uncle Lord Mansfield (Tom Wilkinson) is a judge, and in the main part of the film’s story, he’s hearing a case involving a slave ship and the question of whether human beings can be insured like cargo.
Dido hears about the case in dribs and drabs, and then in more detail from a neighbor, a passionate vicar’s son (Sam Reid) who’s under Lord Mansfield’s tutelage, at least until they have a violent disagreement on the main issue of the case.
Dido’s consciousness grows, as does her attraction to the vicar’s son.
But at the same time, Dido’s aunts, played by Emily Watson and Penelope Wilton, seek to steer Dido into an engagement with Oliver Ashford (James Norton), son of a very scheming grand dame (Miranda Richardson, of course) and younger brother to a bug-eyed bigoted quasi-rotter (Tom Felton, who seems not at all concerned by the fact that he’s lately being cast as a Draco Malfoy For All Seasons).
The movie is intelligently written and well-acted.
Director Asante herself is a woman of color her shooting style is as conventional as any veteran director you can, or can’t, name. “Belle” is of undeniable interest in some respects, its overall execution restricts it from being as engaging as it wants to be, and as wrenching as perhaps it ought.
~~Painting~~
The painting, once thought to be by Zoffany and now attributed to an unknown artist, hangs at Scotland’s Scone Palace. It was one of the first portraits to portray a black subject on an equal eye-line with a white aristocrat.
~~Production~~
The film was shot on location in the Isle of Man, Oxford and London and is the first major British motion picture to be shot on true-4K, using Sony’s F65 CineAlta digital production camera. The film was produced by DJ Films, Isle of Man Film, and Pinewood Pictures with support from the BFI.
Production designer Simon Bowles created 18th Century Bristol Docks on the Isle of Man and created Kenwood House using a number of stately homes in the London area.
Original music for the film was composed by Rachel Portman.
~~Historical references~~
The film is a work of historical fiction, inspired by a painting previously attributed to Johann Zoffany and the evidence that Dido was brought up at Kenwood.
The relative absence of known facts about Dido Elizabeth Belle gave screenwriter Misan Sagay (Their Eyes Were Watching God) considerable artistic license in framing the young woman’s story within the broader historical context of a slave-centered economy slowly entering its death throes.
~~Belle Trailer 2013 Gugu, Tom Felton, Amma Asante 2014 Movie – Official~~
~~SYNOPSIS~~
Published on Oct 17, 2013
Belle Trailer 2013 – Official 2014 movie trailer – starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Tom Wilkinson, Emily Watson, Sarah Gadon, Penelope Wilton, Miranda Richardson, Tom Felton, Sam Reid, Matthew Goode – directed by Amma Asante.
The illegitimate, mixed-race daughter of a Captain in the Royal Navy finds her unique social standing become instrumental in the campaign to end slavery in England after meeting an idealistic young vicar’s son.
“Belle” movie hits theaters May 2, 2014.
Belle is inspired by the true story of Dido Elizebeth Belle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), the illegitimate mixed race daughter of a Royal Navy Admiral. Raised by her aristocratic great-uncle Lord Mansfield (Tom Wilkinson) and his wife (Emily Watson), Belle’s lineage affords her certain privileges, yet the color of her skin prevents her from fully participating in the traditions of her social standing.
Left to wonder if she will ever find love, Belle falls for an idealistic young vicar’s son bent on change who, with her help, shapes Lord Mansfield’s role as Lord Chief Justice to end slavery in England.
It Is What It Is 