Some movies are made to make cry, others to frighten you, and others to bring out issues that arise in the society in which the movie was made. On of those movies would be the cinematic adaptation of Patrick Garland's A Doll's House. The movie carries that name because it presents a household that is as fake and as fragile as a true doll's house. It brings out the everlasting issue of money "eating" a person's soul, the control by it, how it shapes everything we know and how it can destroy relationships as it leads to cruel ambition for more cutting the individual from all that is important, and how people's social status and good name depend on it.
In A Doll's House we are presented with a household that from a first glance appears to be happy, but then even from the first scene you can see how the wife, Nora (Claire Bloom), also being a mother is more concerned about how much money her husband, Torvald (Anthony Hopkins), will give her again for the Christmas shopping even though she had just come home from the shops with enough bags to take up the whole sofa. She loves the power of money and all that it can buy her. She praises her husband's bank position; and even though she has a secret dept to pay she will not stop spending even though she could end up in prison.
Her husband, on the other hand, is a career focused perfectionist who spends most of his time working and less to keep an eye on his family. He was the reason that drove his wife to take the loan and forge her father's signature in order to save him from death sa he was dreadfully in need of an expensive surgery. Himself spends many hours in his office worried about his job and his status in society that during the years of his marriage he and his wife do not have actual conversations as a couple between the anymore. Also when he finds out about his wife's doing he opposes all the blame on to her and none on to himself. He accuses her of ruining their family and their good name and also for being so stupid as to go through all that to save her husband that up till their conversation in the last scene, thought, she truly loved, but also thought that he loved her more than his words showed as he was accusing her.
The movie also shows the lack of trust between two people when ambition and money become more important of their relationship. That is shown when the letterbox appears in the movie. Not many couples or married people have mail slots that lead to a box with a lock for the letters of the house. People who have mailboxes outside their house surely enough do have key and a lock. But why would a husband not trust his family and his wife with the mail if truly he did not have faith in them?
For all the above, the film A Doll's House is really the most close to our era film because it focuses on matters that will be everlasting in our society, if the society itself is not willing to change.