The Luminaries review: A sumptuous if overstuffed murder mystery

Another month, another BBC adaptation of a feted novel by a youthful female prodigy. Eleanor Catton became the youngest winner of the Booker Prize when she triumphed in 2013, aged 27. Running to more than 800 pages, her victorious book, The Luminaries, a murder mystery set during the New Zealand gold rush of 1866, was also the longest winner. Robert Macfarlane, chair of the judges that year, praised its “knowledge” and its “poise”.

Like Sally Rooney, Catton has now taken responsibility for adapting her own work for the screen. The age, sex and success of their authors aside, Normal People and The Luminaries have little in common. The former is economical to the point of sparseness, a precise vision of contemporary Ireland. Catton’s work is a soulful history packed with incident, plot and magic. Where Normal People’s 12 half-hour episodes felt like a thorough, even roomy, exploration of the source material, The Luminaries feels crammed in. Perhaps no production could fit so much plot into so limited a form.

It has a go, anyway. The story is told in split timelines. In the cold open, Anna Wetherell (Eve Hewson, daughter of Bono) is on the run in the wild countryside on New Zealand’s west coast. From whom, remains unclear. In fact, most things are unclear. The scene is gloomier than Wolf Hall in a candle shortage. We can discern echoing voices, gunshots, a warm-lit cabin, a travelling politician, a wounded Maori, but not much else. How did this confused and confusing state of affairs come about?

Nine months earlier, Anna wakes to see the port of Dunedin, on the South Island’s east coast, through the porthole of her steamer. She has made her her way from London to prospect for gold. Staring at the island from the rail, she gets talking to Emery Staines (Himesh Patel), a charismatic and intense young man with whom she learns she shares a purpose and a birthday. The strangers’ stars are cross’d and they arrange to meet again.

Dunedin is a muddy frontierish place, a town of bunkhouses and saloons full of grim-looking prospectors on the make. One is run by Lydia Wells (Eva Green), a scheming madame with waist-length tresses and floor-length dresses. She’s interested in astrology, of course, and she is obviously bad news. Not having made it through the book, I can’t say if this is true to the source or down to Green’s decision to play her as a kind of wild west Maleficent. Through a bit of subterfuge, Wells enlists the desperate, illiterate Anna to work in her saloon and dispatches a gruff associate, Francis Carver (Marton Csokas), to deal with Staines. It’s not a place to be a single woman, and Anna quickly struggles.

The Luminaries is luminous, at least when it’s visible. Not since Peter Jackson’s last elven ad campaign has there been so bewitching a screen vision of New Zealand. Denson Baker, the director of photography, ensures the prospectors’ machinations play out against a cinematic backdrop of lush forests, icy blue waters and silvery beaches. The costumes and sets and score are sumptuous to a point. Greed has rarely looked so good. But there’s one lesson from art that would be lost on prospectors: less can be more. In trying to tell such a complex story, The Luminaries risks swamping its viewers. There’s gold in those all-black hills, but as in every bonanza, it’s hard to tell how much.