'Mildred Pierce' (9PM ET Sunday, HBO) is one of those projects that may well polarize critics, or perhaps aspects of the miniseries will provoke wildly different responses in individual viewers, as they did with me.

Stacked up on one side of the scale are excellent performances from the likes of Kate Winslet, Melissa Leo, Guy Pearce and Evan Rachel Wood. But on the other side of the scale are some serious problems with direction and characterization, all of which made me long for the visual verve and brittle clarity of the 1945 Joan Crawford movie of the same name.

I came away from HBO's five-part series with a great deal of respect for Winslet's impassioned performance, but so many other aspects of 'Mildred Pierce' worked against Winslet's naturalistic style that parts of the miniseries ended up being, frankly, a slog.

The biggest problem in the first two episodes of 'Mildred Pierce' (both of which air Sunday) is the character of Mildred's older daughter, Veda, whose is played in early episodes by Morgan Turner. The character is so affected, condescending and unlikable that she makes you question not only Mildred's sacrifices on behalf of Veda but also Mildred's sanity.

How can she not recognize that she raised a monster who has inherited all her family's class snobberies but none of her mother's work ethic or compassion? What makes Mildred so blind to her child's faults? We get hints of answers but, as written by Todd Haynes and Jon Raymond and gratingly played by Turner, the character is so one-dimensionally dreadful that you can't quite buy any of those rationales.

Turner is given dated dialogue that sounds true to James M. Cain's original novel, but Veda's lines would be difficult for any actor to convincingly sell, so I can't necessarily blame the young actress for having trouble making the character anything but a shrill caricature.

Young Veda's predictable obnoxiousness isn't the only problem in the early going; there's also the fact that Winslet and Turner appear to be in two different projects. Winslet's warmth, sensuality and emotional truthfulness place her in a nuanced reality not unlike our own, while Turner's performance could come from a Lifetime movie about a bratty child who gives her suffering mother a hard time.

Cain's book allows you to understand Mildred's psychology more acutely, and his prose is such a cool, elegant pleasure that it allows the reader to forgive almost any overwrought plot development (and there are a few). But if reading Cain's spare, taut prose is like flying down a highway in a classic roadster, Todd Haynes' directing style is like being on a train that slowly chugs along, making every single stop. Even if you like the scenery, at some point you want the damned thing to move faster.

In the second half of 'Mildred Pierce,' when the sly and silky Wood takes over the role of Veda, it's easier to enjoy the sheer melodramatic richness of the miniseries, which also features delicious performances from Leo as Mildred's best friend, Pearce as a society swell, Hope Davis as a rich matron, Brían F. O'Byrne as Mildred's husband, Mare Winningham as her co-worker and James LeGros as her lawyer.

There is a certain operatic quality to the toxic relationship between Veda and Mildred, but Wood and Winslet are much more evenly matched than Winslet and Turner, and the two actresses share some crackling scenes together. Veda's still a monster, but at least in the second half of 'Mildred Pierce,' her spoiled wickedness is more soapily enjoyable, and the psychological excavation of the mother-daughter relationship is rarely subtle but at least it's melodramatically juicy.

Still, Haynes' stilted, formal directing style will not be for everyone. Haynes is in full-on Douglas Sirk mode here, repeatedly shooting through car windows and other glass barriers that sometimes obscure the actor's faces in annoying ways. There were quite a few lingering, almost static shots that made me wonder if Haynes' true calling should have been as a Vogue or Vanity Fair photographer: He loves to compose intricate, richly appointed visual scenes that the viewer is just supposed to stare at, I guess. Maybe people with advanced film degrees can appreciate the finer points of his occasionally turgid, deeply referential style, but there were times I simply found it self-indulgent.

Despite all the flaws, Winslet does an impressive job of humanizing Mildred, a willfully deluded woman who makes a series of increasingly poor choices and pays heavily for those mistakes. Though this 'Mildred Pierce' won't make anyone forget Joan Crawford's iconic eyebrows and impressive shoulder pads, there are some performances and scenes that may make the miniseries worthwhile for fans of the impressive lead cast that HBO has assembled.


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