john-3109 Reviews

Oh! What a Lovely War (1969)

No Escape

[10/10 · 26 November 2006]

Richard Attenborough's (1969) film of Charles Chilton's play is set in north west Europe during World War I.

For somebody who by 1969 was only 13, this film seemed to me a radical departure for the director who had portrayed Big X - Squadron Leader Roger Bartlett (eclipsed only by Steve McQueen's epic motorcycle leap) in 'The Great Escape' only six years earlier.

His most successful war film to date had already begun to populate bank holiday Monday viewing on BBC TV to the exclusion of all others.

Pre-figuring the uncomfortable mixture of contemporary songs juxtaposed with authentic realism - which became the hallmark of the later work of Denis Potter - it marked a coming of age of the romantic notion that war was 'absolutely thrilling' and the best thing that ever happened to some people.

This film lifts us up with all the fun of the fair, to drop us unceremoniously onto the platform of Victoria Station aboard a boat-train for The Somme.

It's a powerful film, which somehow manages to celebrate the songs which grew out of the spirit of ordinary people bound up in the conflict, while at the same time leaving us in no doubt where it was all heading.

Bitter-sweet and evocative of the spirit of the times in represents.

Buddy's Song (1991)

Daltrey in the background

[10/10 · 19 November 2006]

Claude Whatham's (1990) film, based on Nigel Hinton's novel, charts the rapid success of a young pop singer, Buddy Clark (Chesney Hawkes), a generation before the film's actual release.

Between his feckless Dad (Roger Daltrey) and struggling Mum (Sharon Duce) we follow Buddy's early success and sudden leap to fame, from his modest working-class roots.

Replete with authentic classic cars and quirky costume of the times, this moving period piece captures the sudden, incandescent radiance of fame while balancing it with the sometimes grimy and shady underside of a business which puts people under the spotlight one day, only to drop them in the gutter the next.

This is good film to watch, because it's made by people who - unlike young Buddy - have been through the mill and come out the other end in more or less one piece.

Roger Daltrey (lead vocalist with 'The Who') and Bill Curbishley (Manager of 'The Who' and co-producer of the film) give the film an authentic bite that Hollywood might have missed.

Play for Today: 'Nuts in May' (1976) Season 6, Episode 12

Who's nuts ?

[10/10 · 13 November 2006]

Mike Leigh's early film 'Nuts in May' was first aired on BBC TV in January 1976 as part of their 'Play for Today' series.

It charts the experience of Keith (Roger Sloman) and Candice-Marie (Alison Steadman) who are somehow made for one another (at school) and never quite break out of the mould which their staid and sensible schoolteachers have wrought for them.

At no point - it seems - in their careful upbringing have they quite grasped that, in life, things are not always what they seem.. and that people don't always mean what they say.

Or that the rules and regulations that apply to children cannot possibly be carried forward successfully into adult life.

The title of the play is, itself, a clue. It is one of the few benefits of getting older that I can remember skipping enthusiastically, aged 4 years old and singing the song that goes 'Here we go gathering nuts in May, nuts in May, nuts in May. Here we go gathering nuts in May, on a cold and frosty morning'. Or, at least, that's what I sincerely believe I remember.

But this is madness, isn't it ? There are no nuts in May to gather. Nuts are the result of the growth of trees during the summer ! Squirrels gather them in Autumn, bury them.. and often forget about them. Nobody in their right mind ever tried to go gathering nuts in May, with any reasonable hope of success.

But Keith and Candice-Marie seem to feel honour bound to do so. Their life, in early adulthood is tied inexorably the daft things well-meaning, misinformed 'grown-ups' have told them when they were very young.

By some awful mischance, they have failed to reap the many benefits that healthy scepticism and good old adolescent rebellion confers.

Roger kisses a hot-water bottle named 'Prudence' each night, when he should be saying something else.

Although I couldn't begin to tell you where to get hold of a print of this great film. It's so good, that any effort would be well justified... even if the hot-water bottle is not actually named 'Prudence'. After all, it was over 30 years ago when I last saw this film.

The Wednesday Play: The Gorge (1968) Season 8, Episode 3

Gorgeous

[10/10 · 13 November 2006]

Christopher Morohan's (1968) television film of Peter Nichol's screenplay was first aired by the BBC as part of a contemporary drama series billed as 'The Wednesday Play'. Just to state the obvious, it was show on telly each Wednesday evening.

It was a platform for up and coming writers and directors which included early opportunities for talent of the quality of Denis Potter, Jeremy Sandford, Alan Plater.. and many more.

It's certainly a testament to the impact this film had that I labour under the delusion that I can effectively review it it some 38 years after I first saw it, on the basis that I seem to be the only person alive able to remember what it was about and what it meant to people like me, then aged 12 years old.

Ostensibly, for me, it was a play set in a well-known holiday spot in the west of England. 'The Gorge' is Cheddar Gorge. Figuratively, a combination of a very well-known cheese that survives to this day, and a geological feature of remote antiquity.

But really it was a boy and girl on holiday with their parents, who stole brief interludes together among the ferns and heather.

The dialogue of these scenes, for somebody exiled in a boys Grammar School, was priceless, because it reflected two members of the opposite sex, reeling from the unexpected hormonal effects of puberty - but able to speak frankly to one another about it.

I kid myself that I can remember part of the dialogue, in which the well-upholstered young lady is being addressed by the frank but confused young gentleman.

The subject is tits. He says, with disarming honesty, something along the lines of - If I had tits, I'd play with them all the time but she replies - Yes, I did that.. but it's like playing with your fingers...

It's hard, I suppose, for people aged 12 in 2006 to imagine a time when sex was only conspicuous by its absence. Everywhere it should have been, like everyday conversation, it was missing.

Just for perspective.. across the Atlantic.. Alfred Kinsey's 'Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male' had been published twenty years earlier in 1948. 'Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female' was published in 1953, fifteen years before I saw this film on TV.

But in England, on BBC Television, somehow.. young people like me managed to begin to grasp the differences between how men and women approach love and sex from such different angles from plays like 'The Gorge'.

I look back, aghast, and wonder how this unusual play contributed so much to a process of understanding which so often founders in everyday life.

Purely Belter (2000)

Season Ticket

[10/10 · 11 November 2006]

Mark Herman's (2000) film, drawn from Jonathan Tullock's novel 'Season Ticket', is set in Newcastle upon Tyne in the late '90s.

It weaves the tale of Gerry (Chris Beattie) and Sewell (Greg McLane) as they struggle to make sense of the deficiencies in their fractured lives and solve their insoluble problems, with football.

Within the framework of the close friendship between these two young men, we join them on a journey around Newcastle which can have only one ultimate destination - St James' Park, the home of the 'Toon', Newcastle United Football Club.

But the route is tortuous and led by the fertile imagination and determination of Gerry, Sewell and the rest of us are drawn along as we get to know the characters who populate their special world.

Gerry's semi-absent father (Tim Healy) terrorises the family between safe houses, beating his mother (Charlie Hardwick) and abusing his sister (Kerry Ann Christiansen) as he goes, while Sewell's grandfather (Roy Hudd) struggles to fill the gap left by his parents who have absconded long ago.

Yet, despite everything that confronts them, they unite together with a single, simple achievable aim in life - season tickets to watch Newcastle play.

This is a great film which - like Mark Herman's earlier films 'Brassed Off' and 'Little Voice' - contains the essential spirit of the region it reflects. What shines through is the indominatable spirit and irrepressible resilience of the young.

As the film closes a final unexpected twist places our two heroes exactly where they have wanted to be all along.

Truly Madly Deeply (1990)

Clinging to the wreckage

[10/10 · 7 August 2006]

Anthony Minghella's (1991) film takes us into the life of a young woman named Nina (Juliet Stevenson) and the death of a young man named Jamie (Alan Rickman).

It's set in London, within ten or fifteen years the film's eventual release.

Written and directed by Anthony Minghella, it's pretty much his own personal vision of this woman's experience of grief at the premature death of her partner, whom she loves.

As the film plays out, we follow the course of the her initial shock and disbelief, through her efforts to come to some sort of resolution with the shattering loss with which she struggles to contend.

The film is powerful because it fully reenacts all of her imaginings and recollections, inter-cut with her actual surroundings and survivng relationships. But it does this so skilfully that the audience is often unsure what is actually 'real' and what is 'imagined'.

For Nina, of course, it is all real and it is all part of what is left of her new life, alone.

Unexpectedly, her new life becomes populated with a series of people to whom her remaining friends and family are completely oblivious. While for Nina, they are fascinating and compelling and fill the slowly-healing wound that was created by Jamie's death.

But even in death - and within Nina's imagination - Jamie's life continues apace and threatens to engulf the huge and empty space he has left unoccupied in her life.

This is a great film which finally delivers the context in which the words 'Truly, Madly, Deeply' became an integral part of the relationship which ends as the film begins.

Like John Mortimer's view of his own life we hover invisible, nearby, and accompany Nina lost in a stormy sea - clinging to the wreckage.

Paradise Lagoon (1957)

A notable flight of fancy

[10/10 · 13 July 2006]

Lewis Gilbert's (1957) film, adapted from J.M. Barrie's play by the director, is set on what in English folklore is usually described as a 'desert island'. A 'desert island' is not in fact a desert - as there is always a plentiful supply of fresh water - but is, in fact, merely an island that is deserted.

J.M. Barrie (1860-1937, author of 'Peter Pan') seems to borrow something from Daniel Defoe (1860-1731, author of 'Robinson Crusoe') in placing a titled, shipwrecked family a long way from home where the normal rules of social etiquette do not apply.

Skillfully avoiding institutional racism, J.M. Barrie's story focuses on the English class system and as the story plays out, a natural leader with an impeccable sense of diplomacy emerges.

This is a story that is very well told by the film and has been repeated many times in fact.

The most remarkable factual account of a similar situation comes from the annals of British Airways.

Well before the days of satellite navigation and a reliable infrastructure of ground-based radio beacons, an aircraft took off in North Africa for a flight between Khartoum and Dacca. In those days, like the RAF, a multi-engined airliner carried two pilots and a navigator.

But like these days, there was only so much fuel in the tanks. If the navigator pointed the pilots in the direction of a large desert (where there is never a plentiful supply of running water) they would fly there in good faith.

On this occasion, it was a young cabin steward (who had flown this route a number of times) who meekly alerted the flight crew to the fact that the sun was coming up on the wrong side of the aeroplane.

The navigator didn't know what he'd done wrong; the pilots did their best to land an aircraft, used to asphalt, on the crest of a sand dune. People were injured, but a party of survivors were befriended by nomadic Arabs and found their way to safety.

Up to this point, they were guided by the good judgement and social skill of the young cabin steward.

If you like that story, which is true, then you'll like this film, which is only true figuratively.

The English Patient (1996)

Out for the Count

[10/10 · 16 May 2006]

Anthony Minghella's (1996) film of Michael Ondaatje's novel which was first published in 1992 is set in North Africa and Italy during the Second World War.

It spans the course of the war and the way it both disrupts and facilitates the haphazard relationships and experiences of the characters whose lives we follow as the story unfolds.

It portrays the operation of many confused and troubled minds and like all war films tracks the discomforting effects of sudden and unpredictable life-changing events. But equally, it traces the erratic and unexpected efforts of the different characters to find small interludes of peace in the shattering and unhinging progress of the war as it moves incomprehensibly towards a conclusion.

In writing the book, the author came to the story much as the viewer comes to the film. A little confused and not quite understanding what is going on. At all stages of the film, things happen which are unexpected and sudden, but whose effect is predictable and far-reaching.

But this cannot be the life of the author himself - because he was not born until after the war, of which he writes, was over.

And somehow this is the feeling that the film conveys. Rather like recollections from an actual childhood, which later come into focus the film takes us on an incredible journey which is overshadowed by the awakening recollections of the troubled individual from which it takes its title.

This a great film that takes us into a dangerous, unbalanced world where ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances struggle to make sense of their shattered lives and to find something familiar in their unfamliar surroundings.

The Shipping News (2001)

An article of faith

[10/10 · 16 April 2006]

Lasse Halstrom's (2001) film with screenplay by Robert Nelson Jacobs is based on the novel by Annie Proulx.

Set in Newfoundland sometime in the sixties or seventies, it tells the tale of a slow and steady young man named Quoyle (Kevin Spacey) who falls unwittingly into a marriage doomed to fail. From the wreck and ruin of it, he salvages his daughter Bunny (played at different stages by Alyssa, Kaitlyn and Lauren Gainer) and is persuaded by his beleaguered Aunt Agnis (Judi Dench) to go back to the scene of the crime.

The scene of crime is his old ancestral home in Newfoundland. Arrived there, he chances on a job as newspaper reporter, being hired by the owner Jack Buggit (Scott Glenn), and finds himself suddenly immersed among a group of people who more or less begin the colossal task of straightening him out a little. Not that they're doing it on purpose. For them, it's just second nature.

Tert Card (Pete Postlethwaite) is first to start in on the confused but resilient Coyle - a man whose life 'happens' to him, rather than being the result of any confident effort on his own part to steer his life in a given direction. As the new cub-reporter he is assigned the worst and most uninteresting job on the paper - covering car wrecks and 'The Shipping News'.

But being the kind of man he is, good things come to him like timid, shy creatures which usually stay well out in the wilderness. He strikes up an acquaintance with a single mother, Wavey Prowse (Julianne Moore) but has even more shocks and unexpected skeletons to discover in his Aunt's cupboard.

As the film unfolds, we see a slow and remarkable transformation in the apparently slow and uncomprehending Quoyle. A chance visit by a yacht reputedly owned by Adolf Hitler transforms his career from cub reporter to feature writer. His developing relationship with Wavey creates a rich environment for his wounds to heal and gives him the strength to support his Aunt as she finally confronts her own demons.

We finally learn why she had to come back, and we see Quoyle's journey almost complete as we leave them.

This is a great film with surprises and delights around every corner.

Chocolat (2000)

A life more magical

[9/10 · 16 April 2006]

Lasse Halstrom's (2000) film of Robert Nelson's screenplay is based on the novel by Joanne Harris. It is set in a small French town sometime just after The Second World War.

It's an unusual tale of people who, in their different ways, are trapped by their own fixed and immutable beliefs and seem helpless to overcome them on their own. Also, they are poorly led by Comte de Reynaud (Alfred Molina) who is both mayor and an intrusive, meddling patriarch. He lives a subtle public lie that his wife is travelling in Italy, when really he alone knows for sure that she has left him and he has no idea how to deal with his inconsolable loss.

But through the arrival of some unexpected visitors by fairytale from the outside world, the lives of almost everybody in the village is transformed for the better.

First to arrive - blown in by the north wind - are Vianne Rocher (Juliette Binoche) and her fatherless daughter Anouk (Victoire Thivisol). Rather miraculously, she opens the old patisserie into a chocolate shop. It is let to her by an elderly lady Armande Voisin (Judi Dench) who is estranged from her daughter Caroline (Carrie-Ann Moss) and her grandson Luc (Aurelien Parent Koening) during the last days of her life.

Somehow, once the shop is opened, it becomes a kind of alternative medicine to the people who live in the town. Cocoa-based confectionery is seen on the face of it to be the work of the devil, by Comte de Reynaud, who enlists divine assistance (and suborns a young and impressionable priest) to suppress this ungodly and subversive delight to which he is no more immune than the others.

While the village is fighting to reconcile its craving for chocolate with its righteous duty to Roman Catholicism, another spiritual evil - playing slide guitar - is washed downstream by the current. What are pirates to Anouk and are a dark immoral influence to Comte de Reynaud, is pretty much just what the doctor ordered for Vianne.

Roux (Johnny Depp) and his motherless daughter have been living the same itinerant lifestyle as the manacled choclateer. Rescuing battered wife Josephine Muscat (Lena Olin) along the way and giving Armande Voisin the going-out party she's always dreamed about, Vianne is released from her own wanderings when her mother's ashes go up in a final puff of smoke.

This is a interesting film in which almost everybody lives happily ever after. It is built on the confused logic of a child's thinking, but is filmed without giving away what it is that makes the thought process of adults beyond the comprehension of their children, while leaving their understanding of their emotional situation quite transparent.

And we're left pondering the age old question. Chocolate.. is it really a force for evil.. or a force for good ?

Sex in a Cold Climate (1998 TV Movie)

Suffer little children

[10/10 · 8 March 2006]

Steve Humphries' (1998) documentary is a piece of original photojournalism and social history which documents the testimony of four women who recount their early lives and encounters with a chain of institutions in Ireland which were known by the name of the biblical figure Mary Magdalene.

Children and young women who found themselves arriving at these places became known to the outside world, and even the children from the orphanages which became an awful logical adjunct to them, as 'Magdalenes'.

Mary Magdalene is, like the Laundries in Ireland which bore her name until very recently, nothing if not the source of considerable and enduring controversy. She ranges from being a fallen woman, or harlot to being a saintly disciple of Christ who was present both at his crucifixion and resurrection.

Through the course of the documentary, we come to know Martha Cooney, Christina Mulcahy, Phyllis Valentine and Brigid Young as they tell their own story as best they can. In the testimony of these brave women, we begin to get a feel for the places in which they grew up and what went on there.

Phyllis and Brigid were orphans to begin with, but as their story unfolds the meaning of the word 'orphan' in this context becomes a little suspect. And as Brigid's story takes on it's own powerful momentum, we begin to realise that the orphanages attached to The Magdalene Laundries were an unnatural consequence of the way that the inmates of the Laundries were selected and their natural emotional bonds with their infant children broken.

Many of the worst abuses that these women recall and describe are dramatically reconstructed in Peter Mullan's (2002) feature film 'The Magdalene Sisters'.

As the documentary develops, and the testimony of the four women builds, an uncomfortable pattern begins to emerge. A terrible and unmistakable inversion of the vision of the Christ who said 'Suffer little children to come unto me' is perversely transformed into a dark vision of a Christ who might have said instead 'Make little children who come unto me suffer'. This seems quite clearly to have been the fate of these children who came into the care of the Church as involuntary inmates of the Magdalene Orphanages and Laundries.

Like the great documentaries of earlier times, Steve Humphries film begins a deep social catharsis that alone has the power to transform the lives of vulnerable children in the future. No parliamentary enactment can ever protect them as comprehensively as a well-informed public who clearly understand the nature of the mischief which is being made in their name and with their apparent consent.

The Magdalene Sisters (2002)

Dirty washing in public

[10/10 · 4 March 2006]

Peter Mullan's (2002) film is based primarily upon the TV documentary 'Sex in a Cold Climate' by Steve Humphries which was first aired on RTE (Ireland) and BBC (England) in 1998. The documentary records the recollections of four Irish women who spent their youth and a good proportion of their adult lives as involuntary guests of uncompromising Roman Catholic nuns.

The film is set in a particular example of this institution which, somewhat akin to the English workhouses of the late 19th and early 20th century, became established in Ireland after the Second World War. The Magdelene Laundries took their name from the biblical figure of Mary Magdalene, a 'fallen woman' whom Christ befriended.

We join the main heroines of the movie - Margarette (Anne-Marie Duff), Bernadette (Norah-Jane No one), Rose (Dorothy Duffy) and Crispina (Eileen Walsh) in cameo as their entrance scholarships for the Magdelene Laundry are being sat.

What's most uncomfortable about this part of the movie, is trying to work out what's going on. Trying to work out what it is that's being whispered and what will be the upshot of it, and why. At first, it seems like the soundtrack of the film and the contrast have failed. But before long, it becomes obvious that the soundtrack of the film and the contrast have succeeded. The dark and deafening silence surrounding the circumstances under which these young women are being consigned to the unwelcome stewardship of the Magdalene Sisters comes through loud and muted.

We follow their induction into the laundry by Sister Bridget (Geraldine McEwan), ably assisted by the Sisters Jude (Frances Healy), Clemantine (Eithne McGuinness) and Augusta (Phyllis MacMahon) who contrive with formally celibate gentlemen like Father Fitzroy (Daniel Costello) to represent a world in which God's greatest ideal is achieved through punishment and penitence.

As the film progresses, we begin to understand why it is no accident that these institutions should have been laundries. They could - after all - have been bakeries, dairies, canneries or places where mailbags are sewn.

With every garment that passes through the process, unmentionable filth is cleansed - if the Sisters are to be believed. And if the Sisters are to be believed, the sins of the teenagers and the route to Heaven is bound up in hot water, salt and flagellation.

And as we follow these unsaintly girls on their hapless journey, we finally learn that salvation is as straightforward as a letter we are not privileged to read and a brother who arrives with a suitcase - as if there is anything that anybody could possibly want to carry away from a place like this.

This film is a powerful elegy to the suffering of these unfortunate girls who, constrained to silence for so long, have finally found a voice.

Catch-22 (1970)

Heller on Earth

[10/10 · 4 March 2006]

Mike Nicholl's (1970) film of Joseph Heller's book 'Catch 22' - published 9 years earlier - is set in a US bomber unit during the latter part of the Second World War in Italy. Heller himself served in Corsica as a bombardier on B-25 Mitchell bombers, the aircraft which feature in the film. He flew 60 missions. Buck Henry, who plays Lieutenant Colonel Korn in the film, wrote the screenplay.

We find our hero, bombardier Captain John Yosarian (Alan Arkin), as entrenched and battle-crazed as the other confused and confusing members of this unusual army air force unit.

In conversation with Colonel Cathcart (Martin Balsam) and Lt. Col Korn (Buck Henry) as the film opens, the substance of his conversation is lost beneath the roar of aircraft taking off nearby. As he walks away from the conversation, he is murdered by a civilian who is apparently gardening, near to the base of the bombed out operations tower.

The course of the film takes us on the nightmarish journey leading up to this apparently motiveless crime.

It has to be understood that where human beings of any age or nationality are forced to remain in circumstances that are sufficiently challenging and unremittingly life-threatening, they evolve a series of unique and often incomprehensible strategies to protect what's left of their own sanity.

As the film develops, we begin to get a feel for how each individual in the unit fights their own personal battle to preserve their sanity in this intractible situation.

Among these people, Yosarian seems to be rather special. Not the sharpest tool in the box, yet he alone seems to keep some fragile sense of what is intrinsically absurd in his surroundings and what is simply the product of the confusion in the minds of the other members of his unit. Or maybe we just get sucked into Yosarian's own particular madness and see all the others from his own beguiling perspective.

Along the way, we get to know the company Doctor (Jack Gilford) who is the first to try and explain 'Catch 22' which turns out to be the meaningless apparent solution to a conundrum that seems to underpin everything the army thinks or does. It's as meaningless as the old rhyme

'Mother may I go out to swim ?' 'Yes, my darling daughter.. Hang your clothes on a hickory limb But don't go near the water !'

Doc Daneeka hates flying, so flies on paper as an absent passenger. But when the plane he is logged as flying in crashes, even the suggestible Sgt Towser (Norman Fell) is so switched off and tuned out that he can no longer believe the evidence of his own senses. He is no longer sure what he is permitted to acknowledge as real and happening.

Major Danby (Richard Benjamin), leads the flight briefings apparently under the impression that he is fronting in a TV commercial for soap-powder aimed at suburban housewives. While mess-officer Milo Minderbinder (Jon Voight) manages to avoid combat duty by bartering most of the operational equipment for contraband, returning later having cut a deal to bomb their own base.

This film is a tremendous portrait of ordinary people in really extraordinary circumstances. By the time we see Yosarian endearingly using the army's twisted logic to gently seduce an Italian girl who has become more accustomed to bartering intimacy for cigarettes and stockings, we realise that we too have somehow finally cracked.

Rain Man (1988)

Peek District

[10/10 · 27 February 2006]

Barry Levinson's (1998) film of Barry Morrow's story loosely based on the life of Kim Peek explores the uneasy, deepening relationship between fictitious savant Raymond Babbit (Dustin Hoffman) and his long lost brother Charlie (Tom Cruise).

No surprise that Ron Bass, who shares the screen writing credit, has in preparation a film of 'The Butterfly and the Diving Bell'.

The death of the Babbit boys' father triggers a chain of events and a journey on which we accompany the vulnerable orphan Raymond, and his rather shallow and pretentious brother.

It's rather interesting to compare the story of Raymond in the film and the real life-story of Kim Peek.

In life, rather than in art, Kim Peek is as becoming as Dustin Hoffman manages to make Raymond Babbit. But he is cared for, not in an institution - as Raymond is - but by his own father... who, in everyday life, is far from wealthy.

Pardoxically, in the documentary, we see Kim being put through his paces by neurologists and psychologists who are heavy on tests and measurements but light on understanding. Quite the opposite of the institutional carers shown in the film, who are not slow to miss the facets of Raymond's experience which are non-standard. They are very much the worthy and responsible custodians of Raymond's fragile existence.

The film helps us to begin to confront the uncomfortable and inevitable situation of the Raymond Babbits of this world. The father of the real Raymond Babbit (Kim Peek) will very probably die before he does. Like Raymond, Kim Peek can easily memorise air safety statistics. But, aged 40 something, he is still having trouble getting food into his mouth without leaving a lot of it smeared all over his face.

The uncomfortable exasperation which Charlie Babbit shows us in the early stages of the film is the likely inheritance of any actual Raymond when their parents become infirm and die. There are hardly any fathers wealthy enough to fund meaningful care for individuals in Raymond's situation.

They rely on an unexpected miracle, which happens in the film. They rely on something happening to somebody else that will engender in them a lasting commitment quite inappropriate to anybody who is not their natural parent.

There is no neurology or psychology text book yet published that could make this process as obvious and straightforwardly accessible as this film does.

Whistle Down the Wind (1961)

Wind Power

[10/10 · 21 January 2006]

The screenplay for Bryan Forbes' (1961) film - based on Mary Hayley Bell's novel - was one of the earliest successes for northern writers Keith Waterhouse (Billy Liar) and Willis Hall (The Long and the Short and the Tall).

Set in the north of England in the fifties, it's a charming tale of innocence told from a child's point of view.

As we enter the Bostock family's rural home, the scene is set for a gentle comedy of harmless intrigue.

Kathy Bostock (a very young Hayley Mills) turns in a great performance in the film based on her mother's novel. The barn at the Bostock's place becomes refuge to one of the nicest escaped convicts you could ever hope to meet (Alan Bates) who is discovered by the children in an exhausted and collapsed state, laying in the straw.

As he comes too, he find himself surrounded by a semi-circle of gawping children, one of whom asks him who he is. More by way of exclamation than information he says two words before lapsing back into unconsciousness. 'Jesus Christ !' For the children, fresh from rehearsals for the school nativity play, it all begins to make sense. A barn.. a manger.. the oxen looking on. They mistakenly conclude that it's the second coming and that they have been specially chosen to host the son of God on this impromptu visit.

Doomed to ultimate failure, their endearing efforts to conceal and sustain the scruffy, bearded man they believe they already know so well from Sunday School make the story a poignant testament to a state of grace that is somehow only accessible to the very old and the very young.

Tommy (1975)

From Soho down to Brighton

[10/10 · 21 January 2006]

Ken Russel's (1975) film grew out of Pete Townshend's songs which were first performed by 'The Who' from 1967 onwards.

A surreal musical set in the 50's and 60's, it traces the life of disabled child Tommy Walker (Barry Winch / Roger Daltrey) as his perverse family struggle to make sense of his obvious limitations and unexpected talents. Mother Nora (Ann-Margaret Olsson) takes up with ambivalent step-father Frank (Oliver Reed) whom she meets at a holiday camp where he is on the staff.

As Tommy gets to know his unsettling extended family, including Uncle Ernie (Keith Moon) and cousin Kevin (Paul Nicholas) his precocious talent for playing pinball emerges. This leads him further into a wonderland of seemingly grotesque figures including The Pinball Wizard (Elton John), The Acid Queen (Tina Turner) and various religious fanatics including The Preacher (Eric Clapton).

Despite a consultation with a medical expert (Jack Nicholson) there is apparently no help that mainstream medicine can give the boy. Paradoxically, the abuse he receives from his weird and disquieting family does not seem to have the expected effect.

Haunted by the ghost of his dead father Captain Walker (Robert Powell), still in RAF uniform, Tommy's condition improves and his miraculous recovery sets the scene for his transformation into a religious guru, attracting a widespread following that brings him sudden fame and fortune.

But it's an unfulfilling fame and fortune, that seems bitter-sweet. Almost like the wildly successful and much beloved comedian, who spends their time when not performing in a state of lonely and anxious isolation.

This is a troubling film with a nightmarish quality about it, but despite everything that befalls young Tommy, he seems to have an innate capacity to weather the exceptional challenges that life throws at him and come to some kind of resolution of his uncomfortable lot towards the end.

A film that is screaming to be heard.

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Alabama Churning

[10/10 · 21 January 2006]

Robert Mulligan's 1962 film, with screenplay by Horton Foote, is based on the novel by Harper Lee.

Set in the Winston county, Alabama in the 1940's, the story is told from the perspective of a teenage girl, Scout Finch (Mary Badham), who is trying to make sense of the world outside her family home, and the behaviour of the people within it.

Small town lawyer Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck), takes on the unpopular and difficult task of defending black labourer Tom Robinson (Brock Adams) who stands accused of raping Mayella Ewell (Collin Wilcox), the daughter of white farmer Robert Ewell (James Anderson).

During the course of the trial we get to know both the locality in which Scout finds herself growing up and can't help but become deeply involved in the tense courtroom drama as Atticus seeks to uncover the truth in his efforts to defend his underprivileged client.

As the story unfolds and the underlying racial tension builds, we suddenly find ourselves virtually members of the jury and residents of Maycomb.

This film is a powerful memoir of childhood in this difficult part of the world. Through the way the story is told, we are both led - child-like - through the obvious injustice and yet we have the special, informal counsel of the defence lawyer expressed in ways that we cannot fail to grasp.

The Cider House Rules (1999)

Homer Gain

[10/10 · 21 January 2006]

Lasse Hallstrom's (1999) film is based on John Irving's semi-autobiographical novel.

Set in Maine, USA during World War II, it tells the story of a most unusual orphanage and the truly remarkable people who run it.

Joining pragmatic and single-minded obstetrician Wilbur Larch (Michael Caine), ably assisted by Nurse Edna (Jane Alexander) and Nurse Angela (Kathy Baker) – all in ward uniform – it soon becomes obvious that this is no ordinary orphanage.

As we follow Dr Larch into the maternity unit we first meet his young apprentice Homer Wells (Tobey McGuire) and quickly learn that not everything is as we might expect in this department either.

But as our understanding of what counts for 'normal procedure' widens we soon come to feel a genuine sense of involvement in the lives of the children who live there and the unconventional adults who care for them.

Dr Larch, as well as a great humanitarian and fan of Charles Dickens, is a drug addict and although Homer is well ahead of his years in female anatomy and physiology, he is overdue for a visit to the outside world.

An opportunity comes in the person of Flight Lieutenant Wally Worthington (Paul Rudd) and his prematurely pregnant fiancé Candy Kendall (Charlize Theron). Like impromptu parents arriving to take under their wing the eldest orphan in the establishment, Homer takes his chance to explore the world beyond the railway station - much to the distress of his surrogate father, Wilbur.

Initially lost in the foreign environment of the fruit farm run by Wally's mother Olive (Kate Nelligan), Homer soon finds himself well looked after by Arthur Rose (Delroy Lindo) who is the gang boss of the illiterate, migrant fruit-pickers. Accompanied by his unpromisingly named daughter Rose Rose (Erykah Badhu), the small group in the bunk house provide a rich learning environment for the perceptive, but naive Homer.

Homer's adventures are many and as the story twists and turns, he finds love and best of all he finds himself through his experience of the wider community he now inhabits.

There is so much more in this film that space permits to even hint at. It is comic, tragic, touching and moving. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Little Voice (1998)

Horrocks' Choice

[9/10 · 21 January 2006]

Mark Herman's (1998) film grows out of Jim Cartwright's stage play 'The Rise and Fall of Little Voice'. Set in the north of England sometime in the 70's or early 80's the play was first performed at The National Theatre in 1992.

We join a severely withdrawn 'LV' (Jane Horrocks) and her grief-stricken mother Mari Hoff (Brenda Blethyn) in a grubby flat above a defunct vinyl record store which seems to have gone bust long ago.

In their different ways, both are lost and floundering in the wake of the death of LV's Dad (Graham Turner) who remains a powerful force in their fractured lives.

But within the protective shell that LV has developed there is a special, private metamorphosis occurring which is not evident to begin with. A visit from the telephone engineers George (Philip Jackson) and Billy (Ewan McGregor) marks the slow beginning of a return to normal service.

It's not long before Mari hooks up with small-time theatrical agent Ray Say (Michael Caine) who hears LV singing to her absent father and immediately casts her in the role of the big discovery he has always been waiting for.

Prematurely booking her for Saturday night at a local club run by glitzy Mr Boo (Jim Broadbent), LV gives an astonishing and cathartic performance as a variety of female vocalists from her lost father's heyday. But she is in no state of mind for stardom.

Cranking up the pace, dodgy Ray books her and a full orchestra for the following week and invites London impresario Bunnie Morris (Alex Norton) along, but the performance takes a different turn altogether.

A sudden fire at the flat - which has by now become a mausoleum to her missing father - finally unites her with Billy in the sanctuary of his pigeon loft. Billy's lost pigeon returns at last as LV quietly begins the next and most difficult phase of her life.

A moving film, which takes us on a difficult and confusing journey but delivers us back wiser and stronger at the end.

Brassed Off (1996)

Kind Hearts and Cornets

[10/10 · 21 January 2006]

Mark Herman's (1996) film is set in his native Yorkshire shortly after the reign of Margaret Thatcher (1983-1990).

Written by the director in a state of melodic social uproar, this film more than any other tells the inside story of a traditional, northern mining community in crisis.

As we join the impervious Danny (Pete Postlethwaite), whistling as hard as his failing lungs will allow, we begin to get the feeling that all is not quite well. Determined to convince himself that if only the band can win the annual brass band festival in London the community will remain intact, the audience begins to see the cards stacking up against him – while at the same time being drawn into his hypnotic, romantic belief.

First the unlikely arrival of glamorous Gloria (Tara Fitzgerald) who is staying in only temporary accommodation. While pursuing her professional career.. she has kept up playing the Flugelhorn.. as an elegy to her late father.. another occupational casualty of the industry.

For a moment, she breaks the spell that Danny has woven over his son Phil (Stephen Tompkinson) and workmates Andy (Ewan McGregor), Harry (Jim Carter), Jim (Philip Jackson) and Ernie (Peter Martin). But the reason for her return is more sinister than even she realises.

In 1992, like many others, the pit is under threat of closure as the government progressively favours alternative sources of energy and even alternative sources of coal. The management are muddying the water by offering the workforce redundancy payments as the community closes ranks in a desperate effort to safeguard their way of life.

As the determined, covert machinations of government policy grind inexorably towards their unfeeling end.. every family in the 'Grimley' community is touched by the mounting tension. But the band plays on.

Supplemented by actual musicians from the Grimethorpe Colliery Band, and with sterling performances from Sue Johnson (Vera) and Mary Healey (Ida) many comic moments and situations punctuate the dark undercurrent that permeates the film.

In a triumphant finish that seals the future of the band at least, art and life confront one another at The Albert Hall, London where an brass band competition is held every year.

This is a heart-warming film and a fitting tribute the spirit of all the mining communities whose story is so intricately bound up in it.

Kes (1969)

An Eagle for an Emperor

[10/10 · 19 January 2006]

Ken Loach's (1969) film of Barry Hines' novel 'A Kestrel for a Knave' is written with Tony Garnett (Producer of 'Cathy Come Home' for BBC TV). Set in a mining community in the north of England it tells the story of young schoolboy Billy Casper (Dai Bradley) and his unexpected attachment to a Kestrel.

We join Billy in a fatherless family where Mum (Lynne Perrie) is struggling to keep things together and retain some semblance of control over Billy's fiery elder brother Jud (Freddie Fletcher).

Suddenly we see the well-established northern working class preoccupation with keeping pigeons elevated to an altogether higher plane as Billy begins to rear a kestrel chick. We follow him as he takes on the most challenging project of his life to date and becomes totally engrossed in learning everything he can about this wonderful bird; soon well on his way to becoming expert in the ancient art of falconry.

At school, Billy finds support from English teacher Mr Farthing (Colin Welland) who is not slow to recognise the impact this bird has had upon Billy's otherwise fractured and impoverished home life.

As Billy's imagination soars with his developing rapport with the bird, we share his keen enthusiasm and rich understanding of the nature of this sharp and noble predator.

But in doing so, we pay the price when Billy's troubled home life intervenes and robs him of what has become the powerful symbol of his ability to transcend the limitations of the tough and unforgiving community of which he is inexorably a part.

This is a great film that captures the unique ability of young people to find meaning and fulfilment in the darkest and most unpromising situations.

Play for Today: Edna The Inebriate Woman (1971) Season 2, Episode 2

A crime to be without a home

[10/10 · 19 January 2006]

Ted Kotcheff's (1971) TV film of Jeremy Sandford's screenplay was first aired on BBC Television in their 'Play for Today' series. Set during the 60's in a variety of doss-houses and other temporary lodgings it highlights the plight of the homeless at a time in British history when it was simply illegal (i.e. an arrestable, criminal office) to be without a home.

Like Jeremy Sandford's other tour de force 'Cathy Come Home' aired by the BBC during 1966 in their series 'The Wednesday Play', this film charts the progressive deterioration of homeless alcoholic Edna (Patricia Hayes).

A sullen and haunting portrayal of a rootless existence relieved only by the temporary oblivion brought about by the slow and self-destructive effect of alcohol, 'Edna' shows us a quite unimaginable level of despair and confusion.

As a teenager, working with homeless people in Oxford, I was fortunate in obtaining a print of this film to show to school groups whose teachers had shown an interest in the work that was being done to reach out to people like Edna who found themselves criminalised for little more than their obvious personal misfortune.

Without a screenplay like this and the telling characterisation by Patricia Hayes, I cannot think how you could possibly begin to explain to schoolchildren the reality that lies behind the beguiling and romantic notion of the tramp.

This television film stands alongside Orwell's 'Down and Out in Paris and London' and 'The Road to Wigan Pier' in its ability to involve us in the everyday human tragedy it portrays.

The Straight Story (1999)

End of a long road for Alvin Straight

[10/10 · 19 January 2006]

David Lynch's (1999) film of John Roach / Mary Sweeney's story is set in Iowa and Wisconsin some time well before the film's eventual release.

We come into the life of Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth) late on in life. His medical condition is poor, his life is mostly behind him and he knows it.

This makes what he decides to do, even more remarkable and endearing. He decides (and at every point in the film his own name reverberates through his actions) to put a few things straight.

Alvin is, by this time in his life, a man of great experience but modest means. His daughter Rose (Sissy Spacek) struggles with a speech impediment that makes communication a great effort on the audience's behalf. But it's worth it, because Rose's story cannot help but come out as the film progresses.

This film is the story of a journey. But like all journeys it is a journey in the geographical sense and in the human sense. Early on in the film, we begin to understand that this is an ambitious journey, which no elderly gentleman of Alvin's age should reasonably undertake.

But along the way, we slowly learn how Alvin has so many qualifications which equip him to achieve his unlikely objective. His objective is very simple and straightforward. His brother is ill and likely to die and he wants to visit him. He has had a falling out with him many years ago and they have not spoken in a very long time.

Along the way, Alvin meets many people. The way he behaves towards them and the benefit they get from having known him is the essence of this film. We come to know who Alvin Straight is, from what Alvin Straight does. And at the end of the film, we know who we are .. better.

Brief Encounter (1945)

Poignant Period Romance

[10/10 · 19 January 2006]

David Lean's (1945) film Brief Encounter, based Noel Coward's play 'Still Life', is set somewhere South London in the late 1930's – the late steam-age.

We come into the genteel life of Laura Jesson (Celia Johnson), a comfortably off suburban housewife, as she moves into a personal crisis that we are privileged to share on a most intimate basis. Her true thoughts and feelings punctuate the external action as we hear a subversive and confidential commentary to which other characters are not privy.

Mrs Jesson falls for a doctor (Trevor Howard) whom she meets by chance at the railway station during an afternoon shopping trip. Showing his professional credentials early on, by removing a piece of grit from her eye, he appears to be as much a gentleman of leisure as she is on weekday afternoons. They embark upon a fairly harmless romance that centres around visits to the cinema and the tea shop.

No ordinary Tea-Shoppe this, though, boasting three quarters of a string quartet (exceptional performance by Irene Handl as an arthritic, provincial cellist) and fancying itself to be an outlying satellite of The Palm Court at The Ritz.

With great supporting performances from the staff at the Station Buffet (particularly Joyce Carey and Stanley Holloway), Laura's loquacious friend Dolly Messiter (Everley Gregg) and her faithful, but not-so-sharp, husband Fred (Cyril Raymond) we are soon transported to a bygone era where we are quickly drawn into every aspect of their unusual preoccupations and neuroses.

This film really captures the mood of the time and the underlying confusion and torment that besets these pretentious, stilted and unfulfilled individuals.

Let There Be Light (1980)

Moving real life story

[10/10 · 19 January 2006]

John Huston's (1946) documentary film was shot at Mason General Hospital on Long Island at the end of the Second World War for the U.S. Government during the director's time as an officer in the U.S. Signal Corps.

One of a number of documentary films he made in this capacity including 'Report From The Aleutians' and 'The Battle of San Pietro', it did not see 'The Light' for a number of years. As copyright holders and owners of the film, the U.S. Government chose not to release it.

The techniques used in making the film are described in John Huston's autobiography 'An Open Book' published by Macmillan and also in an interview recorded by Richard Leacock and Midge McKenzie in 1982.

The film follows the progress of a particular intake of men returning from active service in various theatres of war. These men have returned deeply disturbed by their battle experiences and we follow their progress as they are helped to come to terms with their distress and to rebuild their fragile lives.

Huston captures the most unusual and remarkable sequences that document the work of the gifted psychiatrists at Mason General as they assist the men to reconcile themselves to the awful experiences they have endured.

This film was way ahead of its time in recognising and understanding how conditions that were variously known as 'shell shock' and 'battle fatigue' can respond to treatment and give their unfortunate sufferers a renewed lease of life.

Despite the dated soundtrack, the narration by Huston's own father – Walter – makes the confusing and sometimes disturbing footage accessible and meaningful to the audience.

How tragic that such a well-made and important film should have been kept from us for so long.