Weekend Deviation – China Rhyming at the Movies

I don’t talk about films here much but a couple peaked my interest recently so thought I’d note them as they fit into the usual time periods I cover in this blog. What I want to really note is Steven Poliakoff’s new film Glorious 39, but I feel I should note An Education quickly first. I happened to watch the BAFTAs in London and was pleased to see An Education do well – I enjoyed it any rate. It does have a rather nice authentic feel of the early 1960s about it – though I thought Lynn Barber (on who’s story Nick Hornby based his script) got have got a bit more praise. Still it’s fun to watch and does have a rather nice Bristol car, some great frocks, a shot of Walthamstow dog track and some great lines:

‘have you never heard of supper?’

‘of course we have,but we’ve never eaten it!’

Nice to see a nodding glance to Peter Rackman who must surely be overdue a decent biography and while noting Carey Mulligan, Alfred Molina and other great performances (including Peter Sarsgaard’s rather good accent and English mannerisms – he is after all American and it’s not easy as countless American actors playing Brits have proved) I rather thought Rosamund Pyke stole the show as a ditzy and dim posh bird – ‘I always think I’m going to my own funeral when I listen to classical music.’

I also feel the urge to give a nod to the great (and original song) written by and performed in the film by Beth Rowley. The nightclub scene is one of the best in the film and the song is so spot on for the time I’m sure most people don’t realise it’s an original (click here to listen).

Anyway, on to Glorious 39, which is very much my period. I thought this a great period thriller – a posh English family caught up in pro-appeasement skullduggery and far better than the overrated Atonement movie of a couple of years ago. It gets the feel of the bleakness of Britain in the early years of the war thanks to filming in the rather stark Norfolk winter landscapes. One critic thought it OK but not quite Hitchcock’s 1938 The Lady Vanishes. Now I bow to no one in my appreciation of Hitchcock, and the film is about the dangers of appeasement, but I thought Glorious 39 measured in a way The Lady Vanishes is not. The strength of the pro-appeasement lobby among the British political and upper classes (like the secret, and often not so secret, support for Mosley among the same) seem to me rarely talked about issues and the film dealt with them nicely. I hope people go to see it – meanwhile given its magnetism to awards givers it seems An Education doesn’t really need any help from me.

Two good dramas – and may God preserve us from the morons queuing up to see Avatar.