FILM | Reviews
COMEDY DRAMA THEIR FINEST (12A) 117min ●●●●●
With an odd mix of parody and patriotism, this wartime dramedy from Lone Scherfig focuses on the making of a WWII propaganda film. Their Finest sports a high-calibre cast and a knowingness distinguishing it from its heritage film peers, yet often plays things stiflingly safe. Set in 1940, it follows fledgling screenwriter Catrin (Gemma Arterton) as she joins the Ministry of Information’s Film Division. She’s hoisted up the career ladder in the absence of male rivals but her sensitivity and imagination help her thrive. Working alongside experienced scribe Tom (Sam Claflin), they come up with a story to inspire a nation.
The Danish director Scherfig has made something thoroughly, even blandly, British. Events feel insulated from the wartime action and the satire, too, is muffled. Arterton’s subtle emoting elevates a film that plumps for the obvious, although she is saddled with not one but two unworthy love interests. Their Finest can’t quite make the farce of the film-shoot fly but it has some comedic charm, ambling along in a likable fashion and less wedded to a happy ending than you’d expect. It’s just a shame that a movie whose title suggests greatness is actually fairly run-of-the-mill. (Emma Simmonds) ■ General release from Fri 21 Apr.
BIOPIC MAD TO BE NORMAL (15) 105min ●●●●●
The life of controversial Scottish psychiatrist RD Laing is potent material for a biopic. His methods appalled authorities but inspired many individuals, while his parenting skills left much to be desired. Director Robert Mullan has written books on Laing, but opens his film with captions claiming both veracity and fiction. This might be considered an in-joke when dealing with the author of The Divided Self, but the partial fabrication of a well-documented story robs Mad to Be Normal of authority at every turn. Set in the 1960s and seen through the eyes of a besotted student (Elisabeth Moss), Laing (David Tennant) is a hard-drinking maverick presiding over the Kingsley Hall experiment, an East London community treating psychosis with empathy and LSD. Mullan (who co-wrote the screenplay with Tracy Moreton) plays fast and loose with details; the real man was far more complex than this fiction. The plus here is Tennant, unleashing his smarty-pants Doctor Who persona and carrying the film to its vague, unsatisfying conclusion. Battling murky photography and desperately cheap period detail, Tennant seems game for capturing Laing’s spirit, rising above the trite, soap opera-like histrionics. (Eddie Harrison) ■ Selected release from Thu 6 Apr.
BIOPIC A QUIET PASSION (12A) 125min ●●●●●
Filmmaker Terence Davies has proved an astute observer of the plight of women encumbered by expectation, with films like The House of Mirth, The Deep Blue Sea and 2015’s Sunset Song featuring strong women fighting against the tide. And so it is with his latest, which benefits from a barnstorming performance by Cynthia Nixon as firebrand American poet Emily Dickinson. While only a handful of Dickinson’s poems were published during her lifetime, and she
gained literary reverence after her death in 1886, Davies’ film paints a compelling portrait of an intelligent, quick-witted woman (played in her younger years by Emma Bell) who took pleasure in railing against the strict religious doctrines of her time. Refusing to go to church, instead using the time to pen reams of verse, she enjoys hugely
entertaining debates with her Catholic lawyer father (Keith Carradine) and her pious aunt Elizabeth (Annette Badland). Indeed, Nixon’s deft handling of Davies’ rapid-fire, often deeply humorous, dialogue elevates what could have been a formulaic period drama into something more warm and compelling.
Although set almost entirely within the confines of the Dickinson household, this is a film with expansive ideas. Dickinson may be a rebellious soul but she is also emotionally vulnerable, desperate to be praised for her work and, aside from her family (in particular spirited younger sister Lavinia, played by a brilliant Jennifer Ehle), unable to make any really meaningful connections.
As illness and death cast their shadow over the film’s final third and Dickinson transforms into something of a recluse, A Quiet Passion becomes both a celebration of the creative spirit and a poignant reminder of its fragility. (Nikki Baughan) ■ General release from Fri 7 Apr.
HISTORICAL ROMANCE THE PROMISE (12A) 133min ●●●●● This epic romantic drama delivers its history lesson in an attractively accessible, time-honoured cinematic fashion. Writer-director Terry George and co-writer Robin Swicord set a classic love triangle against the backdrop of an historic horror: the still fiercely denied Turkish annihilation of the Armenians. The story begins in 1914 when the crumbling Ottoman Empire allies itself with Germany in the Great War. That crisis and a tide of mindless nationalism triggers chaos, before we witness the dismaying spectacle of people
who have lived alongside each other falling violently on their neighbours. Soulful Oscar Isaac plays a poor but well-connected Armenian medical student in
Constantinople who falls for the vivacious beauty who tutors his cousins (Charlotte Le Bon). But she has a jealous lover – a daring American journalist (Christian Bale). The trio are then engulfed by the much larger, harrowing and tragic events. Having made Hotel Rwanda, George knows what he’s doing. Handsomely cast and beautiful to behold, his film is involving and heartrending. Yet the romantic aspect is overcooked in a Captain Corelli’s Mandolin kind-of-way, with too much orchestrated sentimentality to take. (Angie Errigo) ■ General release from Fri 28 Apr.
74 THE LIST 1 Apr–31 May 2017