British Movies

    Last night, Doralyn and I went to see the movie "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel". It was a wonderful British movie about a group of middle-aged Britons who all end up as the first "guests" of a retirement home in India. It has been advertised on the internet as a luxury hotel but such is not the case. The story revolves around how the new guests adapt to the hotel and life in India, in general.
   While watching the movie, I couldn't help but think of other British movies I have enjoyed in the past. Many of them are the ones I am the most fond of, probably for a variety of reasons.
   I remember being home sick from school one afternoon when I was a young boy. I ended up watching a movie called "Lord of the Flies" about a group of young British schoolboys who were stranded on an island as the result of a plane crash. As I watched, the boys set up their own little society and did a pretty good job of coping. Soon, though, things began to break down, factions formed, and enemies were made. The movie ended but it was difficult to say whether it was a happy ending or not. A couple of the children in it are killed by other children as the blood lust has risen. Before this happened I had started to identify with one of the boys, Piggy. He wore glasses and was overweight. I wore glasses and was overweight. He is one of the boys who dies near the end and this had a profound effect on me. At that point in my life, I simply was not prepared for children to die in a movie I was watching. It was a gut-wrenching kind of moment that has stayed with me since.
   Not too long after this, I saw a movie called "Blow Up". This was about a disenchanted fashion photographer who inadvertently, while filming a couple in a park, takes pictures of a murder scene. He does not realize this until he is back in his studio, developing the film and blowing up the pictures. He sees what he thinks is a gun barrel and then feet sticking out from the bushes. The premise of the movie was interesting enough to a young person and the fact that there was partial nudity and the "swinging sixties" backdrop made it memorable to a young lad such as myself.

   What made "Educating Rita" a movie worth seeing more than once for me was a couple of things--the fact that its two principal stars, Michael Caine and Julie Walters, had wonderful chemistry in the film and that the film centred on writing and the writing process. Essentially, he helps her learn about literature and how to write and she helps him dig himself out of the alcoholic depression which has kept him from writing himself. Though somewhat formulaic, it is well-written and watching these two actors interact is irresistible.

   "The Dresser" is a movie about a travelling Shakespearean theatre troupe in England during the Second World War. Its title character, played by Tom Courtenay, is charged with the task of "dressing" and tending to the ailing leader of the troupe, as played by Albert Finney. Finney is tyrannical but, at the same time, is barely able to function coherently. Courtenay, for all intents and purposes, runs the company because he is the only one who can support its leader. The acting performances are wonderful and the writing is superb.

   One of my all-time favourite movies is "Four Weddings and a Funeral". I think it is one of my favourites because it has a little bit of everything--humour, pathos, love, death and poetry. It features Hugh Grant at his muddled best and the rest of the cast all give magnificent performances. It follows a group of friends as they attend a series of weddings together. Much of the movie centers on their individual searches for love and happiness. Commitment seems to be an issue, particularly with Grant. In the end, they all are happy but not without some loss along the way (remember, there is a funeral in the title...) This is one of those movies I could watch over and over again.

   Battling "Four Weddings..." on my all-time list of favourite British movies is "A Clockwork Orange". It was a pure assault on all the senses. It contained rampant sexuality and violence (quite often combined), classical music, visually stunning and imaginative imagery, bizarre costuming, humour and thought provocation. Alex and his gang of teen aged hoodlums cut a wide swath through a near-future England. The government, in an attempt to crack down on the violence permeating the country, adopt a sort of brainwashing technique which robs evildoers of their free will. Alex falls prey to this technique but, in the end, returns to his old ways. The film was directed by Stanley Kubrick and is the best, I think, of an excellent body of work.
   It is a little difficult to pin down exactly why I like British films so much. The common denominator of all the above films is the excellence of the writing. There is wit (some of it quite dry), understatement, clever use of language, humour, pathos, and much of it is thought-provoking. And the above is not even particularly the definitive list--I have left off such films as "My Left Foot", "Billy Elliot", the early James Bond movies, "Georgy Girl", "Far From The Madding Crowd", "Lawrence of Arabia", "Gandhi" and "The Bridge on the River Kwai" and on and on. There is intimacy and there is grandeur in these films. There is subtle and clever humour and there is violence with a purpose. There is nothing that is "in your face" and much that will require an unmuddied thought process. As much as I have enjoyed all these movies, though, none of them are even in the top ten in a recent poll of the 100 Best British Movies. I guess this means I have my work cut out for me!