Review of Hope and Glory (1987) by Pirkko S — 10 May 2009

I am never going to understand cricket. Ever. If Dorothy L. Sayers couldn't get me to understand it after an entire long, detailed chapter in one of my favourite Wimsey novels ([i]Murder Must Advertise[/i], a book I strongly recommend), a few brief moments in this movie aren't going to do anything for me. When the kid throws a ball, and his grandfather says, "It's a googlie"? This means nothing to me. At all. Apparently, this is something impressive for a young boy to be . . . throwing? I know Lord Peter demonstrated one to one of his coworkers at one point, though Sayers doesn't really give us the information that he gives her. The point is, pretty much the only thing I got out of the scene where the kid and his grandfather are playing cricket together on the grandfather's lawn is, "That ball's going to go into the river." Admittedly, I'm a girl--and that is actually literally why all I did with my grandfather was watch TV; he didn't know what else to do with girls. He tossed a ball around with my cousin Donovan, I guess. But that's about it.

Bill Rowan (Sebastian Rice Edwards)is six, though he seems a couple of years older, on the Day the War Comes--1 September, 1939. His father, Clive (David Hayman), joins the army, ending up as a clerk--he's a veteran of the Turkey campaign form the previous war, and they won't let him do anything else. His mother, Dawn (Sammi Davis), is interested in her husband's old friend, Mac (Derrick O'Connor). His little sister, Sue (Geraldine Muir), is if anything less aware of what's going on than he is. His older sister, Grace (Sarah Miles), goes out to be a carefree woman of the war era. She gets involved with Canadian Corporal Bruce Perry (Jean-Marc Barr), and, well, things go pretty much the way you'd expect. The family ends up living with Dawn's parents (Ian Bannen and Annie Leon). And Bill sees the whole thing the way you'd expect. To the extent that, when a friend's mother is killed in an air raid, his solution to make her feel better is to offer her a piece of shrapnel.

You know, I get it. Autobiographical. And it's supposed to be all interesting and such to see what adults will do in front of children if they don't think the kids understand--we actually see his mother and Mac flirting, right there on the train in front of him. Grace and Bruce fool around in front of him. No one expects him to understand--but the thing is, he doesn't. We're supposed to watch things all ironically, I think, seeing ourselves through him but not of him. He's a tool. I know the screenwriter is trying to work through his own personal life and all. I get that. Really. But you know, it doesn't do anything for me.

About the only character I find remotely interesting is the mother, and they lose her as sympathetic to me when she talks, again in front of her son, about how she should have married Mac instead of the kid's father. Are you kidding me with this? He's a kid. He's not stupid. "I should have married you" is pretty clear-cut, even if you're seven (which he probably is by this point). They know he's there; they keep looking at him. It's not as though a train compartment is the most private of places anyway. And, for heaven's sake, Grace is around there somewhere, too. She also let the kids decide whether or not they're going to be shipped to safety--at the gate, yet. Bah.

Actually, now I really stop to think about it, everyone in the whole movie is pretty immature, not just Bill--who has an excuse, after all. His dad . . . well, all right, patriotic fervor and all that. Okay. So he runs out on his family without his wife's support. Well, a lot of people did in time of war. Fair. But his mom seems to be considering leaving him, and she clearly regrets ever having married him in the first place. Grace seems to actually want to be living a life of hedonism, unaware that there might be consequences. The grandfather's really just a jerk. Bah again. They are living through a time when they're all supposed to be pulling together, and when the house burns down, the only thing the kid cares about is the melted box of lead soldiers.