Review of Their Finest (2017) by Pat M — 09 Apr 2017

I found myself laughing and gasping out loud, and crying - just like the audience inside the movie. It has a lot of humor, but I would never call it a comedy. And I don't see the humor in it as so much a way of coping or a proof of resilience, the characters are not joking to keep from crying, they are just living and the funny things just happen - at least the movie makes it feel that way. The humor made it enjoyable to watch but it also in a way served to amplify the tragedies when they happened - not because it provided contrast, but because it made the characters more human and thus the tragedies - more real.

The acting was so good on all levels, every character felt real, even those used mostly for laughs. The leads are just fantastic. Gemma Arterton made me cry when she cried, among so many other things. Bill Nighy is amazing, I wouldn't be surprised if he gets an Oscar nomination. But while he is still Bill Nighy, Sam Claflin completely disappears into Tom Buckley - this dorky guy who apparently never quite figured out how to talk to girls.

SPOILER ALERT. The last part devastated me. But while I ached for the ending of the love story to parallel that of the movie within a movie, I found the parallel they chose to have much more poignant and powerful. In a heartbreaking irony it is the girl who ends up fixing the motor and it is the woman who is left to finish the script - because the men are no longer there to do it.