Glorious 39

source: Glorious 39

After finding secret pro-appeasement (for the Nazis) recordings Anne (Garai) becomes involved in a secret, violent conspiracy, set in England in 1939. After one of her friends who speaks out against Hitler is found dead, Anne begins to dig deeper into the reasons for his death. This is a very interesting movie. It is both compelling and slow moving. It is tense but it drags in spots. It kept me watching but my mind did wander a bit. This is overall a good movie but you need to be in the mood for it. You really feel for Anne and the way her life begins to fall apart. I am a fan of historical movies so I really liked that aspect of it. This movie had the feel of a made-for-TV movie, although it would have been an HBO movie with the quality of it. I recommend this but again, it's not for everyone, and you need to be in the mood to watch a movie like this one. I give it a B-. Would I watch again? - Probably not

Trying to make sense of this film is like trying to solve the Times crossword using clues provided by a tabloid compiler. You keep feeling there's surely something substantial here if only someone would actually say or do something helpful. Apart from costumes and a couple of vintage cars there's not too much thought gone into creating an authentic 'period' feel. The central idea - the protagonist starting off in the real world and gradually becoming aware of unreality followed by a feeling of persecution and being the only one sane enough to prevent a conspiracy from coming to fruition - has become a cliché and requires something extra special to make it work and retain interest. A feeling of naturalism is totally absent and in its place are a lot of actors who have clearly been instructed to 'act' slightly menacing whilst seeming perfectly reasonable. In short, a disaster.

Glorious 39, when I first heard of it, ticked all of the boxes for what I would normally like in a film - Romola Garai, David Tennant, Bill Nighy, 1930s setting, war drama, so on and so forth. In what now seems a somewhat exaggerated tidbit of praise, Company called the film "This year's Atonement". As somebody who has both seen and read Atonement in great detail, these are big words that create big expectations, not all of which were met, unfortunately. Acting-wise, I felt that the cast as a whole worked well with the dialogue and character types that they had been given. Bill Nighy is, as always, a delight to watch, but his dialogue was not so much of a delight. If somebody finished every single sentence to me with "darling", as did their children, I would become suspicious of them long before Anne ever did. However I rather feel that Romola Garai has been, of late, a sort of amorphous mystery woman who is at first playful to the point of annoyance, followed by quivering and tearful, concluded with blankly staring into space. 'Emma', 'Daniel Deronda' and even to an extent 'Atonement' seem to follow this much of the time. As much as I like her as an actress, I never feel that there is any real defining trait (nor intelligence?) to her characters, though perhaps this is because of input other than her own. Hugh Bonneville and David Tennant were excellent in slightly lesser roles, although their close relationships to the main characters remain the most intriguing mysteries of the film. I found myself repeatedly wishing that they hadn't died, if only to have two likable characters to watch by the end. My main gripes with the film were the ridiculous framing of the story with modern-day, and of course the ending. The story-telling by the cousins was both unnecessary and implausible, and I would have been content with the 1930s parts on their own, as I gained nothing from the modern day section except that Walter remained a weirdo right up until old age. His character as a whole seemed like a cardboard insert to remind us that yes, we should be scared, and yes, this is a very creepy situation. Did he have parents? Did anybody ever know where he was at any given moment? How did he manage to have his own personal bubble wherever he went? The ending was, undoubtedly, the most pointless attempt at a dramatic ending that I have seen yet. I dislike being so harsh about it, but the Atonement comparison had set me up for a surprise ending that really hits home and makes you see the whole story in a new light. Instead I saw an elderly lady sneering at her cousins, presumably for having been in the same place as some people who did bad things. To summarise, I guess I must say that Glorious 39 felt like more of a patchwork of filmic ideas (and clichés) than a coherent plot. Very few surprises were actually unexpected - you cannot expect an audience to have the same emotional connections to characters as your lead does, nor their naivety. We will suspect anybody and everybody, more so if they seem good on first appearances. And of course, this applies doubly when we have rented it out because it is a mystery! The film had its good points, naturally - as has been mentioned, it was visually "sumptuous", particularly in regards to costuming. I felt that the subject matter and, to an extent, the characters had potential, but Poliakoff would have done well to approach a few friends with the script and ask "Does this make sense to you guys?". Sorry Company, but Atonement this most definitely is not.

I am a big fan of Poliakoff and this should have been great atmospheric piece but important parts are just off key, most of all the script that seem couple of drafts away from being what it could have been. Now it is just slow and quite unbelievable, things happen because the plot needs them to happen, and you can see the cogs turning. Just tighter editing might have helped at times, like when the first record (oh so conveniently) got broken. Camera and editing seem a little off too, not as stunning visually as his last work on TV was... Cast are doing their best but somehow hang over nothing - usually Poliakoff manages this miracle, so little happens and is said but the tension and the sense of mystery (of life) underneath is palpable beneath - like puppets in the air, bit uncertain of their moves. Poor David Tennant was particularly badly served, left in our minds just a awkward over acted scream on the gramophone record... Maybe because there now is, in plot terms, a mystery too: what is going on with the records and the Jeremy Northam character and does Bill Nighy know. So the usual Poliakoff treat of sensing the strangeness of life in general doesn't manage to surface from under all this plotting. Also, the main character became at time quite annoying, always whining about not being believed even before anyone said anything...and then, when she realises she's in a nest of asps she keeps talking most unguardedly at places where she's clearly overheard. One thing that thriller's tolarate very badly is a hero/ine who comes across much dummer than the viewer... What a missed opportunity!!! Just not good enough I'm afraid. Made you feel it was LAZY film making.

Stephen Polliakoff's work has shown some consistent concerns: two of them are a nostalgic view of the aristocratic past, and an interest in the aftermath of Nazism. These two come together in 'Glorious 39', which one may describe as a '39 Steps' kind of thriller; and in its middle portion, it's briefly gripping, albeit in a style that seems a deliberate pastiche of an earlier style of film. But overall, it's a rum beast, almost a parody of Polliakoff's earlier work. There are lines of incongruous or anachronistic dialogue, and much of the acting is exceedingly flat. Polliakof often casts Bill Nighy, and seems to order him to underact; in my opinion, all of Nighy's performances for this director are awful. The child acting is also exceedingly wooden. Ramola Garai in the lead role is OK, but she really gets almost no help; yet from the overall feel of the piece, it's hard to avoid concluding that this is intentional. The plot is incoherent and hackneyed: the good guys all want to fight the Nazis, the nasty people don't; even the use of an adopted child as the lead character seems to be a cheap way of having a cake and eating it, as it allows the director to revel in the aristocratic excess while simultaneously suggesting there was something terrible about it. The concluding scene, meanwhile, makes something out of nothing, a crescendo of music hiding the fact that there's no real drama in the ending. It's a shame, as for a number of years, Polliakoff's work was consistently interesting; but this is a mess.

The plot is improbable (MI5 conspiring with barmy aristocrats to oppose appeasement) and the direction is leaden. The settings, costumes and photography have the same sumptuousness as Atonement but, like that film, the atmosphere created doesn't ring true as that of pre-war upper class England. Bill Nighy, try as he may, simply isn't the right man to deliver the aristocratic ennui demanded by the part - he's far too warm and animated. The denouement is too long drawn-out and the ending deeply unsatisfying - both because the story isn't properly closed off and because it avoids any sense of the tragedy that events leading up to it demand. The one bright light in an otherwise frustrating movie was the spirited performance of Romola Garai as the heroine.

What a treat is this dark and serpentine story of conspiracy, betrayal and innocence violated. It is the more powerful, compelling and involving for its subtle and wonderfully gentle understatement. A very English film, it presents genuine, familiar and engaging period performances from a fine cast headed by the extremely watchable Bill Nigh - who's character oozes honeyed treachery. It resonated strongly with me. The themes and characters are gripping. Such a pity it was not made fifty years ago so that it could now be watched in authentic black and white. I've not noticed it on general release in the UK. I can't imagine why not - it will become a classic. I watched it without seeing any of the credits first, but recognised it after just a few minutes as the work of Stephen Poliakoff. Watching this film gave me much pleasure. I commend it highly.

One of the weakest parts of this film was that it began (and ended) with a rather pointless visit to the future, introducing a young descendant of the family in the main plot, who is apparently investigating their family history. It is very unlikely on meeting elderly relatives (apparently only for the second time ever) that within a few minutes they would launch into an extremely complex story about an estranged relative. There are not too many teenagers who would be interested and confident enough to approach relatives they don't have a relationship with, about the 'family tree'. The film could stand alone without this subplot. Also the implausibility of Anne reuniting with her adoptive family in old age and looking relatively pleased about seeing them, ruins the conclusion of the film. The plot did not need this complication. A far more effective ending would have been Anne disappearing in her nightdress (with the audience unsure whether she has lost her mind or whether she has escaped an adoptive family who are poisoning her).

Though there have been books and other films that deal with the dissidence between the aristocrats and the general populace of England around the topic of WW II, this beautifully executed 'historical thriller' brings many aspects of those discrepancies of opinion to light in a manner not unlike the similar thought processes in Germany at the same time: the gentry of Germany turned a blind eye to the events surrounding them (The Final Solution) in order to believe in what they chose to believe as a promise for stabilization and world importance as a genteel country. Writer/Director Stephen Poliakoff has based his examination of this problem on focusing on the life of one particular character whose fate was the standard of the dispossessed. The year is 1939 and the aristocratic family of Sir Alexander Keyes (Bill Nighy) and his wife Maud (Jenny Agutter) are living what seems to be an idyllic life with their children Ralph (Eddie Redmayne), Celia (Juno Temple) and the eldest, Anne (Romula Garai) who we soon discover was adopted before the Keyes discovered they could bear children on their own. Anne is a beautiful creative actress who seems to make the family proud. The family is visited by an old friend Hector (David Tennant) who at dinner is very vocal about the fact that Hitler is a threat to England and that England must stop Hitler before he destroys them instead of pursuing a course of appeasement of Hitler that would prevent disturbance of their elegant way of life on the island of England. It is obvious that Sir Alexander is more concerned with his duties as a member of parliament and his maintenance of his family history and wealth, and his responses to Hector as well as to the mysterious Balcombe (Jeremy Northam) from the Foreign Office and the young Lawrence (Charlie Cox), a new member of the Foreign Office who is courting Anne, suggest subterfuge. The family is visited by the very proper Aunt Elizabeth (Julie Christie) and while the entire family is on picnic, an infant transiently disappears while under Anne's care. From this point the story takes a dark turn: Anne continues filming in London with her close friend, actor Gilbert (Hugh Bonneville), and Anne discovers some phonograph records in the basement of the Keyes home, records that contain not fox trots but instead 'conversations' from meetings. Suspicions about evil derring-do arise when the family learns that Hector has committed suicide soon followed by the suicide of Gilbert and eventually the bizarre discovery of Lawrence's body among the pet animals ordered to be put to death to make the people of England more ready for abrupt changes. War with Germany begins and changes the atmosphere and results in changes in the Keyes family: Anne is imprisoned by the family because 'she is really not one of us' and unravels the harrowing mystery of the Keyes' family involvement in the dark events of the present and the past. The mood of England of 1939 is beautifully captured by cinematographer Danny Cohen and the musical score by Adrian Johnston illustrates the dichotomy of the free-spirited Anne and the dark underpinnings of the Keyes family. Romola Garai is excellent in her treacherous role as are the other stars. Small roles by Toby Regbo, Christopher Lee, Corin Redgrave and others make this a cast rich in some of the finest British actors of the day. GLORIOUS 39 ('Glorious' is the nickname given Anne) is an enlightening film that addresses many significant issues too infrequently addressed by works of history. Grady Harp