HERSELF - BFI London Film Festival 2020 - Day 2

It would be easy to be cynical about a movie like HERSELF but I found it to be a rather lovely hope-filled movie about basic human kindness in the face of personal harm and institutional carelessness. It stars screenwriter Clare Dunne as Sandra: a young single mother of two daughters, still haunted by the horrific physical marital violence she suffered. As the movie opens, Sandra leaves her husband and is forced to rely on the local government for housing.  With so many demands on its services, she's left to an endless waiting list and temporary accommodation in a hotel. On the way, we see how nasty and overpriced private sector rental accommodation is, and how hard it is for Clare to manage all her minimum wage jobs to get by.  But despite this apparently dour scenario, the movie is actually full of hope. One of the ladies that Sandra cleans for offers her a piece of land on which to build a house herself, following online instructions from a progressive architect.  The odds are steep - Sandra has only her own manual labour and little knowledge of how to apply for planning permits or cut timber - but she finds a community of friends who come together to help her. Foremost among these is the wonderfully quiet and kind Aido, played by Game of Thrones' Conleth Hill. As I said before, it might be easy to be cynical about a movie that so clearly focusses on the kindness and generosity of a diverse group of friends, but this movie is not rose-tinted. It clearly shows the nastiness of domestic violence and its profound impact not just on Sandra but on her daughters. That it does so with a quiet dignity is to its, and director Phyllida Lloyd's credit. Indeed this is perhaps the quietest and most discreet of the films I have seen directed by her. It's miles away from the pantomime noise of MAMMA MIA!  But it has a strength and power those films don't have.  When Sandra is in court contesting the custody of her children, she is peppered with insulting questions from the lawyer and judge. She finally breaks and says "ask better questions". For other actors and directors this might have been a histrionic and grandstanding big scene, but here it's suffused with anger, yes, but also weariness and disbelief.  It's all the more affecting for that. 

HERSELF has a running time of 98 minutes. The film played Sundance, San Sebastian and London 2020. 

JOURNEY'S END - Day 3 - BFI London Film Festival 2017

Saul Dibb (SUITE FRANCAISE, THE DUCHESS) has directed what is the stand out film of this year's festival to date, an adaptation of R C Sherriff's stage play JOURNEY'S END.  This powerfully tragic tale of men on the front line in World War One has been brought from stage to screen still depicting the claustrophobia and tension of trench warfare without ever feeling "stagey" or merely a west end show with a camera put in front of it. Rather, Dibb uses his Welsh location to good effect - his film beautifully depicts the mists rising above the trench, and one can almost feel the damp, stale air.  And his use of candlelight inside the dug-out is atmospheric and sometimes even beautiful. 

The movie begins with a naive new officer requesting to join C Company in St Quentin, France, just as the troops are rotated onto the front line. Raleigh (Asa Butterfield) is full of that Dulce Et Decorum Est spirit, but is shocked to find that his schoolboy mentor Stanhope (Sam Claflin) has become a superb commander but also a cynical and volatile alcoholic - something that Stanhope is painfully aware of and scared Raleigh will tell his sister, Stanhope's beloved.  Thus it falls to Stanhope's two junior officers to take Raleigh under their wing - there's the affable, modest, epitome of the stiff-upper-lip, "Uncle" (Paul Bettany) and the working class jovial Trotter (Stephen Graham).  The officers are rounded out by Hibbert (Tom Sturridge) - a ladies man who may or may not be faking neuralgia to get away from the front - something that Stanhope is not having anything of.

Much of the action takes place in and around the officer's dugout as they unwillingly accede to an order for a near-suicide mission to fetch intelligence from enemy lines; and then as the men face a heavy bombardment for the start of the German's Spring Offensive. I found myself physically tensing throughout, I was so involved in the fate of the characters. In such an intense environment, one sees Uncle adopt an air of calm indifference and studied bonhomie to offset Stanhope's nasty aggression.  And it's the play between the two that's really at the heart of this film.  If Bettany's performance is the most instantly likeable it's Claflin who steals the movie. There's a deep and desperate vulnerability to Stanhope that reasserts itself in the film's final scenes. It's a bravura and committed performance that deserves award season recognition. 

JOURNEY'S END has a running time of 107 minutes and played Toronto and London 2017. It will be released in the UK on Feb 2nd.