Bill Nighy quietly says "I'm gay" after a lifetime of hiding, which is devestating, but he says it while putting margarine and nothing else on bread to feed the striker's families, because it is the last desperate end of a titanic struggle where the state smashed organised labour power in Britain, which is far more devestating.
Show this to a friend to make them gay, a socialist or hopefully, both.
It was on TV and I'm jetlagged so I left it on. This film was made a little over a decade ago and feels like a dispatch from another universe. The plot is looser than your average student production. The tone is so off I'm stunned this made money. Lines are delivered completely flat, and then there is a slight pause for laughter that will not come. Everyone feels like they were green screened in from different countries in between…
Misconceived and misguided on every level. It doesn't work, and every minute that it doesn't work is agony. Both twee and monstrously offensive at the same time, which is an achievement, of sorts.
Watched a beautiful restoration with a mini doc at the end at MoMA in New York.
I'm no film expert, and it always takes about twenty minutes for me to settle into the rhythms of something made before, say, the 1970s or so. You often start out thinking this is just a series of vignettes without a clear through line, but what you're actually reacting to is your own impaitence. As the story comes into focus it becomes a lovely,…
