Kinda gaggy that two gay men teamed up to produce some lavish film adaptations of a gay novelist’s best work.
I didn’t recall much about the ending from watching this nearly five years ago. But Anthony Hopkins’s final line has to be one of the most fraught questions I’ve been left with in a long time. It speaks to Forester’s themes of a class dying out and the younger, progressive generation bringing up the rear. It’s such lush, contemplative cinema.
Underneath all the glorious jabs and reads, there’s a lot of wounded men haunted by the war and by the dreams and loves they must repress.
No wonder they bite and tear.
Terence Davies is in usual, dreamy form and has a beautiful leading man in Jack Lowden guiding us along Siegfried Sassoon’s troubled transition into post-war existence. With the heartbreaking closing poem, I could just see so much piling up: the lonely years ahead, the anguish and anger of…
A baffling screenplay. Here’s some of my favorite lines:
“Replace that tit!”
“I have robbed the cradle and fell into hell.”
“The strangest vibrations in this house today!“
“I am only a human girl person and I ain’t always perfect.”
“I am only a human man person myself of the father variety.“
“Pack your bag, baby. As of this moment, you are hired, mired and fired.”
