Victoria and Abdul

We knew that we'd need to screen this film even before it was released and the reviews were in: the combination of Judi Dench and period drama meant that we were bound to get a good audience.

I'd seen the film at the cinema and enjoyed it: it was genuinely good but did not have the story or impact of the same team's Philomena. It was a good evening and, as they say, a good time was had by all.

Here are my notes:


Victoria and Abdul

UK 2017          111 minutes

Director:          Stephen Frears

Starring:            Judi Dench, Ali Fazal, Tim Piggott-Smith, Eddie Izzard and Adeel Akhtar

Awards and Nominations

• Nominated for two Oscars (Makeup and Hairstyling, and Costume Design)
• Nominated for Best Actress - Musical or Comedy (Judi Dench) at the Golden Globes
• A further two wins and 10 nominations

“Victoria & Abdul is worth seeing for Dench's magisterial performance and for Frears's light but sure directorial touch. Just don't mistake it for actual history.”

Christopher Orr

Abdul Karim (Ali Fazal) travels from India to participate in Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. When he meets the Queen (Judi Dench) they strike up an unlikely alliance. As their friendship develops the Prince of Wales (Eddie Izzard), Sir Henry Ponsonby (Tim Piggott-Smith) and members of her household do their best to destroy it.

It is possible to see the film as an unofficial sequel to Mrs Brown (1997) in which Dench’s portrayal of the widowed Queen Victoria won her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress and launched her Hollywood career. The main characters of the film were real people, but the opening credits (“based on true events… mostly”) confirm that what follows is a historical fantasy.

The subject of the film is quintessentially English, and the production involves a creative team that developed their careers at the BBC before moving into cinema where they have been involved in a significant number of the best British films over the past few decades while subsequently garnering an international reputation for their work in Hollywood. The screenplay is by Lee Hall whose early work included plays for BBC Radio before making his name with Billy Elliot (2000) and later writing the screenplay for Stephen Spielberg’s War Horse (2011). Stephen Frears’s early TV work included A Day Out (1972), Alan Bennett’s debut play for TV, and My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), made for TV but released cinematically, before he moved to Hollywood where his films included Dangerous Liaisons (1988), The Grifters (1990) and High Fidelity (2000).

Meanwhile Judi Dench followed an illustrious stage career with a numerous TV roles with the BBC before being cast as Queen Victoria in Mrs Brown. She first worked with Stephen Frears in the TV movie Saigon - Year of the Cat (1983) and subsequently starred in his films of Mrs Henderson Presents (2005) and the Oscar nominated Philomena (2015). Since completing this film she has also starred in Murder on the Orient Express (2017) and has recently completed filming Red Joan, with Trevor Nunn as director.

Here's a link to the trailer:

The Lady in the Van

This was the final film of our season. Fortunately the DVD release was just in time for us to show it.

Our history shows us that Alan Bennett (The History Boys) and Maggie Smith (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotels et al as well as Downton Abbey) have always been popular so the combination of the two was irresistible.

It was also a very good film, although not quite the comedy the poster seemed to imply.

Here are my notes:

The Lady in the Van

UK 2015                      104 minutes

Director:                      Nicholas Hytner

Starring:                        Maggie Smith, Alex Jennings, Jim Broadbent, Frances de la Tour and Roger Allam

Awards and Nominations

• Won Best Actress Award (Maggie Smith) at the Evening Standard British Film Awards
• Nominations for Best Actress (Maggie Smith) at the Golden Globes and BAFTA Film Awards

“Having come a cropper with his screen adaptation of The History Boys in 2006, director Nicholas Hytner here hits the high notes that distinguished his 1994 stage-to-screen triumph The Madness of King George.”

Mark Kermode

In the 1970s Alan Bennett (Alex Jennings) offers the temporary use of the drive to his north London house to a homeless woman (Maggie Smith). She parks her battered van outside his front door – and stays there for 15 years.

The film is based on Bennett’s 1999 stage play which itself derives from the piece he had written about Miss Shepherd in his book Writing Home, and it reunites many people who have worked with him over the years.  Maggie Smith appeared in A Private Function (1984), Bennett’s first screenplay for the big screen and created the role of Miss Shepherd in the stage version of The Lady in the Van. The play was directed by Hytner, who has directed all of Bennett’s recent stage work, mostly at the National Theatre.  Hytner and Bennett’s previous film was The History Boys (2006) and the principal cast members from this production, with the exception of Frances de la Tour who has a supporting role, appear in cameo roles in this film.

As a stage actor Alex Jennings has won three Olivier awards for his work, which has been mostly with the RSC or at the National Theatre.  Here he has worked many times with Nicholas Hytner and first appeared in a play by Bennett when he had a leading role in The Habit of Art.  He subsequently played Alan Bennett on stage in Untold Stories Bennett’s dramatization of one of his autobiographical sketches. He is a skilled mimic, and in addition to Bennett he has played characters as diverse as Prince Charles in The Queen (2006) and President George Bush in Stuff Happens, David Hare’s “history play” about the Iraq War, once again directed by Nicholas Hytner at the National Theatre. 

Here is the trailer:

 

The King's Speech

We start our new season with a somewhat inevitible choice next week.  These are my notes:

The King’s Speech

UK 2010                      119 minutes

Director:                      Tom Hooper

Screenplay:                   David Seidler

Starring:                        Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter

Nominations and Awards

• Won four Oscars (Best Picture, Director, Actor and Original Screenplay) plus eight nominations (including Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress and Cinematography).
• Won seven BAFTAs (including Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress and Best Music) plus seven further nominations.
• A further 56 wins and 75 nominations

“Although the film involves a man overcoming a serious disability, it is neither triumphalist nor sentimental.  Its themes are courage (where it comes from, how it is used), responsibility, and the necessity to place duty above personal pleasure or contentment – the subjects, in fact, of such enduringly popular movies as Casablanca and High Noon.  In this sense, The King's Speech is an altogether more significant and ambitious work than Stephen Frears's admirable The Queen of 2006 and far transcends any political arguments about royalty and republicanism.”

Philip French

In the early1930s the Duke of York (Colin Firth), the younger son of George V (Michael Gambon), was struggling to overcome a speech impediment with help from Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), an Australian speech therapist.  George V died in 1936, and his death was followed by one of those incidents when, in Alan Bennett’s memorable phrase “history rattled over the points”: Edward VIII (Guy Pearce) abdicated in order to marry the divorced Wallis Simpson (Eve Best) and the Duke of York, who had never even seen any state papers was crowned King just as Fascism was on the rise across Europe and Churchill was beginning to warn of the dangers of German rearmament.  Logue continued to work with George V and with his help the King was able to face the challenges of both his Coronation and the public speeches his position demanded of him, including a live broadcast in September 1939 on the outbreak of war.

David Seidler had lived in London during the Second World War and had subsequently developed a stammer from the stress that he had endured.  He had been inspired by the example of George VI’s struggles with his speech impediment and, having moved to the US where he became a scriptwriter in Hollywood, he decided to write about the King.  Lionel Logue’s son committed to give him access to his father’s notes, but only if the Queen Mother consented: she gave her permission, but asked him not to do so in her lifetime.  Seidler subsequently discovered that Logue had treated one of his own uncles, and from him learnt about the techniques that Logue used in his treatment.  From this original source material Seidler produced an initial screenplay that he subsequently turned into a play script, and it was after attending a reading of this that Tom Hooper’s mother called him with a simple message: “I’ve found your next project”.

Although depicting the key historical events of the period, the film makes some changes to enhance the dramatic nature of the story: the Duke of York started working with Logue ten years before the Abdication and the improvement in his speech was noticeable within months rather than years; during the Abdication Crisis Churchill had been a staunch supporter of Edward VIII; and far from distancing themselves from Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement George VI and Chamberlain appeared together on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, an act of endorsement by the King described as “the biggest constitutional blunder that has been made by any sovereign this century”.

The film received rave reviews for its acting, screenplay and direction. Colin Firth received his first Oscar and both Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter received Oscar nominations for their supporting roles.  David Seidler won his first Oscar in his mid-70s, and after a long and successful career as a director on TV and having only directed one other feature film Tom Hooper won Oscars for both Best Director and Best Film.

Here's the trailer:

Liberty in the Age of Terror

Last night we went to hear a talk by A C Grayling - a brilliant lecture in defence of civil society and enlightenment values. I always read his articles in The Guardian and other sites and I've just ordered the book (plus its predecessor which is the story of of the struggle for liberty and rights in the modern West) from my favourite on-line retailer.

After the talk Grayling took a series of questions including one about the future of print media. In his view the mainstream press is under huge pressure from the internet; he described the growth of blogging as giving people access to the biggest lavatory wall ever built in order to express their opinions, with at least 95% of what is published online being worthless.

It is not for me to comment on the value - or otherwise - of this blog. I hope that it will reflect the hard work by members of our committee to get our film club up and running: we have fun choosing our films and it's a pleasure to see a new film or revisit an old favourite. But I can't help remembering the warning words from Alan Bennett in Forty Years On:

"When a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, then the writing is on the wall".