The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

It's the beginning of our new season, we needed a crowd-pleaser to start with and pull in the members so I suggested this film. Fortunately it seemed to work as the film went down well and we actually secured a few new members. I'd seen the film at the cinema, and watching it again made me appreciate how well it was structured, although I don't think I'd rush out to buy the source novel.

Here are my notes:

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

UK 2018          123 minutes

Director:          Mike Newell

Starring:            Lily James, Michel Huisman, Glen Powell, Jessica Brown Findlay, Katherine Parkinson, Matthew Goode, Tom Courtenay and Penelope Wilton

“Buoyed by a reliably appealing star turn from [Lily] James, this handsome tearjerker mostly sidesteps the tweeness of its title to become, somehow, both an old-fashioned romance and a detective story trumpeting gender equality.”

Harry Windsor, The Hollywood Reporter

In 1946 author Juliet Ashton (Lily James) decides to visit the island of Guernsey after Dawsey Adams (Michel Huisman), a local man with whom she has been in correspondence, tells her about The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society which had been established during the Nazi occupation of the island. Juliet plans to write just about the Society but gradually she begins to be drawn into island life as she learns what happened there during the war.

The film is an adaptation of the epistolary novel by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Burrows: Shaffer had been fascinated by the Nazi occupation of Guernsey and had spent years researching the subject before beginning to write the novel but then became too ill to finish it. Annie Burrows is Shaffer’s niece and, as a successful author in her own right, was able to take over the novel and complete it ready for publication after which it became a global best-seller.

Kate Winslet had initially been cast in the role of Juliet but had to drop out when production of the film was delayed. Subsequently both Michelle Dockery and Rosamund Pike were approached to take on the leading role before Lily Jams was finally cast. Lily James made her name in Downton Abbey which also included Jessica Brown Findlay, Matthew Goode and Penelope Wilton, all of whom already had impressive stage and screen credits to their name, as regular cast members. However since her role in Downton Abbey Lily James has significantly extended her own list of credits with a series of major roles: she played the lead in the recent BBC adaptation of War and Peace, and after playing title role lead in Kenneth Branagh’s live action film of Cinderella (2015) she also appeared in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016), Darkest Hour (2017) and, most recently, as young Donna in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018).

Mike Newell started his career in television where his early work includes Dance with a Stranger (1985) Enchanted April (1992) and Into the West (1992). He came to international prominence in the cinema with Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), and since then his eclectic career has included literary adaptations such as An Awfully Big Adventure (1995), Love in the Time of Cholera (2007) and Great Expectations (2012) as well as blockbusters such as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010). His future projects include an untitled film about the death of Alexander Litvinenko as well as a new version of The Day of the Triffids.

UK 2018          123 minutes

Director:          Mike Newell

Starring:            Lily James, Michel Huisman, Glen Powell, Jessica Brown Findlay, Katherine Parkinson, Matthew Goode, Tom Courtenay and Penelope Wilton

“Buoyed by a reliably appealing star turn from [Lily] James, this handsome tearjerker mostly sidesteps the tweeness of its title to become, somehow, both an old-fashioned romance and a detective story trumpeting gender equality.”

Harry Windsor, The Hollywood Reporter

In 1946 author Juliet Ashton (Lily James) decides to visit the island of Guernsey after Dawsey Adams (Michel Huisman), a local man with whom she has been in correspondence, tells her about The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society which had been established during the Nazi occupation of the island. Juliet plans to write just about the Society but gradually she begins to be drawn into island life as she learns what happened there during the war.

The film is an adaptation of the epistolary novel by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Burrows: Shaffer had been fascinated by the Nazi occupation of Guernsey and had spent years researching the subject before beginning to write the novel but then became too ill to finish it. Annie Burrows is Shaffer’s niece and, as a successful author in her own right, was able to take over the novel and complete it ready for publication after which it became a global best-seller.

Kate Winslet had initially been cast in the role of Juliet but had to drop out when production of the film was delayed. Subsequently both Michelle Dockery and Rosamund Pike were approached to take on the leading role before Lily Jams was finally cast. Lily James made her name in Downton Abbey which also included Jessica Brown Findlay, Matthew Goode and Penelope Wilton, all of whom already had impressive stage and screen credits to their name, as regular cast members. However since her role in Downton Abbey Lily James has significantly extended her own list of credits with a series of major roles: she played the lead in the recent BBC adaptation of War and Peace, and after playing title role lead in Kenneth Branagh’s live action film of Cinderella (2015) she also appeared in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016), Darkest Hour (2017) and, most recently, as young Donna in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018).

Mike Newell started his career in television where his early work includes Dance with a Stranger (1985) Enchanted April (1992) and Into the West (1992). He came to international prominence in the cinema with Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), and since then his eclectic career has included literary adaptations such as An Awfully Big Adventure (1995), Love in the Time of Cholera (2007) and Great Expectations (2012) as well as blockbusters such as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010). His future projects include an untitled film about the death of Alexander Litvinenko as well as a new version of The Day of the Triffids.

Here's a link to the trailer:

Stoker

We screened this last week.  Somehow I missed the film when it was on general release, and I when I started reading up on it to write my notes I thought it looked good.

I was not mistaken.

Here are my notes:

Stoker

USA 2012                    99 minutes

Director:                      Park Chan-wook

Starring:                        Mia Wasikowska, Nicole Kidman and Matthew Goode

Awards and Nominations

• Seven wins
• 25 nominations

“The South Korean director Park Chan-wook makes an eye-catching English-language debut with his outrageous quasi-remake of Alfred Hitchcock's 1943 thriller Shadow of a Doubt. Where Hitchcock's original injected a small drop of poison into picket-fence suburbia, Stoker stands proud as a full-blown gothic nightmare. ”

Xan Brooks

Following the death of India’s father, her uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode) who she never knew existed comes to live with her and Evelyn, her unstable mother (Nicole Kidman).  India (Mia Wasikowska) comes to suspect that this mysterious charming man has ulterior motives while at the same time becoming increasingly infatuated with him.

The script is by Wentworth Miller, best known as an actor in the TV series Prison Break (2005), although he submitted the script under a pseudonym, explaining later “I just wanted the scripts to sink or swim on their own”.  Miller described his story as “a horror film, a family drama and a psychological thriller”.   The title Stoker suggests a link to Bram Stoker, but in the context of the story Miller’s debt to Dracula lies more in the relationship between Charlie and India, echoing the corrupting influence that Dracula has on Lucy Westenra, rather than on any overt vampire references.  A more obvious source for Miller’s script is Hitchcock’s 1943 psychological thriller Shadow of a Doubt.   

In an interview Miller freely acknowledged this debt:  

"The jumping-off point is actually Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt. So, that's where we begin, and then we take it in a very, very different direction”. 

 

He emphasises the point by giving India’s uncle the same name as that of Joseph Cotten’s psychopathic killer in the Hitchcock film.

This film is South Korean Park Chan-wook’s first English language feature, after making his name in South Korea as the writer and director of Sympathy for Mr Vengeance (2002), Oldboy (2003) and Lady Vengeance (2005), the so-called Vengeance Trilogy.  Oldboy won the Grand Prix at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival where Quentin Tarantino, a great fan, lobbied hard for it to be given the Palme d’Or.

Here's the trailer: