LONDON - 17 October 2007 - 300 words
Movie: And when did you last see your father?
Fr Peter Malone
Book-loving readers of The Universe may remember this memoir of
poet, novelist, literary editor, Blake Morrison when it was first
published in 1993. It has taken a long time to reach the screen,
not an easy task to adapt a family memoir, but it has been worth
the wait.
If audience experience is anything like this reviewer's, then
they will be identifying with characters very strongly, identifying
with the situations and making comparisons if they have been through
similar experiences, especially of terminal illness and death.
The quotation of the title comes late in the film. It is a reference
to Blake Morrison's grandfather who was asked at the time of his
father's death: 'And when did you last see your father?'. The
question has many meanings, not just seeing one's father at the
time of death or in final illness. Rather, it asks the question,
when did you last see your father as he really was, fully alive
as himself.
Morrison asks the question because he had many difficulties with
his father. Arthur Morrison was an extroverted, jocose, even rambunctious
man, a doctor, married to a doctor, who hoped that his son would
follow in his footsteps. In many ways, his son was a disappointment,
a quiet and introverted boy who grew up to be a writer, even a
prizewinning writer who was never praised verbally by his father.
Not that Arthur Morrison was not proud of his son and loved him.
He didn't say it and Blake needed the words. As he recollects
his father in this memoir, he begins to realise all that his father
did for him and to let go of the anger, even fury, that he felt
for his father.
The film is a memoir composed of jigsaw pieces of life. As they
intersect on screen, we see the little boy realising his father's
infidelity. We see the quiet teenager who becomes the butt of
his father,s stories and jokes. We see the adult Blake who has
come to be with his father and mother in his father's final illness,
hoping for some talk, some reconciliation, a man who needs to
put the pieces together and appreciate his father, faults and
failings as well as generosity and love.
The film is beautifully presented, home and travels in traditional
English countryside and a musical score that starts light but
becomes more sombre as the narrative progresses. Many audiences
will feel at home in the film.
But, it is the acting which is the film's great achievement in
communicating the characters, the story, the crises and the emotion.
Jim Broadbent is one of Britain's great character actors. He won
an Oscar for caring for his wife in Iris. Here, he is the dying
father most convincing and moving in this part of the film. But,
in the flashbacks, he comes fully alive and creates a vivid Arthur
Morrison.
Colin Firth can often be silent and withdrawn in his films. This
suits perfectly as the adult Blake, remembering, tending his father,
supporting his mother and trying to deal with his emotional needs
and his relationship with his father. Matthew Beard is also strong
as the adolescent Blake. Juliet ---Stevenson is unobtrusively
moving as the long suffering but devoted wife and mother.
This is life, acknowledging the hurts and the sins, but seeing
the hope in a redemptive love.
© Independent Catholic
News 2007
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