In Celebration

As one of the American Film Theatre movies, "In Celebration" is difficult to find on tape, but this story of an English family gathering for the parents' anniversary deserves a wider audience. Three grown sons argue over their individual problems while Mum bustles about cluelessly and Da waits uneasily for whichever crisis might erupt first. As the angry brother with some unresolved issues, Alan Bates makes the strongest impression, but the other actors are excellent as well.

This film reminds me of the Monty Python sketch featuring old Yorkshireman trying to complete as to who had the worst childhood. This film consists of the brothers of the family bickering with each other and their parents. Yawn.

Lindsay Anderson directs a stage play adapted by writer David Storey.

It is set in a Derbyshire mining town as Mr and Mrs Shaw (Bill Owen and Constance Chapman) celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary and their three sons have come to join in with the celebrations.

Mr Shaw is a miner, he plans to complete his 50th year in the mine pit which is next year and retire. His sons want him to retire now. Mrs Shaw seems to have come from a well to do family, she might had become pregnant by her husband hence she married beneath him yet she does not come across as too bright but seems to have been a dutiful wife and mother.

Tensions emerge once all the sons come around and there seems to be memories of the eldest child who died as a boy which no one is sure of why which seems to be the catalyst.

Andrew (Alan Bates) is the eldest and the most fractious. He is a solicitor who has gone on to become a drifter and a artist off sorts.

Colin (James Bolam) seems to have been left wing rebel now a negotiator for his company, a well off executive with a company car but unmarried. Again Andrew pulls his leg by questioning his sexuality.

Steven (Brian Cox) the youngest is a writer but has stopped writing. He is married with children but seems to be haunted by the past.

Periodically their neighbour Mrs Burnett drops in.

The film is a series of tensions that come on and off the boil interspersed with humour. The trouble is it looks too much of a stage play which has not been opened up. It is nicely acted but some of it was hard to understand as well. It actually does not feel like a feature film but more like a BBC Play for Today.

The great Lindsay Anderson adapts another play for film.

Quite interesting, well acted (a then quite young Alan Bates, Brian Cox, Bill Owen among others) study of dysfunctional working class English family where the three sons have become educated and moved up in the world, but are still stuck in the wounds of their childhood.

The production still feels very stagy, and some of the writing is too theatrical for film, but much of the play is moving and nicely complex; finding ways to combine the personal and the political.

It does feel a bit dated -- from a time when breaking away from living the life your parents expected was still a more radical idea.

A very slow and extremely tedious film about a Yorkshire family reuniting up north to celebrate their parents anniversary.

Unfortunately, it's not filmed in Yorkshire, and there's not a real Yorkshire accent to be heard anywhere! Even old 'Compo' couldn't convince anyone he was a Yorkshireman... maybe because he was actually a southerner!

Strangely the classic film "Brassed Off" is a better portrayal of Yorkshire folk in an old mining village, and one of the stars was Scottish!

There are brief moments of good acting from the all star cast, but they are few and far between in this bore of a movie.