Wetherby

An intriguing film which plays with time in an interesting way - it is based around the bizarre suicide of a young man, and scenes are shown in no particular order, some from before the suicide and some from after. Often it's hard to tell when chronologically a scene occurs. I like this kind of narrative structure (cf. Pulp Fiction).

Towards the end of the film further scenes are interspersed from an apparently independent storyline about American soldiers during the war. When I saw the film (quite a few years ago) I couldn't work out how this related to the rest of the film at all. But it all seemed to make some kind of sense anyway.

Definitely worth a look.

British renowned playwright David Hare's feature film debut, WETHERBY was bestowed with Golden Berlin Bear, an honor shared with Rainer Simon's THE WOMAN AND THE STRANGER in 1985.

In the centre of the story is a mysterious suicidal case, a disaffected young man John Morgan (McInnerney) has shot himself in front of Jean Travers (Redgrave), a middle-aged high school teacher he contacts only one day earlier as an unbidden guest to her dinner party with her married friends. This premise sounds quite unrealistic in real life, but in Hare's text, everything has been subsumed into a symbolical existence, which leaves the narrative often fragmented, jump between present and past, before-or-after Morgan's blunt action, achieved by a rapid editing modus operandi. Ellipsis and lacunae, abrupt plot devices, implicit dialogues, those are the weapons in Hare's possession to challenge viewers' understanding and assimilation of the whole myth, which also renders his social criticism of its era unobtrusively rapier-like.

The suicide's repercussions evoke Jean's buried memory of her youth (play by Redgrave's daughter Richardson, who is brilliantly elegant in her very early screen presence) in 1950s, when she lost her lover Jim (Hines) who volunteers to fight in British Malaya instigated by some airy-fairy nationalism. She never marries, her life has been perpetuated in the rut ever since, but Jean is not a disillusioned soul, she loves teaching and is beloved by her pupils, she enjoys the company of her friends, particularly, Marcia (Dench, who earns a baffling BAFTA nomination since she is barely required to do anything special here), her best friend since teenage years, and Stanley (Holm), Marcia's solicitor husband, he and Jean would meet in bars for some drink, have a tête-à-tête or simply enjoy the comforting silence.

Yet, in the eyes of this reticent John Morgan, she shares the same loneliness that has afflicted on him for a long time, to a point he is mulling over the option of suicide, but again Hare's elusive approach only leaves hints, no exposition, we sees Morgan, a college student, follows Marcia with unrevealed motive and it is through her, his interest alights on Jean eventually, and Hare rebelliously disrupts the narrative thread with sporadic flashbacks until finally discloses what has happened between Jean and John that night, alone, and defiantly, that offers no direct satisfaction to audience either, but trickles of clues might or might not account for John's decision.

The great Vanessa Redgrave, engages in a palpably compassionate rendition of Jean's weather- seasoned inscrutability spiked with a tinge of singular vim and vigor, there is a certain modernity in her character which makes her an almost indestructible entity, not even decades of loneliness, that's where she differs from John, she is a real trooper who admirably holds sway of her own life. Tim McInnerny (mostly remembered as Lord Percy in BLACK ADDER TV series), is consistently nuanced in his feature film debut, John's pain has never emerged from his blank veneer, but he intrigues our attention every time he materialises.

Saddled with lugubrious dirges and symphonic longueur, WETHERBY is an oddly beguiling film, delving into the mystic vicissitude of human's mentality with its oblique syntax and an absolutely fascinating lead performer.

I've always loved this movie deeply. I just watched it again for perhaps the sixth or seventh time. I fully agree with the Japanese reviewer that the mention of Nixon is in sympathy, not ridicule. His yearning to be loved by another, is very much meant as a parallel to the young and older Redgrave character - as well as to the young man at the dinner party.

David Hare has a wonderful scene here that is very similar to the very end of Plenty - when we see Joely Richardson writing in her diary in 1947 or so (think of Plenty's flashback to Meryl Streep in 1944 or 1945 speaking to the French farmer). The scenes might be full of bathos - but gee, I was overwhelmed both times.

This movie has much in common with other Hare ventures - movies like Strapless and Plenty, plays like Skylight and "Amy's View".

Hare's deep sympathies are with the romantic, the compassionate, the sensitive, the foolhardy, the collective-minded and the lost. He is antipathetic toward the self-sufficient, the ambitious, the laconic, the individualistic, the successful. I only partly share his sympathy and his antipathy but he makes me appreciate his attitudes through dramas he creates with real living characters.

Hare is sentimental in a nostalgic way, and can write wonderfully vivid, intelligent and lost protagonists. I think him a far more intelligent and better dramatist than such left-wingers as Mike Leigh or Ken Loach.

Many of us will see much of ourselves in his protagonists' loneliness, our wonder at mistaken hopes from our past, and sense of our own frailties and faults as we grow older.

Others speak of similarities to Pinter - I don't see them. Hare is more essentially romantic - even if he doesn't want to be - and I'd place him more with a Jacques Demy than with a Pinter-Mamet and their cold keen patterns of speech and behavior - though granted, he's more concerned with social and political background than Demy.

This is essentially a sad movie about one who was once happy - and her wonder and self-realization about another sadder than she.

This movie also started me off on two decades of strongly favoring Joely Richardson in any role - as I had always loved Ian Holm and Vanessa Redgrave. (I realized recently that among my several dozen favorite movies since the mid-1960s, about one quarter seem to have Ian Holm in them!).

If you like movies like Sunday Bloody Sunday, Butley, Plenty, A Kind of Loving, Quartermaine's Terms - and I do - you'll love Wetherby. I love this movie.

David Hare's quiet masterpiece conveys a genuine sense of alienation and dislocation while covering a great deal of social and political ground. It never loses sight of the human story, though; the loneliness of the characters comes through in this startlingly intelligent drama which unfolds slowly, like a flower under time lapse photography. We watch the bloom, flowering and eventual withering of the characters' bodies and minds over several decades of social discord, emotional disappointments and lost dreams.

It's stunning how Hare constructs such an involving character study under the framework of a conventional mystery. The inexplicable suicide of a young man draws the viewer in but it's the characters that involve the viewer in a greater mystery of the heart; how did these people get to this point in their lives and the history of a nation? Hare delicately examines the spiritual decay of late-20th century British society and how it impacts all generations, from the haunted post-war generation to the alienated, disconnected contemporary youth. Ultimately both groups are unable to reach out to each other, trapped in the inescapable malaise which spares no-one.

Vanessa Redgrave carries this film. In her eyes a dazzling spectrum of emotions infuse her scenes with joy, heartbreak, hopelessness, elation, and everything else in between. It's a brilliantly written film but no words are necessary to understand the despair. It's all in her eyes.

This is a great film. I just saw it for the first time. The comment above is completely wrong, however. I must set the record straight. The military scenes are not US soldiers, but rather a flashback for Vanessa Redgrave to a love lost. Royal Air Force, sir, in Malay. I whole-heartedly recommend the film. It has a great dramatic score. It also has tackles some real dark ideas about love and life. And it has a pace that doesn't exist anymore in many films, especially those with stars. Great performances from Ian Holm and Tom Wilkinson. Also a fine performance from a very young Joely Richardson (Vanessa Redgrave's daughter), who now stars on FX's Nip Tuck.