Probezeit

Paul wrote a beautiful review with the proper amount of reverence towards what is in our culture almost a sacred subject, the father son relationship. This is the story of two such relationships, each one gone bad, and how the two survivors find the solution in each other and could find the solution in nobody else. The filmmakers also had a problem which needed a solution and found that in the cinematography, direction and marvelous acting and casting (several actors for each character at different ages) and music you'll remember long after the lights go up. Because it's such a small scale picture I would only give it a 9/10 and BenHur and Laurence of Arabia get a 10, yet they're no better, only bigger.

William Hurt is very believable as a west country postmaster and the adoption process is taken apart in a sympathetic and believable manner. The film has charm and pace while dealing with a difficult subject. If it were to be made now would there be a different emphasis in the light of current obsessions with protecting children from paedophiles?

This is a moving, touching film. For me a little bit frightening too. In the real world there are some people, who behave like Holt. (Unimportant, but funny that the word "Holt" means Dead in Hungarian which is my first language.) This movie is like a therapy, an advice for unhappy, lonely people. A believable film is a great pleasure nowadays, but if you meet your own life face-to-face in a script, well... it's pretty scary. If you pay attention good enough, it changes your life! Thank God for this film!

I've read the other reviews posted here and concur with all of them. The film triumphs in its realistic depiction of two broken hearts, Jamie's and Graham's. I think, in order to appreciate the story, one must have somehow experienced the psychic shock of childhood abandonment, either emotionally or by outright physical abandonment. The pleasure of watching this film, aside from the acting and cinematography, is having the sense that it will work out okay. At the very end, when Jamie walks briskly to catch up with Graham, slips his hand into the grownup's hand, and then walks much more slowly, one can see in their stride together the fulfillment each has received. I rewound the film at that point to see that scene again.

This is an exquisitely poignant tale of a love-starved, troubled orphan boy and an emotionally incomplete man who has decided to reach out for what he wants most in life: a son. Jamie very much wants to love the kind man who wants to adopt him but is prevented from doing so by the promise he made to his biological father just before dad went to jail: to love him "best in the whole world forever." In what may just be the greatest dramatic performance by a child ever captured on film (surpassing even that of Freddie Bartholomew in "Captains Courageous" who had held that title for that past 60 years), Chris Cleary Miles demonstrates a precocity which makes one wonder if he hasn't already overcome some great tribulation(s?) in his short life in order to give such a compelling performance. Alternately masochistic, loving, violent and affectionate, the range and depth of emotion he portrays are nonpareil. I am still having trouble believing it was only a movie! It is unfortunate that Miles never acted in another movie; on the other hand, when you start at the top you can only go down.

Others have called this William Hurt's greatest role and I would have to agree. While his transformation from the stiff, detached loner to loving father was beautifully written in the book by David Cook, Hurt interprets this flawlessly. In fact you might say the film's brilliance was relatively easy on the heels of Cook's depictions. Nevertheless every scene in the movie is significant and the editing with the multiple flashbacks was excellent. Why this film did not win all kinds of awards is beyond me.

"Second Best" is second best to none in its genre.