Glorious 39

I always enjoy watching BBC films, always very well acted and usually an interesting story that makes you think. This one promised quite a lot: a great cast including Jeremy Northam, Bill Nighy and Romola Garay, a plot in the first year of the second world War, it seemed like a recipe for a great movie. Unfortunately may parts of the story seemed to weird to be true and in the end I didn't understand if the girl was simply crazy. Dead bodies all around her, people talking about secrets and dropping dead afterwards without a lot of explanations, her being locked up in a room and drugged, characters that appear without explanation and stare just as if it was a horror film and in the end nothing is quite clarified... Just totally mystifying...

After finding secret pro-appeasement (for the Nazis) recordings Anne (Garai) becomes involved in a secret, violent conspiracy, set in England in 1939. After one of her friends who speaks out against Hitler is found dead, Anne begins to dig deeper into the reasons for his death. This is a very interesting movie. It is both compelling and slow moving. It is tense but it drags in spots. It kept me watching but my mind did wander a bit. This is overall a good movie but you need to be in the mood for it. You really feel for Anne and the way her life begins to fall apart. I am a fan of historical movies so I really liked that aspect of it. This movie had the feel of a made-for-TV movie, although it would have been an HBO movie with the quality of it. I recommend this but again, it's not for everyone, and you need to be in the mood to watch a movie like this one. I give it a B-.

Would I watch again? - Probably not

I enjoyed this movie because it took a turn I wasn't expecting when the family started acting strangely. I didn't start to think about the plot holes till it was over--I kept thinking it would all come clear. But I gotta admit it didn't make sense.

(1) Anne was adopted. Then we learn she was a gypsy. The English have always been so class conscious that an upper class person hardly speaks to anyone except those in their circle, so I find it impossible to believe they would take a Roma child into their family as a full member.

(2) Before the war started, England was divided on their opinion of going to war. This is easily documented in any history book about WW 11. Some people wanted the war, some people didn't, some were sympathetic to Hitler (The Duke and Duchess of Windsor), and some just wanted him to go away.

(3) At that time, (like now) the opinions of young women were regarded lightly. What they had to say did not account for much. Especially in politics, they were ignored.

In view of (1) (2)and (3), please someone tell me why the Keyes family went to so much trouble, murder, lies, deception, cruelty to animals, and darn near killing Anne, just because she might hold a different opinion on the war. When her father was explaining it all to her, all he could come up with was she was a Roma (gypsy) and didn't fall in with the families' opinion of the war. It's pretty darn strange and puzzling to me. What did I miss? She wasn't political at all till they started their odd behavior.

Anne Keyes disturbingly uncovers a sinister plot without apparent motive in a story told as a flashback in a way that is helpful to its audience.

This is a very British film about guilty pasts, family values and inner strength set around the outbreak of WW2. As with much British mystery drama on screen there is a lavish dedication to quality acting, strong story telling, and brilliant cinematography. It is a compelling watch despite some plot flaws and moments when the story doesn't quite flow as convincingly as it should. But there is tension, intrigue, suspense, and menace in just the right quantities to keep us gripped and interested.

Romola Garai gives us a superbly convincing portrayal of Anne with some great support notably from Jeremy Northam (Balcombe), Sam Kubrick-Finney (young Walter), Hugh Bonnevile (Gilbert) and Juno Temple (Celia). Some familiar faces also provide strong cameos.

My one reservation about the film, and what stops me from awarding more than eight out of ten, is that it is slightly too cold, too austere, too abrupt when, perhaps, we are in need of a little warmth and camaraderie. But this is a story about the outbreak of war and the destruction heaped upon truth, privilege and family values and so it is a matter of subjective judgement. You should go and see it for Romola Garai's performance alone.

Stephen Polliakoff's work has shown some consistent concerns: two of them are a nostalgic view of the aristocratic past, and an interest in the aftermath of Nazism. These two come together in 'Glorious 39', which one may describe as a '39 Steps' kind of thriller; and in its middle portion, it's briefly gripping, albeit in a style that seems a deliberate pastiche of an earlier style of film. But overall, it's a rum beast, almost a parody of Polliakoff's earlier work. There are lines of incongruous or anachronistic dialogue, and much of the acting is exceedingly flat. Polliakof often casts Bill Nighy, and seems to order him to underact; in my opinion, all of Nighy's performances for this director are awful. The child acting is also exceedingly wooden. Ramola Garai in the lead role is OK, but she really gets almost no help; yet from the overall feel of the piece, it's hard to avoid concluding that this is intentional. The plot is incoherent and hackneyed: the good guys all want to fight the Nazis, the nasty people don't; even the use of an adopted child as the lead character seems to be a cheap way of having a cake and eating it, as it allows the director to revel in the aristocratic excess while simultaneously suggesting there was something terrible about it. The concluding scene, meanwhile, makes something out of nothing, a crescendo of music hiding the fact that there's no real drama in the ending. It's a shame, as for a number of years, Polliakoff's work was consistently interesting; but this is a mess.