S Burns

I fail to understand how anyone can watch even a single episode of 'Open All Hours' and label it 'quaint', 'gentle' or 'twee', yet I've come across these descriptions time and time again. Personally, I consider its humour, if not its situation, to be among the darkest (and the deepest) of any British sitcom. For example: ' She's a dear, frail old lady. Of course you can leave her. Just stick her on a park bench and run for it.' Or 'I wouldn't give you tuppence for his kidneys. How much is your boiled ham?' Or Arkwright's deducting the price of a crate of ale from the money he spends on his best friend's funeral wreath. Hardly sentimental, is it? In fact, it's downright callous at times, and all the more impressive for it.

From the synopsis, it's not a film I would've gone to see without a good deal of persuading, but critics who say they're giving up criticising because they've so fallen in love with the best supporting actress that they need to spend the rest of their days gazing sadly into lily ponds and combing their hair with a melancholy air...they're not half bad at the old persuading. Admittedly, I wasn't going for the script, not after having read a few quotes on this site and on various others. They struck me as...well...twee might not be too limp a word for it. Exposition, that's what I'm talking about. It said too much...bold philosophy spilling from the mouths of mortal people. That didn't impress me on paper. I was set up for something rather more cinematic.

And lummy, did I get it. What it is...it's cinema. It might not hold me for so long on the small screen, but goodness, do these people know how to make cinema. Few words, unbelievable action. Including the fight scenes. I watch a film for the filmyness, not the movieness...I think that means for the script rather than the action. But it was the experience, the whole thing...it was more a dance than a film.

Front row in a little arthouse cinema. I could sink down right under the screen. I could feel myself lift with the floating scenes. I wanted more of the floating. I mean, you would, wouldn't you? If you knew you could do that, you'd never walk anywhere. The whole cinema smiled after the floating scenes. I really can't understand those who have any complaints about the floating...without floating, it would've been fighting. On the ground. Which is normal. Floating...that's straight out of the dreams of a five year old and did more for me than any decent writing could do. Writing. Huh. Over-rated stuff if you ask me. And the trees. The swaying fight in the palm trees. This wasn't quite cinema as I know it...more about movement than wit. It got me swaying in sympathy. And the humour. I mean, I thought Bo's paralysis was funny, and that was before the business with the comb. You would've thought she could've found a branch of Woolworths nearby. There you go.

And you know those twee little quotations? I got over it. I'm not jealous of the film because the dialogue wasn't that sort of dialogue. No moments of 'I wish I'd said that, in that sort of way'. But in such a period feeling piece as this - not just the setting, the tone: it had the clout of a George Eliot novel, and she philosophises left, right and centre - they felt almost at home. Like they'd been lifted from Confucius.

Stunning stuff.