Mrs Lowry & Son

As the title indicates, this is very much a film about Lowry's mother Elizabeth, a chronically ill malingerer, housebound and demanding. She despises almost every one of his early canvases, but when she warms to a picture of ships in the local canal and gives him two shillings to submit it to an exhibition in Manchester, she opens the door to his future glory. A showdown at home is the dramatic climax of this essentially domestic and un-dramatic narrative.

Timothy Spall and Vanessa Redgrave give performances which we have seen in other films, subtly shaded to fit this restrained and evocative story. Adrian Noble has directed a slow-burning movie with few "fireworks", but it offers an acting (and painting) master-class.

This story is heart wrenching! The mother is a woman who uses every opportunity to put her son down, and I feel genuinely sad and sorry for Mr Lowry.

This is a gem, precious in every way, and makes you wonder how much longer we'll be able to invest this kind of attention and feeling into film. Half a generation more? I'm beginning to understand the internet, ratings, and what they mean about who we are. They point, just not in the right way.

This marvelous film is steeped in Beckettian tropes and style. The mother son relationship is akin to Hamm and Clov in 'Endgame', or it might be Winnie in 'Happy Days'.

Even the reality of Lowry and his mother is not so far from Beckett and his own fractious relationship with his mother. Vanessa Redgrave even resembles Beckett as an old man with his spectacles.

The film echoes Beckett's maxim, 'to fail again, fail better' almost with the same sense as Lowry follows his own path against the odds and faces years of rejection and hostility, not the least from his mother who lacks imagination and only understands what she sees, not the meaning. Indeed the film has a very strong layers of social history in it as it reveals the neuroses and social anxieties of the period in England.

The excellent script is matched by admirable directing and editing together with technical features to make the 1930s flat and town vivid.

And then there are performances from Spall and Redgrave which are the pinnacle of skill and empathy. It is a consummate and perfectly poised interaction between the two.

If only other films gave their audience as much.

This is a mesmerizingly slow film set almost entirely in one room..... it could almost be a play. However Adrian Noble thankfully focuses on the two main actors and we are gradually sucked in to their closed little world. Both Spall and Redgrave give towering complementary performances which keep the audience completely entranced from the beginning. Redgrave especially manages to create a relentlessly critical and bitter character without the viewer ever hating her for it.. and Spall has grown into a confident and creative character actor of the highest order. Beautiful cinematography and set design make this film artistically watchable. If you like slow burning drama then this is a treat.