John Boorman's final film is the sequel to his earlier film, Hope and Glory, the last of his films that received serious critical and awards consideration, and the only other film of his that's explicitly autobiographical. I'd say that all of his films are somewhat autobiographical at a certain level, he's just that kind of artist, but this is supposed to be a recreation of a certain aspect of his life. I thought on both of these films that they would be marked departures from the thematic focuses of the movies around them, but I was wrong on both counts. Queen and Country is a capstone of the man's career, boiling all of his ideas into one film like he knew this was his last. Since we're nine years on and there's no indication of any efforts to put another film together, it seems like Boorman decided to make this his one last statement, and it's a nicely packaged one.
Bill Rohan (Callum Turner) has grown up into a young man and must report for his military service of two years. Along with his friend, Percy (Caleb Landry Jones), they report and go through six weeks of basic training. They do not get sent to Korea, though, being promoted to teach typing. Under the exacting and cruel auspices of Sergeant Major Bradley (David Thewlis), a closed-minded, by the books NCO that uses the smallest of infractions, like an undone button on a uniform, to report his inferior officers to his superior officer, Bill and Percy chafe and hope for a break from their unfair prison of military life. They commiserate with Private Redmond (Pat Shortt) about their situation, but there's little they can do against Bradley since he's so by the book.
The film continues Bill's sexual awakening by giving him an opportunity to meet girls at a more appropriate age. The first are a pair of girls that he meets with Percy, mostly Sophie (Aimee-Ffion Edwards), a nurse in the local military hospital, but Bill gets caught up with the sight of a mysterious and elegant woman (Tamsin Egerton) with an obvious air of sadness about her. She refuses to give him her name, letting him call her Ophelia. At the same time, Bill's older sister Dawn (Vanessa Kirby) returns from Canada after having married her Canadian flyer beau from the previous film. It should be noted that the image used on all of the posters for the film shows the moment when Dawn comes home and has a playful moment with Bill on their island home called The Sphinx. It makes them look like lovers in the posters, but they're not. It's such a weird thing to focus on, probably trying to take advantage of the fact that Kirby is a slightly bigger star than Egerton. Anyway, Dawn and Percy get along together while Ophelia comes by the house to visit with Bill and his family.
Where the thematic focuses of Boorman's career peek through is around the class differences in English society (represented by Ophelia's true identity), something he touched on a lot through his career in different ways (the Eternals ruling the world in Zardoz or the prince and his relationships with the poor people around him in Leo the Last as examples), the brutality of power in the modern world (like in Point Blank and Where the Heart Is), and the thin veneer of civilization falling away to reveal the brutal nature of man (like in Deliverance or Excalibur). None of these ideas is front and center and the reason for the film, it's more purely autobiographical than thematic, but they are all present in different amounts, which I find interesting.
That last idea, the thin veneer of civilization falling away to reveal the heart of darkness in men is tied to a subplot about Percy, wanting to get back at his superior officers for their succession of little tyrannies against him, steals a prized clock from the officers' mess, a clock given to a commander of the regiment a hundred years ago by Queen Victoria. The loss of that clock turns the officers completely against the men, tearing apart the camp in search of it. It also extends to the treatment of Bradley, with the young men finding a way to hoist him by his own petard, which breaks him (touching on some PTSD he was dealing with after his service in WWII), leaving a power vacuum in the office for a short time, essentially a state of nature that Redmond ends up reveling in while Bill tries to reestablish order by giving orders to Redmond, that Redmond refuses. It's a small moment, but it obviously points to something that Boorman had been touching on since Catch Us If You Can.
The heart of the film is Bill's awakening into a changing world. It's not a coincidence that Boorman chose to tell this story of his around the death of King George VI and the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, including a nice scene on his little island home with his family, including his father Clive (David Hayman, the only returning cast member with a bad black wig to hide his age), where they gather around the new television to watch the coronation, and a light debate comes as they all keep their eyes glued to the screen about the use of monarchy and tradition in the modern world. Bill himself comes softly on the side of the idea that the monarchy is an institution past its time, but it's more introspective, the kind of thing an older man facing his sunset years might say instead of one of youth, a young man filled with opinions he knows are right. I seriously doubt the real Boorman was this circumspect. I mean...I've seen Zardoz.
This really is the work of an older man looking back at his life and reflecting. There's a certain melancholy quality, even when focusing on more manic episodes like the stealing of the clock, that give the film this overall warm aura. The emotional journey that Bill takes through his burgeoning adulthood, seeing first romances rise and fall, friendships strained and strengthened, and the country around him changing, ends up being a nice testament not only to Boorman's youth but also to his entire career. It's definitely not his best work, but it's also definitely not his worst. It's nice.
