Comrades

There were such possibilities and opportunities to be grasped in the making of this film. There was a marvellous cast (I omit Keith Allen, whom I loathe and as for Barbara Windsor-she was totally out of place here) who made the best of what they could with a less than expansive script. There was some beautiful cinematography too in parts and a real feeling of the period in the costumes and sets but and I am reluctant to say this, a great deal of this movie was too slow and could have benefited from some judicious cutting. I am a lover of this kind of story and subject matter so I felt nonplussed at times as to what was going on in one or two scenes. The film was far too long and slow to really hold one's attention. I was not expecting a glossy Merchant/Ivory type production but something much more gritty and realistic which Comrades delivered to some extent but that was not enough for it to be truly absorbing. I could not get over the left wing bias that the film carried either- it was a natural result of the subject matter of course. One thing I did like was the refusal to use a lot of exposition and explanation in the script but I think it may have got in the way of filmgoers who did not know their history, understanding the whole thing. Overall rather a disappointing film, a story which could have been told so much better and more succinctly.

Sorry that this is posted a little late but Film4 showed 'Comrades' at 12.20am on March 20th 2009, complete with advertisements unfortunately.

The announcer said "now for a rare screening of a British epic", too right, I estimate it hasn't been on TV for 20 years.

They do tend to show films more than once so it might be repeated in the next few weeks, probably in a graveyard slot again.

Not sure if I enjoyed it as much as the first time around but the location filming and Dorset landscapes are stunning.

Seeing as they released the Bill Douglas 'Trilogy' on DVD last year perhaps a release for this overlooked epic is in the pipeline?

Bill Douglas – the director – might have been born to tell this story of the Tolpuddle Martyrs; his own Scottish childhood had been something of a martyrdom to working class deprivation and poverty.

I vaguely knew about these Tolpuddle Martyrs from school history: how 6 humble farm labourers in rural Dorset of the 1830′s had dared to form a union and ask for higher wages , and as a sorry consequence got deported to Australia.

This "poor mans epic" was a flop in the cinema and got dropped after a couple of weeks, never, or hardly ever to be seen again. I can sort of see why it didn't have general commercial appeal.

At times Douglas's way of telling the story gets in the way, slows down, or even just undercooks, dedramatises – deliberately? – the films propulsion, pace, purpose. I suppose i've been too used to being spoon-fed glossy costume dramas on prime-time BBC 1: narrative elements – exposition, explanation, transition – are all smoothly storyboarded in to give you the slick entertainment experience this film seems resolutely not to want to give you.

It could be that Douglas wasn't experienced enough as a film maker to make a grand epic drama (he'd only made his small-scale low-budget autobiographical Trilogy previously) The toil in the soil, the squelch of the mud, the hovel-like existence of downtrodden agricultural workers – not many rights or entitlements, very little power, hardly any choice in the matter – you do get a sense for all of that in this film. It feels like a dirty life, basic survival existence, punctuated by simple "entertainments – lantern shows, travelling fairs, communal singsongs, folk dancing – with life's inevitable fall ameliorated via mutuality, familiarity, warm comradeship.

There's a lot of film technique on show, which might be Douglas's self-conscious need to make it look stylistically different, uniquely his own: lots of long shots and slow shots, and focusing on still faces looking straight into the camera; abrupt and occasionally jarring transitions; using a lantern show to pick out salient features in the narrative – which i found a bit irritating (too fairy-tale like – i craved more of the nitty-gritty squelchy mud realism!) The last third of the film moves to Australia; we've already had 2 hours or so – and another hour gets tacked on. The shift to somewhere else breaks the intensity of focus; the immersion in that localised rural reality of rainy dirty Dorset becomes too dissipated. I felt most of this Australia section could have been edited down into a 5 minute montage.

After watching this film i was curious to find out more about what happened on Google. I read several articles.

So i guess if a film has inspired me to want to know more, get further "inside" the history of these Tolpuddle Martyrs – then as a historical document its succeeded. But as a Film film perhaps less so. I doubt i'd want to watch it again.

Still, i feel enlisted as one of Douglas's "comrades" now. I'm one of them. One of him.

I remember watching Comrades many years ago, sitting spellbound as the story slowly unfolded. I particularly appreciated the long slow "mug-shots" of the characters, which stayed with me for years afterwards. The story of the Tolpuddle martyrs was new to me, although I remember hearing the name in my history classes. What develops in the film is the story of an early attempt at democracy and human rights, that ends with deportation to Australia. Even there the early spirit of trade-unionism emerges: United We Stand, Divided we Fall.

What a shame that the film seems to be currently unavailable on either VHS or DVD. Who can I write to about this?

This is one of the greatest underrated epics of Brtish cinema.

Not only does it chart a pivotal event in the development of trade unionism but one of the few films portrays the harshness of the Australian exile system.

Everyone looked like they wanted to make this film and excel in it. The narrative slow burning but riveting, pausing to allow the audience to taste life of that period.

We see much of the wretchedness of late Victorian urban life on the screen but this early rural period is often pasteurised like a Constable painting or concentrates on the upper classes.

Bill Douglas owes more to Ken Loach than Merchant Ivory.

I believe this film was made by Channel 4 but it is never shown and or has a DVD release.

If anyone who has any experience of Channel 4 , I would be interested to know what they have against this film.