The Man Who Cried

What else is there? Ciaran Hinds is extraordinary, again. This story is complex, difficult, and compassionate. The screenplay is outstanding. This movie moved me. All the performances were great, including the ones by the children.

Amanda Root and the actress who played Florrie wrench my heart.

Ciaran Hinds is the best actor working today. Yet another outstanding performance.

See it and open your heart.

To deal with the spoiler at once - if it is one - and then have done with it: to intensify the realism of the film most of the figures have to speak their local northern dialect, which makes it rather difficult to understand for foreigners as myself. (And on the DVD there are no subtitles.) This is a pity as the description of a nation going through an economic depression is very convincingly shown as a background for the love-story (or rather love-stories) and would be interesting in other countries, too.

Besides, the central figure Abel Mason would appeal to his audience everywhere: This is a part which seems to have been invented from the beginning for the marvellous powers of Ciaran Hinds in presenting complicated characters. On the one hand side Abel seems to be of an old fashioned strict morality which shuts out all light-hearted play with women, on the other hand he even sails into bigamy. While serving a one-year-sentence in prison there exist (quite different) relations to three women, but even the judge is convinced that everything happened in and by good intentions.

One of these intentions is Able's search for a peaceful and secure place for his ten year old son to grow up. The relations to this son are beautifully acted from both sides and deeply moving for the spectator. Hinds is able to show quite another side of Able's character: There is the labourer desperately looking for work - but not under all conditions! There is the relatively young man looking for a really true love; and there is the careful and tender father, in spite of all his sorrows able to laugh with his son.

As the film develops the tragedy mainly on the faces of the actors, long parts can be understood without language - strengthening the general human appeal of its story.

There is more than one answer to the question: "Why does the man cry?" - and this is part of its fascination.

Let me start by saying Catherine Cookson was a very popular British novelist who sold something like 100 million books during her career. If her books had been like this boiler plate TV production she would not have sold 100 books.

Here is the story: A man abruptly leaves a failed marriage and travels with his son to Northern England where he eventually has to marry again (and thus commit bigamy). Wife finds him....soap twists and turns abound--second wife Hilda discovers she is not her father's daughter etc etc....

The first half is by far the best...the boy Dick is played by a charismatic child actor he makes the first half. The second half of the series is lousy from the 2 dimensional rendition of war time England to just the way the screen writers condensed and parsed the novel--a common problem with book/movies.

Another problem for me was the Appalachian type sound track...it is incongruous to the location.

This is an over dramatized soap with below average production values. I blame the writers and a couple miscast characters.

One measure I have of soaps is if they make make me care about the characters... in the second half of this film I grew to dislike all of them. Beware!

Catherine Cookson wrote some fantastic stories but this isn't one of them. I've not read the book but the story is pretty depressing. The redeeming factor is the hilarious cockney/east London accent of Abel's first wife. Worse than Bert's in Mary Poppins.

I'm not sure if were meant to feel sorry for Abel, a married man carrying on with a married woman. He then moves on to another woman, marries her whilst still married to first wife. He then leaves the second wife for her sister who is having his child. No wonder he cried!

It's slow and plodding and unlike her other stories (and subsequent dramas) this is not worth watching except for the wonderful Ciaran Hinds. The awful east London accent gets worse!

Got to say that usually Cooksons are a bit predictable, with the heroine and villain being pretty clear cut from the outset. Here the relationships are bit more hazy and really only at the eleventh hour does a heroine emerge. All the characters are questionable and it is far from the usual black and white portrayal of life I associate with Cookson. A very realistic portrayal of family turmoil, strife and sibling rivalry.

Two of my favorite actresses here, a cameo from Gemma Craven as the man mad aristocrat and the brilliant (and under-sung genius of) Amanda Root makes this an absolute treat.