The Ploughman's Lunch

Always intelligent, but hardly cinematic, this is certainly an interesting film, but not fully entertaining. I saw it on release and again for the second time this week and the lasting impression is a dog's dinner of ideas. At the centre there is a doomed romance, overlaid with a smorgasbord of messages inter-weaved in the script. I shall attempt to list these message here. a) The long term decline of Britain's importance in the world, b) the folly of the Suez expedition and a sort of oblique parallel with the Falklands War which doesn't work - Suez was a disaster, the Falklands campaign successful, c) the emotional toughness/nastiness of the Thatcher government, d) the Greenham Common anti-nuclear encampment (not sure what this is doing in the film), e) the lies sold by advertising, f) the bias inherent in the way we rewrite history, g) the English class system, h) the emotional coldness of journalists. Phew! Added on to this, we have the conundrum of our hard to like hero James Penfield who wants love, but does not show it to those who love him. Crucially, he is foolishly chasing a snooty, upper (ruling) class girl whose own frivolous behaviour seems to be a comment on Britain's decline. The real shame is that there are some fantastic parts to the film. Rosemary Harris is just perfect as the love seeking historian. And, then there is the cinema magic of filming the denouement to the central romance within the real-life setting of the Conservative Party Conference. With a few changes this film could have been up there with Performance and Brief Encounter, instead of an obscure curio of British cinema.

This is a very cold, well observed multi-layered portrait of a bunch of vile people, all scrambling up and down the greasy pole in the politically bleak bourgeois homeland of Thatcher's Britain at the time of its Falklands War obsession. The central character, an empty, ambitious, morally bankrupt journalist (Jonathan Pryce) is impossible to like or even dislike - just like the film itself. It's like a doctor's accurate diagnosis: you may need to know, but you don't necessarily want to. The photography is beautiful.

Spectacular balancing act between fact and fiction, public and private, greedy, ambitious Thatcherites and vacuous upper class specimen of the gauche caviar. The "Ploughman's lunch" is extremely tightly narrated and manages to make the spectator interested in the sorts of a bunch of not really likeable characters and their struggles for love, sex and power. This is "Wall Street" in European and ultra-minor key version and a formidable depiction of the Eighties and their political and social contradictions.

Hope I haven't made it sound boring, because it isn't -- it's wryly, dryly funny, without even so much of a wink to the spectator, and dissects his protagonists with surgical precision.

Totally agree - have been a huge fan of this film since I saw it on Channel 4 in the mid 80's and while it's been many years since I've seen it it lingers in the mind like a cold stain,with the reprehensible character that Jonathan Pryce plays remaining one of the most mesmerising cold and self-serving people ever committed to film - the final shot,without giving it away,is breathtakingly harsh and sums up his persona in one callous masterstroke.

It is also beautifully crafted/shot and scored,with a dark and entrancing mood maintained throughout. I've literally only just found out today it was released on DVD in the UK a couple of years ago so have ordered a copy.

Extraordinary stuff and one of the great movies of the 1980's. Mike Wesley

I am a huge fan of Richard Eyre's work on stage and think he did a masterful job running the National Theatre for all those years. However, both the movies he has directed that I have seen (this one and Iris) are flawed. I think his style of directing might not suit film. There are several passages of the film that neither progress argument, nor develop characters nor set atmosphere effectively.

I am also a big fan of Ian McEwan's writing. This story is full of interesting material. Some of it could come across better - especially the double crossing in the various love interests and the echo of the Suez crisis therein. This might come down to the screenplay or perhaps the directing again.

But stick with it.

The scene in the pub during which Frank Finlay explains to Jonathan Pryce the origins of the ploughman's lunch is superb. The ghastly hermetically sealed cheese chunks on their plates providing a visual to Finlay's words.

We live in a society where we constantly reinvent the past in our attempts to shape the future as we want it. This is a key lesson in the film on all its many levels - the several love interests, Pryce's dereliction of family duty, the Falklands War and the Suez Crisis.

This is a fascinating piece. All the characters are ghastly, especially Jonathan Pryce's well-crafted central character. The standard of acting is consistently high. Despite the flaws, it is well worth seeing.