Um Mês no Campo

It is a movie like a good book, you want to cozy down with on a long winters night....it said more than it showed and it showed more than it said..the parting of Birkin and Moon mostly, Birkin, had me watching it several times,,what were the questions and the answers?...it reminded me of "Waiting for the Moon" with Linda Hunt...thanks

It's a love story about rebirth and self healing. The foundation of the plot seems very simple: a young man comes in a town to clean the wall of a church. With a subject like that it could be absolutely boring...but it's not. "Emotion" could be the word to describe it all, though "repressed emotion" would be even more accurate. It's a delicate movie, with thousands of details you might not see the first time; it's deep and truly is a masterpiece in its genre.

Of course to appreciate it you must love repertoire movies. It's not a blockbuster movie...far from that. You must be in a slow mood I guess to enjoy it.

This is the kind of movie I would like to keep in my collection: isn't it a pity that "anonymous" has probably sold his tape already? (I cannot find it in Montreal!)

I've just watched this haunting movie for the second time, after an interval of several years and having just read the book on which it's based. I feel as though the director,actors, cinematographer took a walk inside my head to pluck the images that lived there as I read the book. Of course, it was those images inside THEIR heads that have made this film the masterpiece that it is...to enrich the heart, restore the soul. Colin Firth brought the character, Tom Birkin, so fully into life, with his sensitivity, conflicts, process of restoration (both as a skilled worker and as a damaged human being) and yearnings one wonders why such roles as this haven't been offered him since. His brooding Mr Darcy in the TV version of "Pride and Prejudice" used some of these talents, but not nearly enough. Kenneth Branagh's fine understated playing of the equally war damaged archaelogist (and a closet homosexual) is amazing and brilliant, considering especially his over-the-top performances in later films. Lovely Natasha Richardson creates just the right tone of controlled longing of the unhappily married Alice Keagh. Jim Carter and the rest of the cast are splendid as well. This is a film to return to again and again for its visual and soulful beauty, simplicity and depth. What an antidote for the juvenile,frentic blockbuster fare we're offered for the most part by the movie "business."

I adored the book by J. L. Carr, and was skeptical that Birkin's first person narrative could be conveyed on film. Firth brilliantly makes this internal landscape manifest, while the film provides a sumptuous external setting. All the lead cast strike an effective balance between intensity and restraint. Every time I view the movie, I see things that I hadn't noticed before.

I wish I had seen "A Month in the Country" on the big screen when it was released. The laserdisc looks good, though I wonder what I'm missing. Even though the laserdisc soundtrack is monophonic, it was striking enough to make a friend jump when we were viewed it.

This is a true gem of a film. Only those however who have an empathy for the destruction of World War One, and a sensitivity about how moving religious themes can be, will really appreciate the aspects of the film which make it timeless. It is deliberately slow and careful in its pace, and the contrasts between Church and Chapel, working and upper class, and social mobility makes it a film I have always found very moving. The use of the Schubert Mass as a musical backdrop at key points emphasises the cathartic journey Birkin makes. Indeed, his visit to the church as an old man demonstrates the way he has been cleansed of the mud of Flanders.