The Tichborne Claimant

Every inch a home-grown product, The Tichborne Claimant is a Victorian-set comedy-drama, based on a true story and featuring a whole host of British character actors. During the 1870s Sir Roger Tichborne, heir to the ninth largest estate in Britain, went missing, shipwrecked off Australia. Sure of his survival, his brother and manservant went to find him. When his brother died of alchohol abuse, the servant was stranded in Australia, the Tichborne family unwilling to pay for his return. This is where the story really begins. The servant, Andrew Bogle (John Kani), formerly an African slave, begins to look for Tichborne - or a passable imposter - in order to return to England and resume his old life. After years of searching, a fat drunkard (Robert Pugh) appears who is evidently Tichborne - or someone who knows an uncanny amount about him. They sail back to London, Bogle training Tichborne up to act like an aristocrat on the way. Unsurprisingly, his family claim he is an impostor and he is forced to take legal action to claim his estate. Both Pugh, a veteran stage actor, and Kani, a South African who survived three assassination attempts while campaigning against Apartheid, are excellent. Kani is both dignified and enigmatic, while Pugh is outrageous as the cigar-smoking, drunken Tichborne. A supporting cast of dozens of Britain's finest adds an enormous amount, with Stephen Fry and John Gielgud (who recently died, aged 96) particularly enjoyable as wonderfully odious members of the establishment. First-time director David Yates sustains a comfortable pace and establishes a stylised but believable vision of Victorian England. As in real life, we are never truly sure whether Tichborne is who he says he is and this helps to sustain the interest in the story throughout. Overall, an enjoyable film - witty, moving and interesting, a quiet alternative to the likes of Fight Club.

British period pieces typically suffocate under the dull weight of precise costumes and historically accurate settings, offering nothing but boring, predictable and comforting aesthetics. Here is a stronger number, true to the tired genre but beyond it -- a period piece with strong, well-developed themes and balanced, multidimensional characters liberated from crusty, faux bourgeois literariness. Aside from haunting, perfectly pitched performances, it examines questions that matter: What constitutes personality? What constitutes class? Is one contingent on the other? If a "coarse" man can be transformed into a convincing "gentleman," what is he really? And if the class boundaries are truly porous and arbitrary, what is their true function and purpose? Don't let the superficially "Masterpiece Theatre"-ish trappings fool you -- this mysterious, stimulating picture has a pulse.

At the start of THE TICHBORNE CLAIMENT we're informed that this is the greatest fraud ever played upon the British public so what does this type of movie say to you ? That you're going to be watching a truly cinematic and enthralling tale ? A sort of Italian Job with horse drawn carriages instead of minis ? That's how the movie should have been produced but for some reason the audience are never treated to anything resembling a cinematic movie

Who do we blame - The director David Yates or the producer Tom McCabe ? I looked up Yates resume and though much of his work has been in television he has a fairly good track record and will be directing the next Harry Potter film so that must mean something while McCabe has a very uneven CV which nearly always involves his produced works failing to get wide distribution so I'm making a very educated guess that Mr McCabe is the one responsible for this film being virtually unknown

The problem starts round about the opening sequence where Andrew Bogle relates the story of Lord Tichborne through a series of photographs and a not convincing model shot of a shipwreck . This expositional story telling technique has been done many times via the BBC's excellent history show TIMEWATCH and umpteen documentaries on the history channel and all through the running time of THE TICHBORNE CLAIMENT I never got the feeling that I was watching a dramatised cinematic account but something from The History Channel

What makes this rather unforgivable is the potential of the story and the fine cast . People love hearing about other people being made fools of and it's part of human nature but at no point will the audience rub their hands in sadistic glee watching people getting ripped off ( GREY OWL also suffers from this by being overly serious ) and the cast certainly don't help by being very staid . The whole movie would have been much more better if it had a Dickensian caricature feel where the characters are portrayed as Great British eccentrics . As it stands THE TICHBORNE CLAIMENT is instantly forgettable and ever so wasted as a cinematic film

When Sir Roger Tichborne is lost at sea he is feared dead but his mother believes him alive and living in Australia. Sending her youngest son and butler (Andrew Bogle) to Australia to find him, plans are ruined when her son drinks himself to dead with his newfound freedom. When Bogle appeals for money for the passage home he finds himself forgotten and asked to 'start a new life'. With this in mind, Bogle sets out to find a ringer for Roger Tichborne and return to claim (and share) his part in the estate. With the long sea voyage to prepare, Bogle applies the extra work needed to turn his impostor into the real deal, but will they be able to carry it off?

With an intriguing premise from the very start, this film delivers an occasionally comic story that is enjoyable if a little forced. The plot is fairly ordinary from the start but still is interesting enough to engage. If anything it is in the later stages where it pushes into an out of the ordinary plot that it becomes a bit exaggerated and not as enjoyable as a result but by that point I was into the story enough to stick with it. It has a certain amount of humour but it is more gently amusing rather than hilariously funny and it is this that helps the drama play out pretty well. This is not to suggest it is a great film because it isn't that great but it is lively enough to be enjoyable.

The characters are a fair part of this because the main two are the focus of the film and the source of both drama and comedy. Bogle is a good character who is delivered with dry wit by the actor John Kani. His delivery can often seem lacking in life but for my money it was well pitched to be the firm base of the film. Pugh has a much more lively character and plays it well drawing out the comic side of the material well. He manages with the more obvious pratfalls as well as the more serious side of the film. These two are the heart of the film and they deliver well enough to cover the weaknesses in the material, but it can only help to have a colourful support cast that includes small roles and cameos for a hatful of famous faces ranging from Stephen Fry, John Gielgud, Robert Hardy, Dudley Sutton right down to the rather more unusual finds of Anita Dobson.

Overall this is an enjoyable and engaging little story that manages to cover up the fact that it never really convinces when it needs to. The story has nice comic touches to it as well as having enough in the way of drama to it to keep the interest. The delivery from the lead two is nicely done despite some reservations and the support cast are as good as one would expect from those involved.

Lacking in originality - it didn't match up to the Return of Martin Guerre; there are many acclaimed examples showing the decay and corruption of the aristocracy. Even in terms of the implied racism relating to how the manservant is treated by the Tichborne family says nothing new. The all star cast retrieves a little for the film - there are excellent cameos from John Gielgud as the judge and Stephen Fry as the barrister for the Tichbornes. Their performances excel in clarifying the bias of the legal system. A disappointing film, a thin story line with little to commend it. Watchable as a TV slot, not a 'must have', let alone an evening out.