In Celebration

Lindsay Anderson directs a stage play adapted by writer David Storey.

It is set in a Derbyshire mining town as Mr and Mrs Shaw (Bill Owen and Constance Chapman) celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary and their three sons have come to join in with the celebrations.

Mr Shaw is a miner, he plans to complete his 50th year in the mine pit which is next year and retire. His sons want him to retire now. Mrs Shaw seems to have come from a well to do family, she might had become pregnant by her husband hence she married beneath him yet she does not come across as too bright but seems to have been a dutiful wife and mother.

Tensions emerge once all the sons come around and there seems to be memories of the eldest child who died as a boy which no one is sure of why which seems to be the catalyst.

Andrew (Alan Bates) is the eldest and the most fractious. He is a solicitor who has gone on to become a drifter and a artist off sorts.

Colin (James Bolam) seems to have been left wing rebel now a negotiator for his company, a well off executive with a company car but unmarried. Again Andrew pulls his leg by questioning his sexuality.

Steven (Brian Cox) the youngest is a writer but has stopped writing. He is married with children but seems to be haunted by the past.

Periodically their neighbour Mrs Burnett drops in.

The film is a series of tensions that come on and off the boil interspersed with humour. The trouble is it looks too much of a stage play which has not been opened up. It is nicely acted but some of it was hard to understand as well. It actually does not feel like a feature film but more like a BBC Play for Today.

This film reminds me of the Monty Python sketch featuring old Yorkshireman trying to complete as to who had the worst childhood. This film consists of the brothers of the family bickering with each other and their parents. Yawn.

This is old school acting so redolent of the British stage during its 'angry young man' heyday. Bolam simmers throughout and does more with a body posture than other modern actors do with a facial expression; Cox ruminates throughout, a beautiful portrayal of a soul in torment; and Bates gesticulates, explodes and with sheer energy of purpose drives this drama. This is acting of the highest order. Yes it's stagey - it was written for the stage! But Anderson takes us up close and personal mirroring the claustrophobia of the subject matter - a family crippled by the past and barely able to cover the cracks. The director makes us feel like we are part of the room and it is uncomfortable but compulsive viewing.

The great Lindsay Anderson adapts another play for film.

Quite interesting, well acted (a then quite young Alan Bates, Brian Cox, Bill Owen among others) study of dysfunctional working class English family where the three sons have become educated and moved up in the world, but are still stuck in the wounds of their childhood.

The production still feels very stagy, and some of the writing is too theatrical for film, but much of the play is moving and nicely complex; finding ways to combine the personal and the political.

It does feel a bit dated -- from a time when breaking away from living the life your parents expected was still a more radical idea.

If you are looking for some of the wonderful off kilter charm of Lindsey Anderson's other films, you might be disappointed with this. If you are able to respond to great filmed theater along the lines of "Glengarry Glen Ross," "Long Day's Journey Into Night," Olivier's "Othello" and indeed the American Film Theater's great movie "The Homecoming", you may go all the way with this one, which I found a deeply moving experience.

Storey's play has some odd parallels to Pinter's "Homecoming" (a comic horror story of family that is perhaps the best of the brief life of the American Film Theater series) and perhaps primed by that film

I was sort of waiting for something bitter or freakish to occur for about the first half. But it is Storey's purpose to illustrate that even among families of great love and decency, dark secrets and bitter resentments can brew.

The film brings much humor and intensity to the subject. It's a thing of beauty. Critically

the affection Storey has for his characters never slips into sentimentality. This movie was a

big discovery for me. Give it a shot and see what you think.