farrellyfrank52

There is a lot to praise in That They May Face The Rising Sun: stunning scenery, great acting, beautiful score, but the presence of a strong plot, theme, or central relationship, one of which at least, is required to hold a great film together, was lacking. The married couple around whose lives and cottage the main action revolved, seemed to coexist largely on a diet of meaningful glances and melancholy embraces. Joe's (Barry Ward) depiction as a stoic Good Samaritan-friend, embalmer, driver, letter-writer to all, starved the actor of any emotional range, and the the action of any dramatic surprise. His wife (Anna Bederke) had little to do but smile serenely at her new, semi-cloistered, adopted world, like a novice nun stuck with her vows. Clearly Pat Collins placed most of his chips on mood and atmosphere, which for me, often echoed that doomed rural isolation and missed opportunity which The Ballroom of Romance did so well. I liked some set pieces, particularly the the wedding, where the close up of Brendan Conroy's lonely face tore at the heart. The wake (strangely, for its time, without a priest in sight) and laying out of Johnny's corpse, showed the single death is also a communal one. I loved Sean McGinley's performance, especially in that devastating scene where his eyes and voice convey the deep shame he feels for having left Ireland, only to end up cleaning the 'English jacks' in Fords.

The film succeeds in what it sets out to do; capture life in the ordinary moments of ordinary, often frustrated individuals, present it in significant, often striking fragments rather serve it up as a coherent narrative whole, a kind of style that Fellini perfected in the incomparable Amarcord.

I knew this story already, and had seen 'Alive' a long time ago, but this treatment of the ill-fated Andes flight in 1972 was so impressive, so sensitive to its core truths, that it stayed in my head for weeks after the credits closed. More importantly, it stayed in my heart. And this is the point: it seems superfluous to assess this film's technical wizardry, its stunning setting and superb acting, when the abiding sense at the end is one of deep admiration for the human spirit in adversity. We've all been there, in our fashion: young, idealistic, like the hero in Conrad's 'Youth', believing he could 'outlast the sea, the earth, and all men'. Then at 12,000 feet and 20 degrees below, your life crashes into a glacier, leaving you stranded with your closest friends. What do you do? What do you think you would not do? What are your limits? One thing for certain: you will find out what kind of man you are. You might even find a new god, like Arturo did, whose spellbinding speech I will never forget. I even wrote a poem about it. This is a story of survival, friendship, courage, hope; the universal themes, and has little to do with eating human flesh. Thankfully, director J. A. Bayona knows that.

From the start, this bore all the dreaded hallmarks of a routine TV movie: stale dialogue, laboured narrative, undeveloped characters. It was docu without the drama. No attempt to explore or present the trauma of separation and forced exile. All too clean, too tidy, too predictable, too focussed on the facts. I liked Hopkins, though remember him mostly as simply pottering around, mulling silently about the past. Things lifted in the final That's Life section, but in the end, I was left with the taste of cloying sentimentality and self-congratulation. I get it that the film was a tribute, and rightly, and deservedly so, in honouring this great man- but as a film, only a poor man's Schindler's, at best.