skygiants | (no subject)

I saw Their Finest on a plane last year, and -- despite an ending that made me spend a few minutes just blinking dubiously at the screen -- enjoyed it enough that I went and sought out the book it was based on, Their Finest Hour and a Half.

The book focuses on the making of a Heartwarming Feature Film About Dunkirk during the Blitz, with three protagonists:

- Catrin, a young Welsh woman who gets recruited by the ministry of propaganda to write 'slop', the romantic and/or Bechdel-passing dialogue that none of the existing stable of screenwriters are enough interested in to do well at; she's the one who interviews twin sisters who tried (and failed) to take a boat to Dunkirk and decides to quietly lie about their success in order to get their story made into a film
- Ambrose, an aging and wildly self-absorbed actor who takes the first half of the book to very reluctantly, grudgingly accept that MAYBE, JUST POSSIBLY, his expectations of leading-man roles are unrealistic and ends up playing the role of the twins' Heartwarming Old Uncle
- Edith, a middle-aged Madame Tussaud's wardrobe-mistress, bombed out of her home and employment, who by chance ends up living in the village where the film is being shot and is Romanced by the film's painfully shy military advisor

As a sidenote, Catrin and Ambrose both make it into the film relatively unscathed, but Edith was cut out of the movie completely, so she was a delightful surprise to me! She's an expert in distressing old clothes who's done extensive work costuming the wives of Henry VIII! The military advisor surprise!proposes on the first date, and she's just like 'well, this might as well happen' and then promptly uses the connection to land herself a dream job in the film's wardrobe department! I'm very annoyed the filmmakers apparently didn't think her interesting enough to include.

On the other hand, the film did bulk up the role of the lesbian continuity advisor, who gets a few lines in the book including one quiet remark about her sexuality and in the movie is constantly hanging out in the background reminding everybody that she's gay, so they did at least one thing right.

I'm also very fond of Catrin, whose arc involves growing out of her identity as the wife/girlfriend of an Important Artist, and into her confidence and skills as a screenwriter with an investment in making women sound like people onscreen. In the film, unsurprisingly, this also very much involves a Romance with the primary screenwriter on the film, Played By Sam Claflin, Romantic Lead. In the book that character is much more secondary and the relationship is much more ambiguous, a mentorship laced with something that might just be standard-era 1930s sexual harassment, or might be actual feelings, and even if they are feelings it's not at all certain that Catrin wants or reciprocates them; it's possible that she does, but it's equally possible that she just wants the camaraderie and banter and professional respect.

In both cases, he makes a pass towards the end of the movie, Catrin rejects him, then finds herself missing their dynamic; they reconcile backstage after a major bombardment (a first kiss in the movie, an accepted offer of something that might be an experimental date in the book), he gets called off to go deal with some film-related crisis, and ... IMMEDIATELY GETS HIT BY A PIECE OF FALLING SCENERY AND DIES.

I'm sorry: I laughed my head off. WELL, THAT WAS A GREAT RELATIONSHIP! THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES!

And, I mean, I get it, I do, a.) it's the Blitz and you can't say SURPRISE DEATH FROM ABOVE! isn't thematic and b.) his death opens the way at the end for Catrin to step into his role and grow into herself, and the way that the death and absence of men during WWII opens opportunities for talented women to grow into their jobs and become better than the people they replaced is a running theme throughout. (There's a great subplot in both book and film about Ambrose's sweet gay Jewish agent, who dies in a bombardment ,which would irritate me except then his retiring sister decides to step up and take over his agency and promptly turns out to not only be an AMAZING agent but a WILDLY TALENTED Ambrose-ego-squasher-and-manipulator. She might be my favorite character.)

And yet: A PIECE OF FALLING SCENERY COSHES HIM ON THE HEAD.

Anyway! That aside, I would like to emphasize that I enjoyed the book enormously overall, and the film generally as well; Blitz home front + backstage hijinks are definitely two great tastes that taste great together. The Ministry approved the script but now the Navy's mad we got the boats wrong! The producers are demanding we add an American hero despite the fact that there were absolutely no Americans at Dunkirk! WHAT ABOUT THE BIT WITH THE DOG.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

tree_and_leaf

I particularly enjoyed the film given the frothing portentousness of "Dunkirk" (I'm sorry, I know I'm supposed to like Christopher Nolan, but I don't) , and that the trailers included one for "Darkest Hour", which was obviously going to be hagiographic tosh (and, as it turned out, politically dubious at that).

From:

tree_and_leaf

Also, I thought the costuming department did an incredible job, especially with the knitwear.

From:

skygiants

I saw Their Finest and was like "oh good, I don't have to see Dunkirk now, because I just got the entire gist AND it was funny (and had women in it!)"

From:

sovay

And yet: A PIECE OF FALLING SCENERY COSHES HIM ON THE HEAD.

I think Blitz-thematic sudden death from above is a lot less out of left field when it's actually Blitz-related! Is it supposed to be ironic? Is it supposed to be horribly funny? Did the editor go missing for the denouement?

I note that the film was directed by Lone Scherfig, also responsible for An Education (2009), a movie I keep meaning to write about because it was not at all the sort of thing I usually enjoy and I thought it was amazing.

I'm very sorry the wardrobe mistress was deleted; she sounds great.

From:

tree_and_leaf

I did see Dunkirk

I couldn't tell any of the leads apart. (And I'm white British! They still seemed completely identical! Granted, I am not brilliant with faces, but I don't normally have this problem!)

From:

tree_and_leaf

My reading is that it's supposed to be at least a bit horribly funny, or at least you're supposed to be uneasily aware that it's a bit slapstick, and yet this is, in fact, the sort of ridiculous but horrible thing that happens in war all the time. But it does make for a very uneasy end to the film.

From:

kore

Let us hate Christopher Nolan together!

From:

kore

THE BOOK EDUCATION WAS BASED ON WAS SO GOOD ahem.

From:

kore

Both the book and film sound great! (that film title,omg)

From:

sovay

I couldn't tell any of the leads apart.

I saw Dunkirk and I enjoyed it and I also thought casting three dark-haired, skinny, very young white British men as the leads was, unless some clever point about the interchangeability of cannon fodder was sliding past me, stupid. [edit] I forgot we spoke in comments of that post; apologies.

Edited Date: 2018-04-28 07:21 pm (UTC)

From:

sovay

THE BOOK EDUCATION WAS BASED ON WAS SO GOOD ahem.

I read Lynn Barber's essay in the Guardian, but not the complete book! I'll look for it as I slowly work out what to say about the film that is just not AAAAAAAAAAAAAH CAREY MULLIGAN and moral complexity.

Edited Date: 2018-04-28 05:57 pm (UTC)

From:

kore

CAREY MULLIGAN, SO AMAZING AMIRITE? She was pretty good in the terrible adaptation of the book about clones! (Other bits of that movie were surprisingly good, I just wanted to drown the male clone in a bucket early on.)

From:

skygiants

Yeah, I think it's meant to be ironic, and also a reminder that Death Is Frequent In Wartime but also can Attack From Above At Any Time! War Is Not Unique! which ..... I can see the logic? AND YET. I think what really pushes it over the edge for me is that it happens immediately after the romantic beginning/reconciliation (in the film especially, where it's KISS SMILE BOOM! and, like, what can you do but start laughing?)

Huh -- I can't say it reminded me particularly of An Education at the time, but now that you mention it, I absolutely can feel the similarity in directorial style. A kind of way of framing the heroine.

From:

skygiants

I super enjoyed them both! The premise was immediately appealing and I was not disappointed.

From:

sovay

Huh -- I can't say it reminded me particularly of An Education at the time, but now that you mention it, I absolutely can feel the similarity in directorial style. A kind of way of framing the heroine.

Well, that makes me more interested in Their Finest.

From:

lilysea

I think what really pushes it over the edge for me is that it happens immediately after the romantic beginning/reconciliation (in the film especially, where it's KISS SMILE BOOM! and, like, what can you do but start laughing?)

Whereas for me, that moment was emotional whiplash, unexpected, a shock, a disappointment, and I genuinely burst into tears in the cinema...

From:

skygiants

Admittedly, it probably also makes a difference that I saw it on an airplane rather than having the Movie Theater Experience!

From:

china_shop

I saw the film, and was disappointed the lesbian continuity advisor didn't make a move, once the falling scenery had cleared the bloke out of the way. *wonders if there is fic*

From:

tempestsarekind

I did this the other way around: read the book first (though not before I knew there was a film version coming out), and then only just watched the movie this March! I was so disappointed by the absence of Edith, and the military advisor whose name I've forgotten (I could see why they cut him, though, because so much of his part in the book is about seeing that character from other people's POV as meek and milksoppy, and then realizing from his POV that he's basically suffering from PTSD and flashbacks pretty much all the time). I did like Gemma Arterton as Catrin, though, Rachael Stirling should be in everything, and I even enjoyed Sam Claflin's presence, aside from the, er, coshing.

(I think this annoyed/frustrated me more in the movie than the book, because the meta-ness of making an uplifting movie where The Hero Has To Survive Dunkirk and then killing off the male lead in the "real world" was much more meta in movie form than book form, and it felt kind of like the movie was mocking the audience for wanting a story where the hero survives, after spending the whole movie saying that those kinds of stories were valuable? IDK.)

From:

tree_and_leaf

*fistbump*!

From:

skygiants

YULETIDE!!!!

From:

skygiants

Yeah, I thought Gemma Arterton was a delight as Catrin -- basically that (plus how funny it is) is the reason I'm still enthusiastically recommending the film to people, despite the ending and also the tragic absence of Edith.

(Yeah, I felt that way too -- especially since the movie is so much more structured as a romantic comedy, so killing off the lead really does feel like a bit of a betrayal of the form, like all those debates that were raging a while back about unhappy endings in romance novels. Whereas in the book it's not even the main romantic subplot, and the entire relationship is so much more ambiguous, that the fact that it ends in a way before the proper beginning of the narrative Catrin is just starting to build up in her head feels less jarring. ....I mean, still jarring, but definitely less so.)

From:

izilen

I saw the film during my hardcore Home Front Phase a couple of months ago and I think it was it that ultimately satisfied me, haha. I will probably check out the book!

From:

sovay

especially since the movie is so much more structured as a romantic comedy, so killing off the lead really does feel like a bit of a betrayal of the form

I turned out to have been fine with it because of the foreshadowing of Buckley saying that people like films because in fiction, even sad things happen for a reason, whereas in real life they just happen, which is the kind of meta that warns the audience that a sad thing is going to happen for no reason, even though it is of course happening for a reason, because this is a film.