Descending Freestyle

L has made plans to spend lunch with a friend in Ashbourne today. So the boys and I offer her a lift and then head into the Peak District for a walk. We yomp up Thorpe Cloud and then along Dovedale for a few miles. Thorpe Cloud is more difficult than it might have been as the conditions are incredibly slippery after all the recent rain. Going up is hard but coming down is terrifying particularly when you’re attached to a dog. MD refuses to go off lead and bites my feet when I try, which is the last thing you need when descending Thorpe Cloud freestyle. Doggo meanwhile skips ahead, miles in front, making a mockery of his twelve years.

In the evening we go to Broadway and take in The Railway Man

 

Eric Lomax (Colin Firth) was a signaller in the British army that surrendered to the Japanese when Singapore fell during World War II. Lomax's captivity as a Prisoner Of War was spent working on the construction of the Burma Railway. He was lucky to survive it. After being found with a homemade map and a radio he was tortured to within an inch of his life. Thirty plus years on (the film is set circa 1980) the scars of this dreadful experience have failed to heal.

We meet Lomax, surprisingly still a railway buff, and the film’s love interest Patti (Nicole Kidman) rather appropriately on a train. They immediately marry (or so it appears) but the baggage that he carries with him causes him severe moods swings and nightmares but he won't share the reasons for these with his new wife. 

She has to go visit his friend and fellow POW Finlay (Stellan Skarsgård) to find out why. Then when a photo appears in a Japanese newspaper of the translator Takashi Nagase who was Lomax's tormentor in chief and was now working as a tour guide on the railway, Lomax takes the opportunity to head over to exact revenge.

The key question posed by the film is what would you do if you came face to face with the man who tortured you? Unfortunately the film fails to give a convincing answer.

 

Probably because too much has been changed from Lomax’s original story. The real Lomax didn’t turn up unannounced and he wasn’t the only one who had been wrestling with his demons. Nagase had been too and had attempted to atone for his sins. The real Lomax knew this because the two wrote to each other for two years before they decided to meet. So the film’s scenario didn’t happen and this is probably why it feels so false.

The film bounces back and forth from the Second World War to the 1980s. From young Eric's (the excellent Jeremy Irving) physical torture to old Eric’s emotional torture as the film overlays a snapshot of life constructing the Burma railway and in the POW camp with a rather thin love story.

That didn’t work either. The fact that the real Eric returned from war, married his pre-war sweetheart, had two kids and then met Patti (also with kids) whilst he was still married and romanced her for two years prior to marrying her was a better back story than the one we got because we didn’t get one at all. The film just feels made up because most of it was and that’s a shame.

It’s not an awful film but it is unremarkable and far too ‘nice’ when it should have been harrowing and eye opening but it simply isn’t. The scenes in the camp are not pleasant yet overall the film seems desperate not to offend. The only time I felt any emotion was when they put photos of the real people up at the end. 

Afterwards we head to the Falcon and then the Hand & Heart for a final night cap.

(Saturday 11^th January)

Overdoing It With The Old Man

This morning on the park, Doggo pulls up short as he chases his ball and then just lies down, as if he’s ‘chilling’. Both MD and I know he’s hiding a limp. The fact it takes us an age to persuade him to get moving again proves it. Not sure how he’s going to hide that from L. She’ll accuse me of overdoing it with the old man again.

Derby win, which was a surprise enough. To win 5-1 is something else entirely. Perhaps this season won’t be quite so bad after all.

Tonight a film and an alcohol free one at that, as I have semi-serious run tomorrow.

We haven't seen an IRA thriller in a while, at one point you couldn't move for them. ‘Shadow Dancer’ is set in Belfast in 1993, to the backdrop of the ongoing peace process which resulted in the IRA ceasefire the following year. First though, we rewind to 1973, when Collette McVey was but a little girl. When she offloads an errand to the shops on her little brother, he comes back dead, hit by a stray bullet in the street.

Fast forward twenty years and Collette (Andrea Riseborough) is in London about to plant a bomb on the underground. Only, the authorities are on to her and she gets captured. They have enough information to put her away, where she will lose her son or, they tell her, she could become an informant and work for MI5.

She agrees, way too easily, which is one of a few things that are wrong with an otherwise impressive film. A lot of things seem a little too easy, not only is Colette easily turned into an informant but back in Belfast, although they are instantly suspicious of her return, particularly as CCTV coverage of her had featured on the TV News but nobody makes too much of it. They certainly don’t think to follow her to her regular meetings with Mac (Clive Owen) her MI5 handler. Perhaps because most of these meetings seem to happen in the pouring rain.

There is good tension in the film though. Gerry, the local IRA commander, is the one man who is suspicious. He knows there’s an informant in their midst and will happily use a little water torture on Colette’s brother to find out if it’s her. Possibly Gerry’s character and his role could have been developed further but the film doesn’t really dip into the politics of the situation and the full horrors of terrorism are largely absent from the screen.

The film prefers instead to pinpoint the distrust and paranoia on both sides. Whereas Colette has to betray her own side and family, Mac has his own problems, Gillian Anderson. Anderson appears briefly as a senior MI5 Officer putting obstacles in Mac’s path as she keeps him in the dark as regards the bigger picture in infiltrating this particular IRA cell. He starts to feel responsible for Colette when it becomes apparent she is just a decoy to take the heat off their main informant.

It's a good film, intelligent, suspenseful and well-acted. Riseborough is excellent and even Owen is sort of ok. It's just lacking in a bit of extra oomph.

(Saturday 1st September)