The farewell film by Notting Hill author Roger Michell is a sentimental and righteous interpretation of the Robin Hood legends.
The opening film of the Britfest festival is based on a true story. In 1961, Newcastle taxi driver Kempton Bunton (Oscar winner Jim Broadbent) stole a portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London. He anonymously offered to return the painting, but only on condition that older people in the UK begin to receive more support from the government.
Roger Michell was primarily known as the author of "Notting Hill" and "Good Morning" - both paintings were separated not only by the ocean, but also by the theme. However, in both of them, the feeling of coziness and intelligibility was turned to the limit: enveloping the audience with warmth, they made them organically fall in love with the characters and their twists and turns. Michelle passed away this September at the age of 65. His last picture "The Duke" has absorbed all the possible qualities of a director and became a bright testament to the audience.
Kempton Bunton flatly refuses to pay the broadcasting fee to the BBC - to such an extent that he dodges in front of the tax authorities every time they come to his soul, and defiantly does not turn on the channel after the evening TV gathering. Kempton's wife Dolly (Helen Mirren) is used to the old man's quirks, grumbling every time he returns from work. Too Kempton is irresponsible, in her opinion, approaches her duties, often forgetting the money she earned. Much more important for Kempton is the people in the cabin and the situations they bring with them: for example, a hand will be raised to force a hearing-impaired WWI veteran to pay.
After being fired, Bunton got a job in a bakery, but there he also plays a fighter for justice, standing up for an immigrant from Pakistan who became the target of racist jokes. Being ignored in the British Parliament and on the very BBC, despite speeches and homemade posters, Kempton realizes that the only chance to draw attention to the problems of the older generation will be a crime, namely, the theft of the portrait of the Duke of Wellington exhibited in London's National Gallery (painted in addition "ugly" , according to Kempton himself). The ultimatum is simple: the painting will be returned to the museum if over 100 thousand pounds sterling is paid for it, which will go to the needs of the elderly.
Everything that happens in an hour and a half of timekeeping is built into a good-natured fairy tale about one warrior in the field who, even at an old age, finds the strength to go against the circumstances, with humor and the imprint of grief left by his daughter who died as a result of an accident. The Duke functions in the same way as the notorious five-o-clock tea: predictably invigorating, causing addictiveness and automatic nostalgia for samples of a similar genre, so successful for the British and referring to the 1960s with their Charades and How to Steal a Million ... Michelle is more confident than other colleagues who draws the line between drama and comedy, looking first in one path, then in another, mixing and again deriving a working formula for a family, uniting viewing.
Broadbent is getting used to Kempton with the rhetorical ease of stage and screen veterans. And although his main achievements are his brilliant oratorical skills in court closer to the finale, Broadbent manages throughout the film to create the image of a familiar pensioner who surprises with his staunchness and conservative ideals. His hero is also a playwright, having no special education for this, he creates mainly "on the table". One of his plays is dedicated to the death of their daughter Dolly. "Girl on a Bicycle" is Bunton's own consolation and not the last chord in his decision to fight for at least some dividends in life, and not to remain completely devastated in nothingness. Their relationship with Dolly is a separate, not always accurate and natural, but generally convincing reflection of this tragedy and a way to go further.
Dunkirk's Fionn Whitehead appears in the background as Kempton's son Jackie and Matthew Goode as the famous lawyer Hutchinson. A touching denouement will satisfy the needs of almost everyone, even if the film is known step by step in advance, and moralizing is physically unbearable. Sterile old-fashioned "Duke" to face, such anachronisms today will be especially urgent and soul-saving, as an enriching trip to the same museum with a QR code at a safe distance.
This article was sponsored by Gulsen Demir
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