Weekend Film Recommendation: In the Name of the Father

By 1993, Daniel Day-Lewis had cemented his reputation as one of the foremost young British talents in cinema. The method acting for which he had acquired the interest of the critics (and the consternation of the film crew) in Jim Sheridan’s My Left Foot was deployed yet again in their collaboration on the film adaptation of Gerry Conlon’s autobiography Proved Innocent: The Story of Gerry Conlon of the Guildford Four. The film that resulted, In the Name of the Father (1993), is this week’s recommendation.

Screen shot 2014-08-26 at 15.13.05

The film front loads the explosive action: in the opening scenes we watch the bombing of a pub in Guildford that we later learn kills five and wounds many more; back in Belfast a few days earlier, an upstart young Gerry (played by Day-Lewis) accidentally ignites an overblown military response by the British Armed Forces in his Belfast neighborhood after he’s caught stripping roof materials with his friend Paul. To secure Gerry’s safety, his father Giuseppe (played by Pete Postlethwaite) sends Conlon the lesser to London, whereupon Gerry and Paul waste no time getting into mischief.

But it’s out of the frying pan and into the fire, as Conlon actually has a rather unhappy knack for stepping into sensitive and highly threatening situations. The wider political climate, fraught with tension as the Troubles were reaching (one of) their peak(s), has just seen the passage of the Prevention of Terrorism Act that permits – among other things – the detention of terrorist suspects for up to seven days. Conlon becomes a suspect in the Guildford bombing and is tortured by the cops for days until they extract a fabricated confession from him that incriminates himself, his travel buddy Paul, and two other friends. In a wretched turn of events, even Gerry’s father and aunt are included in the conspiracy.

From that point forward, the drama shifts gears to a crusade for the exoneration of those convicted for the Guildford bombing – a crusade prosecuted by the resolute Giuseppe and the lawyer Gareth Pierce (played by Emma Thompson). Giuseppe and Peirce hope to recruit Gerry to the cause by rousing him from apathy before it’s too late. In a film dominated by male spaces, all of which lack either determination, a sense of justice, or competence, Peirce brings a refreshing blend of all three.

Although the physically demanding preparatory rituals Day-Lewis used in My Left Foot weren’t required for In the Name of the Father, he was no less obsessive in getting into character. He stayed awake for days and starved himself before permitting filming to proceed in the interrogation scenes, and his desperation shows through. Even the weariness of being in prison for fifteen years comes across in his appearance, right down to the facial features. It’s not Linklater’s Boyhood, but Day-Lewis looks like he’s visibly aged by the end of the film.

Screen shot 2014-08-26 at 15.11.41

While there’s no question that Postlethwaite is outstanding as Conlon the elder, the added value of his character to the overall plot (beyond simply providing added grist to the suffering mill at the heart of the miscarriage of justice trope) becomes clear only as we approach the film’s conclusion. The father-son dynamic sharpens the sadness in the beginning of the film, but Giuseppe’s most significant contribution is as a foil for Gerry’s character development. At various points, Gerry spurns all three of the film’s elder male leads (Gerry’s father, the righteous Giuseppe; Gerry’s one-time idol, the self-confident IRA soldier McAndrew; and Gerry’s nemesis, the crooked cop Dixon). Eventually, Gerry has to pick what direction his embitterment will turn him toward, and it’s this complexity – combined with the impressive performances – that elevates In the Name of the Father above your garden variety miscarriage of justice movie.

Indeed, throughout the film there are fragments of more subtle imagery and nuance than the traditional ‘wrongful conviction’ genre would suggest: in prison, Conlon dulls his nerves to the indignity of his incarceration by taking acid smuggled in on pieces of a jigsaw puzzle of, you guessed it, the British Empire. As Conlon’s undeserved time in prison ticks by, the fabric of the Empire itself is gradually chipped away. The religious allegory one expects from the film’s title is mercifully never over-played, even as the themes of redemption and forgiveness permeate the story.

Watch it, and you’ll get a sense of how good a film has to be to make a soundtrack that includes Bono’s music tolerable.

Weekend Film Recommendation: Peter’s Friends

As the holiday season is still upon us, let me follow up last week’s recommendation of A Christmas Story with Kenneth Branagh’s 1992 film Peter’s Friends. Sometimes glibly dismissed as a “British knockoff of The Big Chill” it is in fact superior in most respects to that film (which not incidentally was itself based on a better, little seen movie, The Return of the Seacaucus Seven).

The plot: Peter (Stephen Fry) has inherited a large estate and house from his recently deceased and very formidable father, whom he hated but now misses. He is also grappling with a serious personal problem — the nature of which is not revealed to the audience until late in the movie — that is causing him great strain. Unable to decide what else to do, he throws a weekend Christmas party for his dear friends from Oxbridge days. Once a young and happy troupe reminiscent of the Footlights (of which many of the actors in the film are alums), Peter’s friends have since run into their own painful challenges in life.

Rita Rudner, who is hilarious as a shallow and unhappy American TV star, wrote the witty script with her husband Martin Bergman. The script also includes some strong dramatic moments, even though it doesn’t quite seem to know how to wrap things up at the very end. Without spoiling the plot, Peter’s Friends also deserves praise as being one of the first major British movies to deal with a particular topic that had been too long avoided.

Director Kenneth Branagh gets the best out of the talented ensemble cast, even though he himself gives only a so-so performance (for whatever reason, with the exception of the Wallander series, Branagh always seems a bit too mannered and self-conscious when he plays modern parts). You are blessed with more than a bit of Fry and Laurie here, as well as good work by Imelda Staunton, Tony Slattery and Alphonsia Emmanuel. But the best performances of all come from the mother-daughter team of Phyllida Law as the housekeeper-quasi-parent of Peter, and Emma Thompson as a bookish turbo-neurotic who is secretly in love with him. I have never met anyone whose former boyfriend wrote self-help books right up to the moment he committed suicide, but if I did, I would expect her to be exactly like Thompson’s pathetic, nerdy but still very appealing Maggie Chester.

The film’s music is also enjoyable, including hits of the period (by Bruce Springsteen, The Pretenders and Tears for Fears) as well as a lovely version of Jerome Kern’s “The way you look tonight” sung by the entire cast (Imelda Staunton can really hit a note!). The then-popular music and focus on a particular British generation’s experience could have turned this into a period piece which would age badly, but the many laughs and the moving moments gives Peter’s Friends great appeal that extends to the present day.