BBC’s own Stephen Poliakoff writes and directs his first film in over a decade, “Glorious 39”. A drama set at the beginning of WW2 and focusing on an aristocratic families’ attempt to protect themselves from a war they are convinced they will lose. Specifically the covert methods employed by MPs in Chamberlain’s government to silence those who stood to fight against the Nazis alongside Churchill.
Set in 1939 and centering around a character with the nickname Glorious, it’s pretty clear this film isn’t the intellectual thriller it should be. For one thing, the exposition is utterly relentless, it seems unlikely that such a family could have any menacing undertones at all when all they seem to talk about is how they’re feeling at the moment, what they are doing or what they are about to do. It’s not easy to identify with characters’ whose lines are so completely interchangeable.
Romola Garai has her work cut out for her as the films’ protagonist “Glorious” Aka, Anne Keyes. She’s less of a leading character and more of a running commentary. The script mainly consists of her asking one of the other characters questions like What? or Why?, or just updating them on what’s going on. Even when she’s alone and exposition might seem impossible, Poliakoff conveniently places a cat for her to direct her diatribe towards, filling in the plot holes and explaining how she’s feeling at this point in the film. And if things still get too confusing, Sir Christopher Lee is always available in present day London to flashback on to the next part of the story “I remember they were setting the table” he introduces as we see a shot of the main characters setting the table.
Bill Nighy does his thing as the well respected father Sir Alex, and almost nearly pulls off lines like “It’s an extraordinarily emotional time right now”… but not quite. David Tennant plays one of Churchill’s young MPs and elevates the film for a brief moment with an engrossing rant on the British governments’ sluggish reactions to fascism. But the film soon throws away all that boring politics and enters into a spooky paranoid thriller that Poliakoff has decided his audience would prefer.
Not to give too much away, but it turns out that 90% of the film’s characters are just plain evil and quite happily kill those who are against Hitler, making them all Nazis by default, even the home guard seem to be in on it. This is never resolved and sits very uncomfortably with the more commonly known history of wartime Britain.
The phrase “Evil triumphs when good men do nothing” seems an appropriate thought for the film that this could have been. The upper classes’ eagerness for an appeasement with Hitler is a dark and greatly unexplored part of Britain’s history and something Poliakoff is no stranger to. His 2007 BBC drama “Joe’s Palace” handled the subject of appeasement expertly by examining how it affected the life of a man whose father had done business with the Nazis.
In choosing the preposterously spooky conspiracy path for this film, Poliakoff misses the intelligent, character based drama that actors like Bill Nighy, Julie Christie, Jeremy Northam and “Atonement” girls, Romola Garai and Juno Temple could have given him and that he has achieved so successfully in the past.
Review By Arthur Sloman