Wartime tour de force surely their Finest hour yet
‘Obviously, we can’t pay you as much as the chaps – so shall we say £2 a week?’
Their Finest Cert: 12A 1hr 57mins
There are some films that hit you right in ‘the heart’. Their Finest is one of them. I’ve seen it twice now and absolutely loved it on both occasions. It’s made me laugh, it’s made me cry and it’s made me realise what a fine actor Sam Claflin is quietly becoming.
But before I urge you all to rush out and see it, I have to warn you that my response to the film is as much personal as it is professional. As the son of a mother who, between her first career as an actress and her third act as a television producer, was for many years a script editor, I warm to any film that combines that Proustian whiff of late-night whiskey with the clackety-clack of a typewriter. And I particularly warm to one that combines both with a female scriptwriter making her way in what was then – just as it was for my mother – very much a man’s world.
‘Obviously, we can’t pay you as much as the chaps,’ says the man from the Ministry of Information (Richard E Grant), ‘so shall we say £2 a week?’ Catrin Cole (Gemma Arterton) doesn’t have much choice.
It’s London in 1940 and while the Blitz means no one is safe, Catrin’s life has hit one of those glorious periods of transition, when you’re never quite the same person again. She’s been plucked from South Wales by her older artist lover (he paints her into every painting but always very small), been installed in a suitably bohemian-looking garret, and now one of her cartoon captions has caught the eye of Buckley (Claflin), a floppily good-looking but drily sardonic scriptwriter from the Ministry of Information’s propaganda film department.
‘We’ll need someone to write “the slop”,’ he tells her, expanding when she looks confused: “…the women’s dialogue”. Ooh, I think Mr Buckley doth overdo the putdowns a little, don’t you?
The story – based on a novel by Lissa Evans – is now properly up and running, as Catrin soon proves a resourceful dab hand at scripting propaganda films. And then she stumbles across a story that might just be the feature-film material that the ministry big cheeses have been looking for. ‘Authenticity and optimism’ are the key words and the story of two sisters who borrow their father’s fishing boat to bring back soldiers from Dunkirk seems to provide both. There’s just one problem, as Catrin soon discovers. The sisters’ story isn’t quite true. But when did truth get in the way of good, morale-boosting propaganda? Directed by acclaimed Danish director
Bill Nighy and Gemma Arterton lead the way in a moving tale… with an oh-so-glorious cameo from Jeremy Irons
Lone Scherfig, Their Finest is her best film since An Education, which catapulted her into mainstream acclaim in 2009.
The performances she draws from her cast are just exquisite. Claflin, still only 30, quietly dominates every scene he is in, while Arterton is as good here as she has ever been. Better, even. But it’s the supporting performances that make
Their Finest such a joy for those who enjoy top-flight acting.
Helen McCrory is a radiant delight as the sad but surprisingly worldly spinster sister who steps into the breach when her agent brother is killed.
Rachael Stirling is a study in purpose and power as the quietly closeted but ever-so-nosey lesbian ministry administrator. As for Jeremy Irons as a stage-struck cabinet minister unshakeably convinced of his own theatrical genius, his brief but glorious cameo is one of the highlights of the film.
But rising above them all is Bill Nighy, simply perfect as the ageing, vain and immaculately dressed actor Ambrose Hilliard, who still thinks he should be up for the romantic lead but is persuaded to take on a lesser role. Did I mention that my father was a vain, immaculately dressed actor who still thought he ought to be playing the romantic lead right up to his recent death aged 82? I probably should.
This is vintage Nighy – a performance that could so easily have gone over the top but never does, eventually managing to move, rather beautifully, every bit as much as it makes you laugh.
The tone is spot-on throughout. In other hands, this could easily have been a lightweight Ealing-style romantic comedy but, despite superficial resemblances, it never is.
Yes, it’s somewhat romanticised and enjoyably witty but it has a satisfying reality too – this is a wartime story where characters actually die; rather shockingly – and perhaps audience-dividingly – in at least one case.
With casting and production design also both dazzlingly good, Their Finest is a period delight that I’m sure many will love. But nobody, I suspect, more than me.