Glorious Hope

TCM runs somewhat more recent movies during 31 Days of Oscar, which usually gives me the chance to see some things I hadn't seen before since I tend to watch older movies more. Among the more recent -- well, at least by my standards -- movies this year was Hope and Glory. Having recorded it, I recently sat down to watch it.

Sebastian Rice Edwards plays Bill Rowan, a boy of about 10 who is living in a housing development on the periphery of London with his family: dad Clive (David Hayman), mom Grace (Sarah Miles), elder sister Dawn (Sammi Davis), and kid sister Sue. The movie opens on September 3, 1939, which if you recall from your history books is the day the United Kingdom declared war on Nazi Germany after the Germans invaded Poland. If you didn't know, it doesn't matter, since the movie opens with the radio airing the Prime Minister's speech about the declaration of war.

As you can guess, Britain going to war means big changes for the whole of society, even for the Rowan family. Dad, despite having three children, decided to enlist for the war effort, leaving Mom to raise a family somehow. (I don't think we see anything of her having any sort of a job, and certainly not the sort of jobs the women in Millions Like Us had.) Billy is old enough to comprehend some of the horrors of war, as we see in his nightmares, but not all of them. Trying to survive a war and maintain some sense of normalcy is seen by Billy as a grand adventure. When the Blitz comes and various properties in the area are reduced to rubble, the boys in the neighborhood start a club to play at war in the rubble.

As such, Hope and Glory is a movie that's more of a memoir than a standard plotted movie; indeed, director John Boorman based the movie on his own experiences during World War II. But the main characters each have their subplots. Mom finds that she still holds a candle for another man whom she had loved years ago, while Dawn, who's growing up, has to grow up much faster what with all those soldiers around. She's swept off her feet by a Canadian soldier (Jean-Marc Barr) who of course gets his orders to ship out, leading to, well, you'll have to watch the movie to find that out.

Along the way, the Rowans lose their home, although surprisingly, they're the one family that doesn't lose their house to the Nazi air raids; instead, it's just a normal fire. But it forces them to move in with Grandpa (Ian Bannen) and Grandma, who are growing old and fighting it every step of the way; Grandpa in particular doesn't like the encroachment of technology on his riverside home.

John Boorman's nostalgic retelling of the homefront is excellent, buoyed by fine acting performances. The lack of one overriding main plot works in the movie's favor as it makes these people feel more like real people, simply trying to get through terrible privations as best they can, sometimes resorting to dark humor to do so. We're all like that, to a greater or lesser extent.

The Britain that Boorman presents in Hope and Glory is also a way of life that was dying out, to be changed irrevocably by the war. In that regard, Hope and Glory would make an excellent double feature along with Michael Powell's A Canterbury Tale. See it if you get the chance.