★ 7 / 10
I'm not usually a fan of remakes, especially
CinemaSerf
I'm not usually a fan of remakes, especially as the 1951 iteration of this story featuring Michael Redgrave is a powerful piece of drama. Who better, though…
I'm not usually a fan of remakes, especially as the 1951 iteration of this story featuring Michael Redgrave is a powerful piece of drama. Who better, though, than Albert Finney to pick up the mantle and offer us his own interpretation of this curmudgeonly ancient languages master at a public school who is facing retirement? Mike Figgis has updated the Rattigan text to bring it into the 1990s, but the plot remains essentially the same. He is married to a younger women "Laura" (Greta Scacchi) who is a bit fed up with him and quite attracted to "Frank" (Matthew Modine). He's an American who is gradually settling into his new British surroundings' and is conflicted by his extra-martial enthusiast. We know that "Crocker-Harris" (Finney) is aware of his wife's peccadilloes - "Frank" is not the first, and what follows now is a gradual reassessment of his life. A life without a pension, without the respect of his peers, without the appreciation of his pupils, without the love of his wife. Also central to this story is the young "Taplow" (Ben Silverstone) who, alone amongst the student body, has a degree of respect for this teacher. Perhaps it's because he wishes to swap to science next term, or perhaps because he sees something of the vulnerable in the older, lonelier man? As that final day and it's speech gets closer, things come to an head that is poignantly inconclusive. Finney is on good form here as is Michael Gambon as the headmaster obsessed with the cricket team and with placating the snooty parents who the school afloat, and the young Silverstone. This update sexualises some of the characters in a way that's a little unnecessary, but for the most part it's a stylishly produced film that is faithful to an original story of privilege, relevance, tradition, age, change - and bicycles.
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★ 8 / 10
Understated and beautiful:an English treasure
Rich-188
A touching,gentle movie,The Browning Version is perhaps hugely under-rated. The simple tale of an aging school teacher forced into retirement actually contains…
A touching,gentle movie,The Browning Version is perhaps hugely under-rated.
The simple tale of an aging school teacher forced into retirement actually contains many poetic metaphors for struggle.Crocker-Harris finds himself at one of life's great crossroads and wrestles with the inner turmoil of the knowledge that his life-work may have been futile.His convictions about language and literature are to be swept aside with the arrival of his successor and his still-beautiful wife,sympathetically played by Greta Scaachi,is as distant as his pupils.
Finney plays this role with a calm and measure that is evidence of a great actor at work.Perhaps only Hopkins could have hoped to have done so well with this role.
The score is excellent and the cinematography elegant.A great "English" film in every sense;my only wish is that it might have been a little longer.Somehow,an epic running time may have yielded the acclaim that it justly deserved.
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Plz seed. Antiggy