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When Graham Swift's novel "Last Orders" was published in 1996 it speedily garnered two distinctions. It won the high profile - but less than prestigious - Booker Prize. And it was labeled by some as a wholesale rip-off of Faulker's "As I Lay Dying". Both of these judgements were exaggerated. The book isn't of genuine prize-winning quality. And the premise it shares with the Faulkner - the remains of the newly dead being carried from A to B - contains no more weight of plagiarism than can be said to exist between, say, "The Naked and the Dead" and "The Thin Red Line". Both the American and the British books can perhaps be described as being linked only through being passage of last rites novels. In the case of "Last Orders" (i.e. the classic cry of the London pub barman looking to shut up shop) the recently dear departed is one Jack Dodds whom we first meet sitting on the counter of his favorite, life-long boozer, "The Coach and Horses". In a post-cremation plastic urn. Contemplating this container are Jack has asked to be scattered where once, perhaps, he was happy. The film charts the ensuing journey, intercutting, of course, a sustained series of flashbacks - the late 1930's, World War II, the 1970's - that weave together the lives of the main characters over two generations. For those of us who were there, it is an exercise in nostalgia. But since by worldly standards all these characters are losers Swift would no doubt prefer to consider it a study in the still, sad music of humanity - the lower classes leading lives of not so quiet desperation and sometimes finding a pocket or two of hard won happiness. The film is a very largely faithful adaptation - by the director Fred Schepisi himself - of the novel. (This is not surprising. The book, carved up into short-take, time-shifted islands, reads like an extended film treatment). Schepisi , an Australian, commendably resists the temptation to present a tourist's view of a picturesque Pearly King, East End and the scenes in and around the pivotal pub are authentically rooted. So too is the dialog. Taken mainly straight from the novel it thankfully makes no concession to mid-Atlantic. The cadences and turns of phrase ring very true. Also well done technically are the flashbacks. Astute, good look-alike casting (understandably so in the case of Nolan Hemmings) of the main characters as twenty-somethings and uniformly excellent playing by the literally younger generation, makes for a virtually seamless continuity of personality for Jack and his mates over the years. Unfortunately, however, Schepisi, as director does not trust either the quality of the lines or, it seems, of the actors delivering them. Rather than opt for sustained and/or stationary takes in the manner of the classic "On The Waterfront" cab scene, he tears the emotional heart out of one intimate exchange after another - and these are the film's own heart too with his fussy, creepy crawly camera moves. The inevitable result is distraction - we are conscious of the film-making process - and a series of on-going jump cuts whenever Schepisi needs to break away from his essentially unmotivated and hence non-naturally concluding tracking. He is bad on blocking all round. It is a long time since I saw a film so hiccoughing in its screen movement and ragged in its editorial rhythms. To a degree Schepisi's reluctance to put all his money on his (older) cast is justified. Helen Mirren as the newly minted widow, grieving but with another agenda to pre-occupy her, (and in a dream part for any actress looking to go from glam lead to major character role) is downbeat exemplary and Tom Courteney in the least rewarding of the good ol' boy parts demurely restricts himself to the quiet delivering of a straight Stan Laurel performance. But Michael Caine and Bob Hoskins, bankable star names that they are, ACT. My word how they do! Terribly understated, of course. But just look at all those wheels going round. Mitchum, as Wordsworth wrote, you should be living at this hour. All these names are left floundering in the wake of one quite staggering performance. David Hemmings - remember? - as the most embittered, most defeated by life, of the group invisibly deploys his technique not to act, dear boy, but just be. His wonderful exhibition of art hiding art won't win him any awards - he's not a name and his role is not obviously enough sympathetic - but it is a performance worth, to coin a phrase, the price of admission in itself. Go and see him and the film in that order.Never a masterpiece, Swift's novel, because full of first-rate 'documentary' observation, has all kinds of incidental felicities. Ultimately it collapses in an utterly incredible concession to the feel-good factor. For the nice guys, it tries to assure us, the still sad music will modulate into something sweeter. The film in ending is even more feel-good. The part of the widow is designedly written up and the boy who met girl too late, got girl for a few weeks of gentle adultery before losing her for years, ends by getting girl. The bonus is that it will be in Schepisi's Australia. Sydney, though, is a long way from Bermondsey. It is about as far as "Last Orders" is from such a masterpiece of ensemble playing as "Holiday"; from similar classic status.David Hemmings, however...... |
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