Posts Tagged ‘Fionn Whitehead’

Emily

Director: Frances O’Connor

Cast: Emma Mackey, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Gemma Jones, Fionn Whitehead, Adrian Dunbar, Alexandra Dowling, Amelia Gething, Harry Anton, Elijah Wolf

Running Time: 2 hours and 10 minutes

Film Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Mansfield Park actress Frances O’Connor makes her directorial debut with the new period drama Emily based on the brief but vivid life of British novelist Emily Bronte who penned the classic novel Wuthering Heights.

Anglo-French actress Emma Mackey takes on the title role capping off a succession of period films in 2022 from Death on the Nile to Eiffel and fortunately Mackey is brilliant as the headstrong Emily Bronte.

Set in the decade before the publication of Wuthering Heights in 1847, Emily focuses on the inspiration behind such an astounding novel and her complex relationship with equally famous sister Charlotte Bronte played by Alexandra  Dowling. Between the sibling relationships, Emily has to contend with a passionate love affair with the dashing curate Weightman played by rising British star Oliver Jackson-Cohen (The Lost Daughter).

While unable to escape the influence of her father played by Adrian Dunbar, Emily gets entangled in a bad sibling relationship with her undesirable brother Branwell Bronte, a regular at the local pub and a frequent consumer of opium. Branwell, superbly played by Dunkirk star Fionn Whitehead influences Emily into a range of undesirable activities mostly radical from voyeurism to drug taking, while chanting the mantra Freedom of Thought.

Whilst the sensible Charlotte Bronte has no time for her brother’s antics, Emily is entirely susceptible until eventually their father Patrick Bronte separates the siblings.

Emily discovers how complicated love can be, especially with a devoted man of God. The doomed love affair between Emily and Weightman is expertly captured in the seduction scene on a Yorkshire moor beautifully played by Emma Mackey and Oliver Jackson-Cohen as both actors struggle to untangle themselves from their restrictive Victorian clothing, a cinematic metaphor for the pervading morality which frowned upon acted out on one’s sexual desires.

Actress turned director Frances O’Connor does a relatively good job of directing Emily, keeping it extremely historically accurate while balancing the focus of the friction filled relationship between the two gifted Bronte sisters, both of whom would make a massive contribution to English Literature with the publication of their novels Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. However, the director could have got some editing tips as Emily does linger too long and occasionally loses focus.

Emily gets a film rating of 7.5 out of 10 and is saved by a superb cast that does justice to the legacy of the Bronte sisters. This film is recommended for those that enjoy a literary period film set in Victorian England.

The Children Act

Director: Richard Eyre

Cast: Emma Thompson, Stanley Tucci, Fionn Whitehead, Ben Chaplin

Notes on a Scandal director Richard Eyre adapts an Ian McEwan novel The Children Act featuring another Oscar worthy performance by Emma Thompson who plays a British judge Fiona Maye who has to decide the complex case of Jehovah Witness teenager who has leukaemia and whose parents are refusing to allow the hospital to give him a blood transfusion which is against their religious beliefs.

Dunkirk star Fionn Whitehead plays the young seventeen year old boy Adam Henry who takes a shine to the supposedly impartial judge Maye after she visits him in hospital to determine how critical his medical condition really is.

The Children Act is masterfully directed by Richard Eyre and ably supported by an articulate screenplay by Ian McEwan who adapted it from his novel.

At the centre of The Children Act is a superb performance by Emma Thompson who is not only having to deal with legally and morally complex court cases but has to grapple with the failure of her marriage to English lecturer Jack Maye wonderfully played against type by American actor Stanley Tucci (The Devil Wears Prada).

Thompson who cut her teeth in some early Kenneth Branagh’s Shakespeare film adaptations including King Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing, has come into her own as a respected British actress.

She later blossomed under the artful direction of now Oscar winner James Ivory, who at age 88 adapted the screenplay for the superb 2017 film Call Me by Your Name. Emma Thompson starred in two major Merchant Ivory productions Howards End and Remains of The Day both opposite Anthony Hopkins. She won an Oscar in 1992 for Best Actress for portraying Margaret Schlegel in Howards End.

In later years, Thompson has not really featured in many complex roles but her turn as Fiona Maye in The Children Act has redeemed her star quality which peaked in Ang Lee’s handsome film adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility opposite Kate Winslet, for which she picked up another Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.

The Children Act is a sophisticated British legal drama about the moral boundaries of the law and the psychological impact such judgements can make on those suffering from terminal diseases. An intelligent handling of a complex and deeply polarizing subject matter, held together by a flawless performance by Emma Thompson.

The Children Act gets a film rating of 8.5 out of 10 is highly recommended viewing for those that prefer substantial British dramas which are not easily weighed down by melancholy or prejudice.

Dunkirk

Director: Christopher Nolan

Cast: Fionn Whitehead, Aneurin Barnard, Harry Styles, Kenneth Branagh, Jack Lowden, Cillian Murphy, Tom Hardy, Mark Rylance, James D’Arcy, Michael Fox, Tom Glynn-Carney, Barry Keogh

Inception and The Dark Knight Trilogy director Christopher Nolan achieves a cinematic feat when he authentically tackles the war genre in his brilliant film Dunkirk starring a host of young British actors including One Direction lead singer Harry Styles, Fionn Whitehead and Aneurin Barnard backed up by some Oscar nominees Tom Hardy (The Revenant) and Kenneth Branagh (My Week with Marilyn) and Oscar winner Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies).

Dunkirk shot entirely with Imax cameras and with crystal clear cinematography by Hoyte Van Hoytema who also worked on Interstellar and superb production design by Nathan Crowley is a cinematic experience of unparalleled proportions. Epic, immediate and accessible.

SURVIVAL IS VICTORY

Christopher Nolan keeps his war film as authentic as possible with hardly any use of CGI and using real planes, ships and shot mostly on location at Dunkirk in Northern France, the film immediately positions the viewer in the centre of Operation Dynamo: the forced evacuation by allied soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk between 26th May and the 4th June 1940 as the allies were hemmed in by the Nazi’s approaching from the Western Front and the Luftwaffe were bombing the evacuees at a rapid rate over the English channel.

With minimal dialogue, Dunkirk brilliantly retells this eventful evacuation from three different geographic perspectives Land, Sea and Air.

While the British soldiers viewed the evacuation as a retreat, the fact that so many of the soldiers were saved by civilian ships, was an absolute miracle: 338 226 mostly British, French and Dutch soldiers were rescued in possibly the biggest military evacuation in human history especially during a World War.

Dunkirk is told from three distinct perspectives, Tommy, the everyday 19 year old British soldier played by Fionn Whitehead, from air force fighter pilot Farrier played by Tom Hardy and also from the perspective of Mr Dawson played with determination by Mark Rylance who takes his civilian fishing boat across the channel to save soldiers aided by his son Peter played by Tom Glynn-Carney and his friend George played by Barry Keogh.

The best sequence in Dunkirk is when Collins, played by Jack Lowden (A United Kingdom), another fighter pilot crash lands in the icy channel and is trapped inside the sinking spitfire intercut with Tommy and a gang of young soldiers including Alex played by Harry Styles are trapped inside a precariously berthed ship which is being shot at from an unseen enemy as the tide is coming in on the beach.

Cillian Murphy (Inception, The Wind that Shakes the Barley) gives a harrowing portrayal of a rescued shell shocked soldier who is desperate to leave the slaughterhouse that was Europe during World War II and is horrified when he goes back to the shores of Dunkirk to rescue more soldiers under the stern command of Mr Dawson.

The visceral tension as the evacuation gets more dangerous and urgent aided by a frenetic original score by Hans Zimmer, makes Dunkirk a truly exceptional, economical and sublime war film, authentic and utterly immediate. Christopher Nolan places audiences directly in the centre of Operation Dynamo with ships sinking, aerial battles and underwater sequences which put James Cameron’s Titanic to shame, Dunkirk is a truly exceptional film.

Come Oscars 2018, Dunkirk should be recognized for being a masterful film, in terms of sound editing, cinematography and the sheer scale of the cinematic production.

Highly recommended viewing for those that enjoyed Steven Spielberg’s Oscar winning Saving Private Ryan, Dunkirk is a cinematic masterpiece and gets a film rating of 9.5 out 10.