Right Words

Some more movies I’ve viewed recently.

Room with a View (1985). Currently free on YouTube, I’ve watched this one about three times now and love it every time. E.M. Forster’s books, as a whole, have been successfully adapted to film, thanks to the Merchant-Ivory team et al. In my view, Denholm Elliott and Julian Sands steal this show, but the entire cast is so stellar it’s hard to say that. What struck me the most was the profundity of some of Elliott’s lines as Mr. Emerson, like where he says that the heart is where the sun shines and the bird sings and that wherever we are on earth should be home, etc.

Far From the Madding Crowd (2015). As with the next movie below, there have been other versions of this film, which is based on the Thomas Hardy novel, but this one was profoundly moving to me. The casting was perfect, IMO, and the ending was so gratifying to me as an underdog supporter. I ordered the book right after the film ended, though I read it and The Mayor of Casterbridge in high school.

All Quiet on the Western Front (2022). To my knowledge this is the third film version of this movie, and doubtless the grittiest. I watched the 1979 TV version starring Richard Thomas and appreciated it, but the 2022 version was far more gripping in my opinion. The music, the mud, the machine guns, the melancholy…all made one feel the horrors of war more deeply than the 1979 version (and likely the 1930 version). This movie will make you feel sick about war, as some war films should, but war is such a complex entity that I don’t think all war films should have the same objective. Sometimes heroics are the theme, and I think that’s fine, as long as one understands that war isn’t all heroics: there’s also cowardice, brutality, and many other vices connected with it, which this film ably portrays. There are a handful of gory scenes that earned this an R-rating (like the knifing scene in the crater), but most are pretty easy to skip if you prefer. No sex or nudity, and the swearing is occasional and all in German. I recommend this film if you can handle war violence, but the horror still shook me even though I skipped some of the gore.

Narvik (2022). This is now the third Norwegian movie about WWII that I’ve found…to my satisfaction. This one centers on the battle surrounding Narvik, a key port in upper Norway. It was an early setback for Hitler, but not on the scale of El Alamein, Stalingrad, etc. The plot centers on a Norwegian family in the midst of the battle. Very touching on that note and inspiring in light of the Norwegians’ predicament.