There are lots of films made about World War II. "Hope and Glory" transcends all of them through its casual debunking of the sentimental myths surrounding war-torn England in its darkest hour. There are at least some films made about the British home front but very, very rare is the film that does not idealize. While all the other films focused on the tragedy of war, John Boorman's film shows the comedy of it. The beauty of "Hope and Glory" is that its satire is so deeply submerged beneath the film's truly funny and nostalgic story that it is unapparent on casual viewing. That sort of subtlety is rare in current cinema and is what makes "Hope and Glory" a true classic.
Herman Wouk might have written the exalted title, but this is no grand soldiers' vision. The great power in "Hope and Glory," is the human comedy seen through the eyes of an incredulous, shy and observant 7-year-old boy. It is the power of childhood memories and family anecdotes burnished by retelling over time.
John Boorman's childhood and the London Blitz happened to coincide. Which is great for the movie, because he turns both events into exquisite myth that form the basis of this unconventional but believable comedy. This film is filled with memorable characters and a boy's sense of wonder at the War. During England's last patriotic bonding -- when it fought for (and felt good about) itself -- a young boy called Billy Rohan (Sebastian Rice Edwards) comes of age. And, in this film, Billy, his family and his country all bloom in the face of adversity.
Heightened awareness -- the sense of living life to the fullest -- underlies this blitz of memories, a jubilant celebration of just being alive. It's just that this family lives in extraordinary times and war makes the commonplace wondrous. The Luftwaffe turns Rosehill Avenue into an ever-changing landscape and a nervous hilarity prevails as the home front becomes a battlefield.
John Boorman, the man who made great thrillers such as "Point Blank," "Deliverance," and "Excalibur," now astounds and enchants us with this fond and funny little masterpiece that comes straight from the heart. It fills you up. The last thing one would expect from a director of such grand mythic adventures would be a cheerful, humorous, and quirky recreation of childhood memories of London during World War II. And yet, that's exactly what John Boorman has done with "Hope and Glory." It's a delightful film that is thoroughly entertaining because it draws richly, and quite paradoxically, from its seemingly serious subject matter.
One particularly good example of that sub-satire occurs early in the first half of the film, which concentrates on Billy and his family's reactions to the initial declaration of war. Billy's father Clive (David Hayman) interrupts his horsing around with Billy to reveal that he has joined the military. After his announcement, he motions for Billy to lean towards him so he can convey an important message. At this moment, the audience inwardly groans because it expects a tiresome speech from Clive about how Billy is now going to be the man in the house, how Billy must now grow up and shoulder more responsibility. But no, that's not what Clive does at all. He instead teaches Billy how to throw a googly to confuse the batter in a game of cricket, and he conveys it as a family secret! Although this is one of the more obvious moments, the film is rife with similar instances where Boorman twists conventional expectations such that the comedic results can be interpreted to whatever depth the viewer chooses. The deeper levels of anti-heroism are there, but the shallower strata of simple action and humor provide more than sufficient satisfaction.
"Hope and Glory" is a non-narrative mood piece composed of sentimental vignettes, Nevertheless, this movie is never soggy or soppy, thanks to the virtue of the writing, the strength of the characters and the continuous sense of danger. Boorman allows no complacency, never letting us forget the threat to the Rohan family. He doesn't waste a line or a scene; each moment is as full of nuance and humanity.
Even if we don't agree with our imperfect institutions, such as the law, government, the political economy, there are historical reasons why they developed the way they did. Likewise, in film, the structure of the screenplay has developed through years of experimentation, trial and error, relationships shared with other forms of drama, as well as many other reasons. To challenge such collective wisdom requires the true force of historic genius pushed to an inevitable clash with what has gone before it, and through such a clash is born the advancement of the human race. The essence of drama is the clash of the human will against obstacles -- the testing of just what it means to be a man. In this process our human condition is illuminated.
That perspective is well depicted through superb technical production values. In one of many similar strokes of genius, the film's editing by Ian Crafford conveys Billy's feelings to the audience by depicting the Rohan's burning house for what seems an eternity, yet only showing the bombed school building for a few fleeting seconds.
The creation of the Billy's residence and neighborhood by Production Designer Anthony Pratt and Art Director Don Dossett is thoroughly convincing (even it resembles an Alien Landscape). And Phillippe Rousselot's camerawork demonstrates a perceptive and guiding intelligence, especially when the camera pans in very tightly on the small toy soldiers Billy plays with on his front lawn, making the green grass seem almost like a jungle and the figurines somehow mythically alive. The costumes, lighting, hair styles, etc. -- coalesce together so well that the crew's work seems completely natural and at ease with themselves, the actors, and the audience.
And in that fusion one must not forget the unifying hand of John Boorman. Children have an uncanny ability to see events unhindered by social and cultural baggage -- to see their immediate importance -- and Boorman's film captures that beautifully, from the wonder and the pity to the tears and humor. The children are not cute little tykes completely oblivious to their surroundings (they are forced to recite their multiplication tables in gas masks). Billy and the other children in "Hope and Glory" are perceptive enough to see the effects of the war, but they are go-happy enough not to be too bothered by it. The depth of Boorman's portrayal of these children, as well as the other characters, is one that can only come from cherished and heartfelt personal memories.
The question that underlies most of "Hope and Glory" is how to respond to periods of great despair and tribulation. When Bill's oldest sister Dawn (Sammi Davis), hears Neville Chamberlain's announcement of war on the radio, she exclaims that the war isn't her fault and that she still needs her stockings that she's looking for. Their attitude is not one of crass materialistic infatuation but one of focus on the immediate relevancy of the here and now. The very first night of the bombing, Billy rushes out, surprisingly enough, to dance in their front yard under the bomb flashes. The next day, Billy begins his prized shrapnel collection as he makes his way to school. At school he and his fellow schoolchildren are bombarded with patriotic songs and speeches from the schoolteachers but the war simply gives Billy and the other kids new games and toys to play with as they go on living life their own way. Danger is present everywhere around them, yet they recognize it and absorb it in a uniquely childlike manner which few, if any, of the adults possess.
The Rohans are later elated when their modest middle-class house is spared, but grieve for their neighbors' loss. Bill and his 5-year-old sister Sue, played by the elfin Geraldine Muir, offer innocent solace when a playmate's mother is killed. They ask her if she wants to play. They don't know what else to do.
Maybe there is something in the very nature of war, in the power of guns and bombs that appeals to the imagination of little boys. Bombers and fighter planes and rockets and tanks are thrilling at that age when you are old enough to understand how they work but too young to understand what they do.
Sebastian Rice Edwards, who makes his acting debut as the hero Bill Rohan, is an adorable boy's boy. At a young age he already exudes a natural aura of greatness very evident through the confidence he shows in this film. Very natural as if he's not acting at all. He seems to have a vastly superior emotional intelligence than Christian Bale as Jim in "Empire of the Sun." Whether or not Sebastian decides pursue a career as an actor, "Hope and Glory" has already made him a legend in film.
There is something almost perverse in the way Boorman defines Sebastian's point of view as Bill. He is not concerned in this film about the tragedy of war, or the meaning of war, but only with the specific experience of war for a grade-school boy. He has not given the little boy in the movie any more insights than such a little boy should have. His approach is especially effective in a scene where the boy witnesses his sister making out with a soldier: He looks, and does not quite understand, and looks away, perhaps sensing that this is a chapter that has not yet opened for him.
More importantly, all events are seen through Billy's eyes, which means that he sees individual eccentricities that he (and therefore the audience) finds most interesting. It's difficult to forget Billy's expression of disgust at being repeatedly kissed on the cheek by his mother and aunts, or his toothy grin as he playfully tells his grandfather, who had just completely missed shooting a field rat, that the rat was limping as it walked away.
Bill's world began changing one day while he fights an imaginary battle in his back yard. He knows this because "all the Sunday-morning lawn mowers stopped." Churchill declares war by radio and the fathers are soon off to the front, leaving London to the women and children. And although he is sad when his father goes away in uniform, there are certain consolations, such as the nightly German air raids that leave real pieces of shrapnel in the garden - some of them still hot from explosions, and all of them very collectible. For boy-crazy girls and little boys, war was a theme park full of handsome soldiers and skies full of dogfights.
Well, the War does come but it still leaves the children that necessary half a chance. This is was with a sense of wonder. After each bombing the children joyfully run around to pick up souvenirs like shrapnel and shells. Even the adults stare with childlike wonder as an errant barrage balloon, almost as big as a house, floats solemnly through the neighborhood, capriciously damaging a chimney here or a roof there. Or when a handsome young German flier falls from the sky, landing before a gathering of curious, slightly embarrassed Brits. And in this world of the inanimate balloon seeming like a mischievous floating monster, we see some of what could have inspired Boorman's love of fantasy.
For a young boy, this time in history was more of an adventure, a total upheaval of order, restrictions, and discipline. And the joy when Hitler blows up your school, "Thank you, Adolf!"
From Bill's perspective, toy soldiers are the only casualties of war (they melt in a fire) and neighborhood bullies the only clear and present danger. Blimps float overhead like big balloons and schoolchildren collect shrapnel souvenirs. The rubble makes the perfect playground and the air raids mean a chance to skip school.
Billy's father, has left his son with two things: a houseful of women and a tricky bowling move for cricket games called a "googlie" -- not the most comforting legacy for a world war. But Billy valiantly abides the women who, it seems to him, either fall in love, make catty comments or just cry. And he saves the googlie for the proper time, meanwhile foraging daily in the rubble for pieces of shrapnel. While the girls gush, Billy, man of the house, listens to the bombs.
While ferreting about and joining a new gang (he's initiated into it by learning new swear words) which rummages inside the ruins of bombed houses, smashing already broken windows and furniture, he'll also witness teen-age sex, kiddie gang-power dynamics and death. Billy's preeminence over other boys surfaces however, when he and other boys line up to look in the panties of a girl who exchanges the favor for looted jewelry but then unlike the other boys, he refuses to look. And later, he'll find himself defending hearth and home from the same gang of boys.
"Hope and Glory" is a child's-eye view of the home front, though we see what is happening with the understanding of an adult. Nonetheless, the characterizations of the adults is just as rich as that of the children. The entire film is a three-dimensional portrait of Billy's family, and each character's screentime is used to the fullest. Billy's mother Grace, his father Clive, his three aunts, his Grandma, and grandfather George are all fully developed human characters, and there is not a single bad performance among the actors who portray them.
Wartime is always a time, on the domestic front, of personal upheaval. There is a quiet, touching subplot in "Hope and Glory" about a choice Grace Rohan (Sarah Miles), the mother, made when she got married. She married out of common sense, not out of love, and although she is still best friends with the man she loved, she is faithful to her absent husband. This situation leads to one of the film's best scenes, when her daughter Dawn, reveals that she is pregnant but confesses her love for a Canadian airman, who will later, only be whisked off by military police for being AWOL. The mother tells her daughter she must be true to her heart and follow love wherever it leads, and we know that is exactly what she did not do.
Bully as the tarty, willful Dawn draws mascara seams on her stockingless legs and pants after the Canadian soldier. "I'll just die if I can't have him," she declares. "Don't throw away love," says her mother. "Who said anything about love?" says Dawn, turning on her heel. The mother and daughter fight and then make up, sobbing, while Bill and Sue look down from the stairs. They're often befuddled by the mysteries of adult behavior, observed beyond the banister. "Don't worry, Sue," he says. "We're not going to be like them when we grow up. We're not like them now."
Nonetheless, in one sequence a prayer voiced under the mother's breath focuses the film and elevates her part from a portrayal of a hysterical mother to a tragic hero. The heroic mother who cuddles the kids in the back-yard bomb shelter, has the movie's most complete part and most complex performance, but veteran actor Ian Bannen is vintage as the irascible grandfather, a traditional blustering Brit parodied to a fare-thee-well. Appalled by encroaching modernism and his four daughters' bad taste in husbands, the gruff curmudgeon glowers at an electrical tower. "I curse you, volt, watt and amp," he declares.
Billy's grandfather George dominates the film's second half, and rightly so because he becomes the most influential person in Billy's life after an ordinary fire (of all things!) burns down Billy's house, forcing the Rohans to move to George's riverside country home far from the turmoil of London. It's something of a pastoral rebirth. And Billy gets to learn fishing and punting -- and to bamboozle Grampa with the googlie.
George and Billy laugh all the way back to the countryside, gleeful at Billy's respite from school. George begins to spend a great deal of time with Billy, teaching him how to row, playing cricket with him, and telling stories. Billy is far more endeared to his grandfather's piqued muttering and mean jokes than his aunts' romanticizing or his sister's tears when her newly found Canadian lover is stationed elsewhere. George and his saucy ways are forgivable, especially since the film portrays him not from any current context but as Billy sees him.
There's not a false performance or a flawed moment in this unexpected and unpredictable movie -- a wry, knee-high look, a momentous crisis taken down in size. It's what other directors must have dreamed of when they made other war movies which all seem to be so predictably shallow in comparison to this super-realistic world where moans from the ruins mean couples in love and a little boy who dreams in newsreels wrinkles his nose at the mush.
"Hope's" plot is simple enough. People duck from bombs; afterward, they duck from more bombs. But the music of it all is the power and glory: Boorman's film is a symphonious sweep over Albion, sounding themes, weaving in new ones, returning to earlier ones . . . and there's never a dull movement.
This film is John Boorman's personal masterpiece, and film historians will no doubt add it to the list of films that achieve near artistic perfection through their subtlety, insight, and multi-layered depth.
For filmgoers, however, it is a sheer joy to see Sebastian Rice Edwards' performance on the screen, with all the humor and intelligence. There is also pathos, tenderness, and lots of other endearing virtues in this movie. Savage insults are completely absent. In their place is a much more gentle and smooth story that depends as much on what is not shown as well as the scenes that are. The nonstop comedic moments tend to make even that sub-satire virtually unnoticeable, and yet it is there for those who wish to see it.
"Hope and Glory" is an enormous success in England, where every frame must have its special memories for British audiences. Through the eyes of the world, it is a more universal film, not so much about war as about memory. When we are young, what happens is not nearly as important as what we think happens. Perhaps that is true even when we are not so young.
"Hope and Glory" is so enjoyable you want it to be a 16-part mini-series. When it's over, you sit staring at the credits, as you would the last page of a good book, wishing for another chapter.