The Inevitability of Conformity
Review of A Merry War (1998) (a/k/a Keep the Aspidistra Flying or Comstock and Rosemary (1997))
Seen with on 29 August 1998 with Peter at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas for $8.75Q
When does it become painfully clear that being middle class is not all that bad? Well, for most people, settling comfortably into the bourgeoisie is not a problem. But Gordon Comstock wants to be a full-time poet, so he quits his job with New Albion Publicity and gets a low-paying job in a bookshop and writes poetry at night at a respectable boarding house nearby. Respectable, since there's an aspidistra in the window, and in his room. He laments that while the greats wrote, "Tiger tiger burning bright" he is writing ad slogans like, "Corner Tables takes his with BOVEX."
As seen in so many other British movies, class distinctions in British society are alive and well here. Here, the delineations are done with a wry wit and with a great love of language. Gordon benefits from having a Fellow Traveller for a friend--who happens to be well-tanned, stinking rich, and able to spend, as an envious Gordon points out, "have sex in the afternoon."
Richard E. Grant, as Gordon, brings a comic sense that gives the movie its entire character. His energy when delivering lines like, "Promise me we'll have sex in the afternoon," and "I've been reduced to thruppence!" (upon discovering his aptly named slim volume of poetry, "Mice," is selling for three pence), is the difference between yet another lavish British costume drama and sheer and utter joy. One of the funniest movies I have seen in a long time, actually, with a good bite.
Grant alternates between disgust and joy, enlivening his forays into fancy restaurants that don't believe he's the host, despite his ability to pay, and Lamberth, a horrible slum he romanticizes as he shows it off to his one-time fiance Rosemary (played by a very pale "straight man" Helena Bonham Carter) while joking with the local working girls.
Basically, Grant's performance overshadows the other actors', but they are all very good. Julian Wadham is the aristocratic Ravelston, who loves the working classes, but from a distance that ensures he doesn't have to smell them. Harriet Walter is the long-suffering sister; Lesley Vickerage the wisecracking, sarcastic lover of Ravelston. Barbara Leigh-Hunt is the stuffy bourgeois landlady, overly concerned with her aspidistra, while Liz Smith as Mrs. Meakin, the landlady in his reduced circumstances, is hilarity itself. That a publicized brawl in a pub ruins his career the "good" bookstore is a comment on what Britain was like at the time, and in many ways, still is. Grant makes the "ruination" far from tragic, but redemptive, cleaning himself by rolling in the mud of the working class and loving every minute of it.
There are a few things that will make you wonder, like, why do these people around him stand by him and believe in him, even when he eschews and insults them? Also, it's the height of the depression. Why is everyone so happy, well-fed, and trouble-free?
It doesn't matter. It's well done and enjoyable. The cinematography is also well done, BOVEX ads going up around both town and countryside, and later, being picked at, are portentious of the inevitable conformity, the certainty of an aspidistra coming into his life one way or another. There is also some lovely original music by Mike Batt. Written by Alan Plater and based on a novel by George Orwell.
Frankly, it's on my Best Ten List of 1998.
More movie reviews by Seth Bookey, with graphics, can be found at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2679/kino.html
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