KEEP THE ASPIDISTRA FLYING (AKA: A MERRY WAR) (director: Robert Bierman; screenwriter: from a George Orwell novel/Alan Plater; cinematographer: Giles Nuttgens; cast:Richard E. Grant (Gordon Comstock), Helena Bonham Carter (Rosemary), Julian Wadham (Ravelston), Lesley Vickerage (Hermoine), Jim Carter (Erskine), Liz Smith (Mrs. Meakin), Harriet Walter (Julia Comstock), 1997-UK)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Much ado is made about aspidistra in this comedy adapted from the semi-autobiographical novel of George Orwell. It's a hardy houseplant, used in the story to connote middle-class London respectability when placed on the windowsill of a flat and in the lowclass Lambeth neighborhood, it is offered to the impoverished bookstore clerk as a sign of affection by his kindly landlady. The plant acts as a metaphor, indicating that the confused young hero of the film can't escape his middle-class destiny. His landlady in his middle-class, immaculate flat, Mrs. Meakin (Liz Smith), is actually the most diverting one in the film, her nose lifts upward in snooty sarcasm, capturing all you have to know about the direction this film is heading, as she reacts to the poet's one night drinking binge that got in the papers and got him fired from his Hampstead bookstore job and kicked out of Mrs. Meakin's flat. The aspidistra's in her place seem cold and hostile to the troubled young poet. They show how stuffy and pretentious life is in a suburban neighborhood, while in a slum the people have nothing to lose, so they are free to speak their mind, and social restrictions are not as tensely kept.
The upper-class are royally seen through the depiction of Ravelston (Wadham), a wealthy publisher, who has the luxury of having sex in the afternoon with his acid-tongued priggish girlfriend (Vickerage) and living a care-free existence in his spacious townhouse. He even considers himself to be a socialist, which is ridiculed by his stodgy mannerisms and snobbish attitude.
There's a point to be made in this 1930s depression satire about money counting for everything, and this point is hammered into every aspect of the story, until it gets to be not only redundant, but outright irritating to hear. The would-be poet Gordon Comstock (Grant), who is unsatisfied with his success and promotion in an adverting firm, where he is writing advertising slogans, impulsively quits his job when he gets a good review in a London newspaper for one one of his poetry books published by his friend Ravelston. He narcissistically dreams of international fame and entry into the poetry world of Auden and T.S. Eliot. His girlfriend and co-worker, Rosemary (Helena Bonham Carter), does the graphic art for his slogans and is happy to be a petitioner of middle-class values, which is what her boyfriend tells her he is rejecting. Her role in the film is to wait for him to come to his senses and join her willingly in matrimony, which he will do after he experiences the harshness of poverty, tires of roaming the streets composing banal poems, and accepts responsibility for making Rosemary pregnant. His boss is Erskine (Jim Carter), who makes money from Gordon's wordsmith skills, therefore is disappointed that he quit, but leaves the job open for him if he wishes to return.
The story quickly makes its point, as valid as it might be in Orwell's novel, here it seems trivial, that people delude themselves into thinking that they are the next Shakespeare and spend a miserable time living in poverty or doing what they shouldn't be doing, when they would be much happier being accepted into the middle-class where they duly belong. It's a fair enough point made, but the story has this nasty habit of being saccharine to a point, where its sugary qualities could be fatal to the viewer's heart. Even the scenes of poverty are sugar-coated, making everything look so awfully nice. The film shows how foolish the young man was in giving up his career work in which he shows an aptitude for, and foolishly chooses something he was not born to do, trying to be a William Blake, who was endowed with a rich poetical imagination, therefore could live joyously in an indigent state in Lambeth and still be creative. Something Gordon can't do. It also, somehow, stretches the point of art and advertisement having much in common, cynically stating there is little difference between how they achieve their ends.
It just became dull watching all the clichés about the classes bantered back and forth, with the picturesque view of Gordon descending into poverty, working in a musty Lambeth bookstore, and the creamy richness of his return to middle-class life when the film ends on a happy note, as he returns to his former place of work to cheers from his colleagues and into the warm embraces of his girlfriend and back into the good graces of his stolid middle-class sister (Harriet), and back to his eager boss who is only too glad to hire him again.
The message I got, as I watched this tepid middle-brow, so-called art film, is that living in poverty can be stifling, and that kind of life is not what makes an artist. What the film had to offer, was nothing more than seeing a few artists names referred to, some inferences that there is a merry war going on between men and women, some mild invectives about class differences, and all of life's battle were condensed to being about money matters. For a movie railing against accepting bourgeoisie values - it instead becomes a movie that ends up glorifying those values. Its final message is that there is no escape from one's destiny.
If one looked hard enough, there can be found some wit in Gordon's portrayal of a likable jerk with artistic ambitions and some charm in his relationship with Rosemary. But this uninspired script cannot find anything relevant to say to make this satire meaningful. In fact, it makes a mockery of Orwell's intentions to sympathize with an artist who is prepared to make his own way in the world...Orwell's "Down and Out in Paris and London" offers a more interesting take he has on being poor, as he worked for a time as a dishwasher and in a Hampstead bookstore as a clerk. You'll get a better feel of what Orwell was trying to satirize reading that book than you will by seeing this film.
REVIEWED ON 12/22/99 GRADE: C-
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
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