Red Joan (12A.)
Directed by Trevor Nunn.
Directed by Judi Dench, Sophie Cookson, Tom Hughes, Stephen Campbell Moore, Ben Miles and Tereza Srbova. 101 mins.
The snobbish delusion of British culture is that cinema is such an inferior form that any half decent Fearta director can turn his hand to it if he has a month or two to spare; that having successfully herded a flock of RADA graduates through some iambic pentameter on the boards of a West End shed, editing, sound design and cinematography can be picked up in an afternoon. The 21st century has gone some way to knock this out of people's heads but we still have Trevor Nunn ex-RSC and ex-NT given another go behind the camera, making another dull British film of a subject that could have been so much more.
In 2000, granny Dench is arrested and charged with treason for crimes committed by a different person, young Joan played by Cookson. It's a flashback film, following Cookson adventures before, during and after World War II: falling for a dashing young Trot at Oxford, being recruited to the British attempts to make The Bomb, spying for the Russians, having fraught romantic dalliances with married men and dashing young Trots. The film is Inspired rather than Based on a True Story, being taken from a novel, a fictionalised version of the life of Melita Norwood. The subject matter is fascinating and contentious, some of the 20th century's most essential moments which the film shrouds with a discrete layer of grey drabness and polite discretion.
Directed by Trevor Nunn.
Directed by Judi Dench, Sophie Cookson, Tom Hughes, Stephen Campbell Moore, Ben Miles and Tereza Srbova. 101 mins.
The snobbish delusion of British culture is that cinema is such an inferior form that any half decent Fearta director can turn his hand to it if he has a month or two to spare; that having successfully herded a flock of RADA graduates through some iambic pentameter on the boards of a West End shed, editing, sound design and cinematography can be picked up in an afternoon. The 21st century has gone some way to knock this out of people's heads but we still have Trevor Nunn ex-RSC and ex-NT given another go behind the camera, making another dull British film of a subject that could have been so much more.
In 2000, granny Dench is arrested and charged with treason for crimes committed by a different person, young Joan played by Cookson. It's a flashback film, following Cookson adventures before, during and after World War II: falling for a dashing young Trot at Oxford, being recruited to the British attempts to make The Bomb, spying for the Russians, having fraught romantic dalliances with married men and dashing young Trots. The film is Inspired rather than Based on a True Story, being taken from a novel, a fictionalised version of the life of Melita Norwood. The subject matter is fascinating and contentious, some of the 20th century's most essential moments which the film shrouds with a discrete layer of grey drabness and polite discretion.
