The Journey (12A.)
Directed by Nick Hamm.
Starring Timothy Spall, Colm Meaney, Freddie Highmore, Toby Stephens and John Hurt. 92 mins
In The Journey, the Northern Ireland peace process gets the Peter Morgan treatment, but not from Peter Morgan. Over the last two decades, one way we have used to deal with recent history is by having script writer Morgan sort it into a nice little, easily digested two hander: Blair vs Brown (The Deal), Blair vs The Queen (The Queen), Blair vs Clinton (The Special Relationship.) It doesn't have to bear that much relationship to the truth (the great rivalry between James Hunt and Nikki Lauda in Rush, was largely invented), it just has to make a good screenplay. So here we have fate of the peace process being decided during a car ride shared by bickering odd couple Martin McGuiness (Meaney) and the Reverend Ian Paisley (Spall.) It's a sectarian Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
When he lost loads of weight I imagine Spall might have hoped that his days of playing evil grotesques would be behind him. Instead he was cast as Holocaust denier David Irving (Denial) and Paisley. The script offers a well rounded portrait of the Reverend Ian, as a caricature bigot. That may seem reasonable enough, but opposite him the script presents McGuinness as a cheery, affable chap always ready with a little quip, so he is. While Spall has clearly had to submit to various prosthetics to get the look and done hours of research to get the voice, Meaney comes as himself. The narrative is framed as him desperately trying to persuade Paisley to agree to the deal, a decent everyday man trying to reason with a monster who wont even let him borrow his mobile.
The film gets its excuses in early with a disclaimer that this journey is “imagined;” movie speak for made up. If you're going to imagine stuff, at least stick to your story. The set up is that Paisley, though the two parties have arrived at a remote Scottish hotel for all important peace talks, has to fly back to Belfast for his golden wedding anniversary. Bad weather has closed Glasgow airport so Blair (Stephens, a grinning caricature of Michael Sheen's grinning caricature) organises for a driver to take him to catch a private plane from Edinburgh, which McGuinness insists on a sharing as a chance to break down the barriers. But having set up a situation where time is of the essence, because the weather is closing in, (stubbornly, the weather refused to stay bad for the filmmakers) the car is allowed to dawdle along and various detours are thrown in.
Morgan is slick enough to make this kind of contrivance work, to get you to fall for his pick up lines even though you know they are just pick up lines, but the script by Colin Bateman is overly manipulative and too obvious in the way it tries to shoehorn in information. Paisley wants McGuinness to acknowledge the blood on his hands, which seems unfair in a film too superficial and slight to appreciate that fields of the dead are propping up its larky jaunts.
Directed by Nick Hamm.
Starring Timothy Spall, Colm Meaney, Freddie Highmore, Toby Stephens and John Hurt. 92 mins
In The Journey, the Northern Ireland peace process gets the Peter Morgan treatment, but not from Peter Morgan. Over the last two decades, one way we have used to deal with recent history is by having script writer Morgan sort it into a nice little, easily digested two hander: Blair vs Brown (The Deal), Blair vs The Queen (The Queen), Blair vs Clinton (The Special Relationship.) It doesn't have to bear that much relationship to the truth (the great rivalry between James Hunt and Nikki Lauda in Rush, was largely invented), it just has to make a good screenplay. So here we have fate of the peace process being decided during a car ride shared by bickering odd couple Martin McGuiness (Meaney) and the Reverend Ian Paisley (Spall.) It's a sectarian Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
When he lost loads of weight I imagine Spall might have hoped that his days of playing evil grotesques would be behind him. Instead he was cast as Holocaust denier David Irving (Denial) and Paisley. The script offers a well rounded portrait of the Reverend Ian, as a caricature bigot. That may seem reasonable enough, but opposite him the script presents McGuinness as a cheery, affable chap always ready with a little quip, so he is. While Spall has clearly had to submit to various prosthetics to get the look and done hours of research to get the voice, Meaney comes as himself. The narrative is framed as him desperately trying to persuade Paisley to agree to the deal, a decent everyday man trying to reason with a monster who wont even let him borrow his mobile.
The film gets its excuses in early with a disclaimer that this journey is “imagined;” movie speak for made up. If you're going to imagine stuff, at least stick to your story. The set up is that Paisley, though the two parties have arrived at a remote Scottish hotel for all important peace talks, has to fly back to Belfast for his golden wedding anniversary. Bad weather has closed Glasgow airport so Blair (Stephens, a grinning caricature of Michael Sheen's grinning caricature) organises for a driver to take him to catch a private plane from Edinburgh, which McGuinness insists on a sharing as a chance to break down the barriers. But having set up a situation where time is of the essence, because the weather is closing in, (stubbornly, the weather refused to stay bad for the filmmakers) the car is allowed to dawdle along and various detours are thrown in.
Morgan is slick enough to make this kind of contrivance work, to get you to fall for his pick up lines even though you know they are just pick up lines, but the script by Colin Bateman is overly manipulative and too obvious in the way it tries to shoehorn in information. Paisley wants McGuinness to acknowledge the blood on his hands, which seems unfair in a film too superficial and slight to appreciate that fields of the dead are propping up its larky jaunts.
