Hope and Glory

#3 in my ranking of John Boorman’s films.

It’s kind of funny how you can read the description of a film, think it sounds completely out of step for a filmmaker’s work, and then actually watch it to discover that it ends up fitting perfectly. A slice of life tale of a small boy in the London suburbs during World War II felt like it was something of an aberration in Boorman’s work that had been filled with tales of myth and journeys into the heart of darkness while combatting the degrading nature of technology on the human soul, but that’s pretty much exactly what he ended up delivering on this reminiscence of his own experiences as a child during the global conflict.

Bill (Sebastian Rice-Edwards) is that boy, and he has a mother, Grace (Sarah Miles), a father, Clive (David Hayman), a younger sister, Molly (Susan Woolridge), and an older sister, Dawn (Sammi Davis). Bill plays in the garden with a toy knight approaching Merlin when the news reaches them over the wireless that Britain and Germany are at war. There’s an expectation that the bombs will start falling on their houses that afternoon, and when they don’t, Bill is disappointed that it takes forever to start. In order to do his patriotic duty, Clive volunteers for service and is soon off to take part in basic training.

The bulk of the film is a portrait of this lower-middle class family’s life as the war steadily takes a toll on them, with the anchor being Bill’s adventures around the neighborhood as it gets blown to bits regularly through the German blitz of London. In between moments hiding under stairs or in the bomb shelter in the back garden, Bill picks through shrapnel on the ground outside his house on the way to school, looking for choice bits, passing over the little signs of normal life discarded along the street as he goes. There are high moments of uniquely warlike entertainment like the raising of a barrage balloon or Dawn getting to know a Canadian solider, Bruce (Jean-Marc Barr) while falling in love over the course of a couple of weeks, finding their time for love in her bedroom without her mother’s knowledge or out among the increasing wreckage of the neighborhood.

It’s among the small gang of boys that Bill becomes part of that it becomes obvious that this is a John Boorman film, though and through. The boys, despite their stolid, English, middle-class upbringing turn increasingly feral as the blitz goes on. In fact, Bill’s initiation to the ground involves the other boys holding him in front of a reclaimed, unfired round that they use a hammer and nail to fire, when he’s out of the way, of course, ending with cheers from the boys as they move on from that to another activity in their unmanaged play. They also collect jewelry and other precious things from blown out houses that they end up using to pay a young girl to give them a quick peep show. What Boorman is showing is what he’s been showing throughout his years of filmmaking: the exposing of human nature in the absence of civilization. From Ed becoming a killer in Deliverance to England falling into privation and war in Excalibur to even Father Lamont finding Pazuzu in Exorcist II: The Heretic, Boorman is fascinated by the thin veneer of civilization breaking down and humanity being brought to a more natural state. He sometimes can’t decides if it’s a good thing (like in The Emerald Forest), but he’s mostly a pessimist in general about human nature, especially when you consider the fact that he’s often pointing at technology as the thing that’s going to tear us all apart (the war being the obvious manifestation of that here, of course).

The war also reveals some things for little Bill as it’s a coming of age story for him. Mostly, he discovers sex in the way that a nine-year-old boy can by peeping through keyholes at Dawn and Bruce or wandering around the clothing exchange with his mother and happening upon the slightly older girls in their underthings. At the same time, Grace is discovering that her marriage to Clive is emptier than she ever wanted to admit. She had been in love with Clive’s brother, Mac (Derrick O’Connor), before Clive convinced her to marry him, and in Clive’s absence, as he gets denied officer training and becomes a clerk for the army, she reconnects with Mac. There is no affair, but this yearning between them, for their regrets in life that the war is laying bare, is surprisingly tender. However, before anything can happen, a fire unrelated to the bombing hollows out their house, forcing them to go to Grace’s father’s house. Grandpa George (Ian Bannen) is, perhaps, the main joy of the film, and, if I had to guess, I’d say he’s the character that Boorman most identified with besides Bill.

George lives in the country on a small river in a pastoral ideal. He welcomes the family with open arms, but he’s an opinionated old man who had four daughters, no sons, and now has a small boy to help raise and impart his acquired wisdom. That wisdom is anti-modernity and an embrace of nature away from the cities that seems to match Boorman perfectly, making me think that Boorman saw George as a composite character between his own real grandfather and himself.

Hope and Glory is an entertaining look at a sliver of the English homefront with a strong thematic focus tied to a coming of age story told with clarity, wit, and humor. It reminds me of both Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun and Wyler’s Mrs. Miniver, though it seems to have more emotional truth as a whole than Wyler’s admirable, contemporary effort. It’s also a testament to how a distinct storyteller can make any story his own, bending it to his thematic obsessions. That it’s entertaining is all the better.

Rating: 3.5/4