OPERATION MINCEMEAT***

 

In 1943 the Allies were desperate to land troops in mainland Europe and open up a second front against the Axis powers, and the most obvious candidate was an amphibious landing in Sicily. The problem is that this was equally obvious to the enemy.  So, British counter-intelligence cooked up a cockamamie scheme to convince Hitler that the invasion would actually take place in Greece. The schemers did this by taking a dead Welsh man and floating him into harbour in Spain, disguised as a drowned Royal Marine Officer complete with locked attache case containing the fake plans. Why Spain? Because it was a technically neutral country filled with agents, double agents and triple agents, where the British felt they could map out the path of the fake intel all the way from Spanish fisherman to Hitler himself.  This operation was dubbed Mincemeat, and in Ben Macintyre's wildly popular non-fiction account of the ruse, he argued that it was the most successful intelligence operation in history. Who can tell? We can for sure say that by allowing the Allies to land on a less well defended beach, Mincemeat saved Allied lives.

This new film adaptation of the story is compelling when it sticks to the espionage plot.  John Madden (SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE) does a good job of telling a complicated story and while it does rather drip with British heritage derring do, it's not as jingoistic as it might have been.  Madden and screenwriter Michelle Ashford manage to add shades of nuance with the casting of Mark Gatiss as the potentially treasonous brother of the naval officer in charge of the deception (played by Colin Firth).  I wish they had explored this subplot further. Rather, they waste their time adding a fictional romantic triangle between Montagu - his nerdy colleague Cholmondely (Matthew MacFadyen - SUCCESSION) and their subordinate Jean Leslie (Kelly Macdonald - BOARDWALK EMPIRE).  I felt this love story was rather tacked on and artificial and simply distracted from the real meat of the story.  It was actually far more interesting to see what was happening in neutral but spy-ridden Spain and I was pleasantly surprised to see the rather frank depiction of how the British attache (Nicholas Rowe) was pleasuring his former handler into taking the bait. 

In the supporting cast I thought Jason Isaacs rather wasted in the role of the British military commander unimpressed by the Mincemeat plan. By contrast Johnny Flynn (EMMA) was having great fun as a young pre-James Bond Ian Fleming. But Penelope Wilton (DOWNTON ABBEY) was the real moral heart of the film as the secretary of the espionage unit.  The sight of her, on the eve of the Sicily landing, praying fervently in the office that the Germans had taken the bait, was genuinely moving and brought home the true stakes of the deception.

OPERATION MINCEMAT has a running time of 128 minutes and is rated PG-13. It is now on release in cinemas and on streaming services.

THE SECOND BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL

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THE SECOND BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL is the inevitable sequel to the surprisingly popular and lucrative British romantic comedy set in a crumbling Indian hotel filled with English residents.  Some had come for a holiday - some because they could make their pensions stretch further.  But all were on an exploration of what it meant to be in love at an old age - what does it mean when your kids leave home and you realise you have nothing in common with your partner? How does it feel when you find yourself redundant from your children's lives?  Is it possible to have a second chance at love or a second career in your sixties and seventies?

THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL

THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL is a movie of questionable taste and worse political judgement.  It's a testament to its charming cast that it manages to slip down rather easily, all the same. 

The basic concept is that a bunch of middle-class English pensioners move to a ramshackle Rajasthani hotel and experience epiphanies. The recent widow (Judi Dench) learns independence; the retired civil servant (Bill Nighy) and his wife (Penelope Wilton) learn that they do not love or even like each other; the two desperate singles (Celia Imrie and Ronald Pickup) learn that are still sexually attractive; the racist (Maggie Smith) learns tolerance; and the gay high court judge (Tom Wilkinson) finds peace. 

The problem with the film is the typical problem that modern England has in viewing its colonial heritage. On the one hand, it simply has to acknowledge the dirt, disease, discrimination and general chaos of modern India. On the other, it is faintly embarrassed of this disapproval given its own guilt regarding the Raj, and still has a deep-seated love of the country whose culture, language and cooking have so influenced the home nations. The result is a depiction of India that is at once patronising and awe-struck.  India is the country of spiritual revelation and ancient wisdom.  But it is also depicted as a country of almost child-like innocents who believe in happy endings, ideally set to a musical number.  This absurd juxtaposition is best summed up in the movie SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE - marketed as a "feelgood movie" despite scenes of child beggars deliberately blinded, capped off with the obligatory song-and-dance number straight after a scene where the hero's brother has shot himself.  

THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL isn't quite as crass as SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE. And indeed, in one storyline, we see a reconciliation between ruler and ruled played out as a reconciliation between two homosexual lovers - one a colonial, one an Indian. That at least shows some self-awareness on the part of the film-makers, although it falls far short of the kind of self-examination seen in the novels of E.M.Forster.  But at the end of the day, this is just another movie in which India is a colourful, exoticised backdrop against which pampered Westerners can gain "self-knowledge".  There's no real concern with what life there is really like. And the self-knowledge is easily gained - in the case of Maggie Smith's character, the personality alteration so swift as to beggar belief. 

Still, as I said, the movie is a surprisingly pleasant watch, mainly because it's cast is top-notch and charming, partly because where the movie is on "home soil" it is actually quite insightful.  In other words, when focusing on the disappointments of old age, the movie actually has interesting things to say about the way in which the middle classes are seeing their pension income eroded - their healthcare costs increase - the shock to discover the welfare state and corporate pension simply aren't enough - the indignity of realising one's sex life might be over - the desperation of knowing that the chances to turn one's life around are limited, if they exist at all.

THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL is on release in the UK and Ireland. It opens on March 15th in Germany; on March 22nd in Australia; Norway, the Netherlands,  New Zealand, Russia, Estonia, Finland, Spain and Sweden; on March 28th in Belgium; on March 20th in Italy and Lithuania; on April 12th in Portugal; on May 4th in India and the USA; on May 9th in France; on May 11th in Brazil; on May 17th in Hong Kong and Singapore; and on May 24th in Argentina.

Early review of PROOF – When formulae fail

You can just see the Weinstein boys and their monkeys at Miramax huddled round an excel file plugging in known variables: Oscar-nominated director (John Madden), check; Oscar-winning actress (Gwyneth Paltrow), check; Oscar-winning actor (Anthony Hopkins), check; cool Sundance-award-winning screenwriter (Rebecca Miller), check; plot point similarity to multi-Oscar winning movie, (“A beautiful mind”), check. With the tried and tested formula for a high-grossing award-winning movie in place, what can go wrong?!

Nearly everything. This is a movie based on a play by David Auburn, and reunites director John Madden and actress Gwyneth Paltrow from their recent success on the West End stage and in “Shakespeare in Love”. Paltrow is Catherine, a Math whiz from Chicago who gives up her own grad-work to care for her mentally-ill father, Robert. Robert, played by Anthony Hopkins (best-known as Hannibal Lecter), was a genius who transformed numerous fields of Mathematics in his youth. When Robert dies, his former student, Hal, played by Jake Gyllenhaal (“Donnie Darko”) discovers a ground-breaking new proof among his papers. The second half of the movie hinges on whether Robert or Catherine wrote it.

First off, there is a lot of stuff that, if not “right”, is “not wrong” with PROOF. The acting, editing, photography, set design etc. are all workman-like and the script is funny in unexpected places and touching where it should be. Better still, there is not that obvious tugging of the heart strings that you get with all sentimental Ron Howard movies, notably “A beautiful mind” and “Cinderella Man”.

But I found it very had to care either way who wrote the proof, or to empathise with Catherine’s fear that she, too, is going mad. I think the problem is one of authenticity. In films like “A beautiful mind” and Hustle and Flow it is essential that we believe that the protagonist could have authored the product around which the plot turns, and that we believe that the product is of sufficiently high quality to warrant the hoop-la. So, in “A beautiful mind” we have a nice little explanation of, at a very simple level, Nash equilibria, and we see their importance to a variety of different fields. In a very different film, Hustle and Flow, we hear D-Jay write and perform rap songs and these songs are really really good. We believe that he could have a career as a recording artist. The problem here is that we do not really buy into the idea that either Hopkins or Paltrow are gifted mathematicians, or have a sense of Hopkins greatness. And without that, it all seems like so much shouting about not much in particular.

PROOF was released in September in the US and opens on 24th February 2006 in the UK.