Marvellous

I came across this movie and after reading a few reviews, I thought it was worth giving it a go. Well, I am glad I did because it has to be one of the best I have seen this year.

The story of a man with learning disabilities who goes through life without a care in the world and gets pretty much all he wishes for by simply asking for it. People who come across him just fall in love with his personality, to the point that they feel blessed to have met him and have him in their lives.

In a world as critical as ours, it's magical to see that a man like Nello can become such an icon. Not only is he a sports personality and a circus celebrity. He is now also a movie star!!

This may well be his first and last movie, but it could not be a better way to start. Or finish.

Marvellous is such a small movie in scope and ambition that it shouldn't really register.

It was made for UK TV and not overly hyped, yet it turns out to be a career defining work for an actor that has already had all manner of praise heaped on him for his role in Infamous and his many franchise movie roles (Potter, Hunger Games and The Muppets.).

Like his contemporary Michael Sheen (Cloughie in The Damned United and David Frost in Frost/Nixon) he is adept at playing performances that impersonate the stars (Truman Capote in Infamous). Only this time the star is not really anyone outside of Stoke has ever heard of.

He plays, Neil (Nello) Baldwin, a small guy with learning difficulties who has no fear of the conventions of life because the fear button in his brain is switched off. The result is an outrageous journey of hope over fear, joy over sadness and opportunity over failure.

A clown. Stoke City's kit manager. University of Keele doer. Crazy jobs each and all. And all brought to life by this amazing man's unique personality.

Three times I wept. It's a joyous movie but has deeply sad moments and is an absolute must see.

Marvellous is a film you could safely recommend to anybody.

It is difficult to envisage what you could not like or gain from watching it. It will take you through every emotion imaginable in the 90 minutes and can justifiably apply a range of genres.

It's is slightly slow in the earlier portion, the chronology goes slightly awry at times but nothing which hinders it and you can near guarantee being enriched through the life of Baldwin and performance of Jones being presented to you.

The only downside is that neither film or actor probably meet any of the award season elligibility criteria.

This film is the true story of Neil Baldwin, a man diagnosed with learning difficulties as a child but one who counts royalty and bishops among his close friends, has connections across the world of English football, was given an honorary degree by Keele University, and worked as kit man for Stoke City. I guess to deliver this film there were many ways that the film could have gone, but it was a very wise decision to make the film very much in the style of Neil himself – gentle, unassuming, self-assured, and totally unthreatening. The story opens with Neil abandoned by his circus employer, although hardly put out by it, he simply walks to a church where he is able to get help – not by charm or force, but just by an apparent lack of awareness of "normal" society.

This continues through the film and we see someone who just put his mind to things, decided he would do something, and did it. It is a story that is very well told by the film because it manages to be uplifting, funny, sad, hopeful, and genuinely warming to watch. It is not that he deserves great awards or knighthoods as some have suggested, but there is certainly something cheering about a life well lived without seemingly any trace of malice, spite or harm in the man's body. This gentle, honest approach extends to my favorite device of the film, which is to integrate the real Baldwin and the real Lou Macari into the film, to have them sit with the actors while the actors are in character; this device works surprisingly well, not only because it lets us see that us Baldwin really does seem to be the person that we are told, but also so that Baldwin can contribute directly his views on the thing we just saw. It sounds like it shouldn't work, but it works tremendously well.

A big part of it working is that Toby Jones is excellent. He is wonderfully human, determined, and very much in keeping with a simple man with determination and no ill-will. To consider what some actors would do with a "learning difficulties" character, Jones makes it a base for his character but never what or who he is playing; I particularly liked him staying in character while sharing the scene with the real Baldwin – it not only showed how well the character was being delivered, but it also doubled up on the warming effect and gave an unusual device of getting inside the character's head at that moment. The supporting cast are all very good, but the film belongs to Jones and Baldwin.

You will have heard many good things about this film, and maybe it is a bit over-hyped, but that is not to say that it isn't really good. It is a gentle, unassuming little film that will surprise you by how much it does and how well it does it – again, just like Baldwin himself.

Marvellous is actually based on a true person. Neil Baldwin lives with his mum, deeply religious and wants to run away to the circus to be a clown and make people happy.

Neil is also a person with mild learning difficulties, his mother is worried how he could cope on his own but Neil never lets setbacks hold him back. He makes friends whether its bishops, Archbishops, politicians or football managers.

After being abandoned by the circus, he becomes a greeter at Keele University, he becomes a kit-man to his beloved Stoke City and befriended by their manager Lou Macari. He even turned up regularly at the Oxbridge boat race standing behind the race referee.

Neil was eventually awarded a honorary degree in 2013 at Keele University. Its a life affirming film with the real Neil Baldwin popping up with Toby Jones who portrays him alongside other real life individuals such as Lou Macari. Its almost a fantasy but you keep getting reminded that this is based on true facts as these real people pop up. When you see Neil having tea with Tony Benn in the House of Commons is because he really did know his son Stephen.

Jones does a good job in getting under the skin of Neil, channelling his optimistic spirit and also the doldrums that he enters when his mother dies. Its moving as well as funny with tinges of sadness.

The film is supposedly a period piece but you are never sure when in the past its based, I guess much of the events took place in the 1970s but Macari became manager for Stoke in the early 1990s and Neil has been an unofficial greeter for Keele University for around 50 years when he got there as a schoolboy.

It surely is an individualistic, rather left field film, well it had to be made that way if they wanted to display Neil's indomitable spirit.