kelvin@ut-sally.UUCP (Kelvin Thompson) (06/09/85)
_Return_of_the_Soldier_
by Kelvin Thompson
_Return_of_the_Soldier_ is a bad, boring movie. It is one of those
insufferable, stuffy British dramas, where a lot of aristocrats stand
around sipping brandy and whining about how unhappy they are. The actors
read their lines well enough, but who really cares?
The movie concerns a World War I aristocrat/soldier, Alan Bates
(_An_Unmarried_Woman_, _The_Shout_), who returns from the trenches
physically intact, but with twenty years missing from his memory. He
does not remember his wife, Julie Christie (_Demon_Seed_), and retains
only dim, childhood impressions of his cousin, Ann-Margaret (_Magic_,
_The_Cheap_Detective_), who has been living in their house for several
years. The soldier does, however, remember an old flame, Glenda Jackson
(_Hopscotch_, _Stevie_), and tries to rekindle their summer romance of
twenty years before.
Given this premise, the story proceeds much as one might expect. The
wife is upset that her husband has lost interest in her for a lower-class
gold digger. The cousin is upset that her childhood soul-mate is off his
rocker. The old flame is upset because she is torn between her dull but
loving working-class husband and the dashing Bates. Bates himself is
mostly having a grand time being a kid again, but he too manages to be
upset that everybody else is upset.
Ultimately, though, it is hard to take all of this knashing of teeth and
wringing of hands very seriously. These people live in an incredibly
sumptuous environment, and really have very little to complain about.
They have more money than they know how to spend, more rooms in their
mansions than they can possibly live in, chefs to fix their gourmet
meals, maids to clean up after them, chauffers to drive them, gardners to
keep their Rhode-Island-sized lawns neatly manicured. And they don't
have to do one whit of work to enjoy this kind of luxury.
What's worse, the movie goes right along with this kind of life,
condoning it at every turn. The producers seem to deliberately bypass
every opportunity to point out that the soft, easy life is a profound
flaw in the British system, a flaw that has caused them to suffer through
two devastating world wars and their current economic crisis.
The makers of _Return_of_the_Soldier_ would have done much better to have
made a movie about decent, ordinary people that put in an honest day's
work. For example, a British version of _Blue_Collar_, _The_Deer_Hunter_,
or even last fall's Farm-Woman trilogy would have better suited the
tastes of ordinary viewers, viewers who prefer movies about contributing
members of society and their *real* hardships.iltis@ucsbcsl.UUCP ( ) (06/12/85)
Here Here. I haven't seen Return of the Soldier, because I assumed it would be exactly the sort of movie this review indicates it to be. However, I don't think that the problem with this film is that the central characters are wealthy,aristocratic Englishmen. Rather, the problem might lie with the utter pretentiousness of this kind of movie, and the arrogant demeanour of the actors (Glenda Jackson, ughhh! if you think this movie sounds bad, watch for "The Romantic Englishwoman") There is nothing inherently bad about the plot or theme of this film, as a matter of fact, it sounds like a ripoff of "Random Harvest" with Ronald Coleman and Greer Garson, which also concerned a soldier returning from World War I with "shell shock" and amnesia. The plot of "Random Harvest" was certainly not as "sophisticated" as that of return of the soldier, but with Ronald Coleman in the leading role, who cares. The problem with "Return" lies not with an unworthy theme or unsympathetic characters, but probably with a director who's attended film school and actors who've been on the Merv Griffin show too often. -- All opinions expressed here are my own and not necessarily those of my employer Ronald A. Iltis UCSB Dept. ECE
jpexg@mit-hermes.ARPA (John Purbrick) (06/14/85)
> ... > I recommend _The_Return_of_the_Soldier_ as long as you are willing to watch > a movie which is not based on action but works on a more emotional level. > -- Mike Kilian Kudos and plaudits to Mike Kilian. He's right about _The Return_--the whole point of the movie was the happiness to be found living in the past rather than the present, and the finale was when "the soldier's" wife asked his cousin how he looked after being reminded of his true situation, as he marched back across the lawn to the house: "Every inch a soldier". He was going to go back to the war grieving all over again about his dead son, having just aged 20 years and having to leave the woman he really loved for his snobbish wife, because as "a soldier" that was his duty. But the strong implication is that he would no longer care whether he lived or died, and that the gunshot at the end might as easily be fired by him as by the Germans. John Purbrick jpexg@mit-hermes.ARPA {...decvax!genrad! ...allegra!mit-vax!} mit-eddie!mit-hermes!jpexg