{"id":12262,"date":"2015-09-26T14:03:15","date_gmt":"2015-09-26T18:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=12262"},"modified":"2015-09-26T14:03:15","modified_gmt":"2015-09-26T18:03:15","slug":"br-month-in-the-country-a-1987","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=12262","title":{"rendered":"BR: Month in the Country, A (1987)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"MonthInTheCountry_BR\"<\/a>Film<\/strong>: Very Good<\/p>\n

Transfer<\/strong>: \u00a0Very Good<\/p>\n

Extras<\/strong>: Very Good<\/p>\n

Label:\u00a0<\/strong> Twilight Time<\/p>\n

Region:<\/strong>\u00a0All<\/p>\n

Released:<\/strong>\u00a0 July 14, 2015<\/p>\n

Genre:<\/strong>\u00a0 Drama<\/p>\n

Synopsis:<\/strong>\u00a0A WWI vet travels to a small town to restore a hidden painting, unearthing some secrets and discovering a fellow war vet with similar deep-rooted PSD.<\/p>\n

Special Features:<\/strong>\u00a0 Audio commentary by film historian Julie Kirgo and producer Nick redman \/ Isolated Mono Music & Effects Track \/ 8-page colour booklet with liner notes by film historian Julie Kirgo \/ Original Theatrical Trailer \/ Limited to 3000 copies \/ Available exclusively from Screen Archives Entertainment<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Review:<\/strong><\/p>\n

After the success of Cal<\/strong> (1984), director pat O\u2019Connor shifted to a film version of J.L. Carr\u2019s quiet bromance A Month in the Country<\/strong>, in which two WWI vets strike up a moving friendship and attempt to move on with life in spite of lingering trauma from life in the trenches.<\/p>\n

A ridiculously young (23!) Colin Firth is Birkin, an itinerant restorationist called upon to unearth a painting that may have been covered up in a 14th century small town church. Reverend Keach (Patrick Malahide) wishes Birkin zero success, feeling any art facing the congregation would be a distraction, whereas his lovely wife Alice (Natasha Richardson, fresh from Ken Russell\u2019s Gothic<\/strong>) feels a little different, and seems to enjoy dancing around Birkin\u2019s latent feelings in spite of the latter being wed to a philandering woman back in London.<\/p>\n

Birkin quickly meets James Moon (Kenneth Branagh in his first film role), a fellow vet similarly funded by a generous church donation to find the bones of a figure who may have been buried outside of consecrated walls for mysterious reasons. Where Birkin loathes to be near any holes in the ground and prefers to sleep high up in the belfry, Moon actually sleeps in a trench, finding the ground offers solace as he straddles civilian life after intense trench warfare.<\/p>\n

As typical of small dramas, it\u2019s not the story that really matters but the relationships, and one could regard the character of Alice as a red herring, with the real focus being one man\u2019s attempt to find coping mechanisms in order to do the job he loved in pre-WWI times, and through art, ease away from war trauma to the point where it\u2019s at least manageable.<\/p>\n

Firth has Birkin begin with a stammer \u2013 a portent of his performance in The King\u2019s Speech<\/strong> (2010) \u2013 which dissolves once he nestles himself into his job, and no longer fears Reverend Keach\u2019s supposed efforts to sabotage the gradual exposure and full restoration of an elaborate, story-filled painting.<\/p>\n

Small mysteries like the painting\u2019s creator and the bones sought by Moon are also red herrings designed to draw the characters into each others\u2019 lives, but perhaps in tune with the film\u2019s discrete tone there\u2019s no overt romance, no overt confrontation, no scandalous act, nor a conclusive finale \u2013 it\u2019s a tale where disparate people meet, and for a short time affect in other in minor or negligible ways.<\/p>\n

That peculiar tone is part charming and maddening \u2013 in standard cinema clich\u00e9s, there should be a one illicit union between the married lovers \u2013 but that never happens because it is such an impossibility; the lives within the community are so tight, a terrible scandal would take down more than the starry-eyed, would be lovers.<\/p>\n

Simon Gray\u2019s script is very delicate, and O\u2019Connor seemed intent on creating a vivid yet tempered small English town where the vistas are serene, the colours lush, and much of the illumination is soft and diffused.<\/p>\n

Kenneth MacMillan\u2019s cinematography is very lovely, often bordering on the ideal, yet O\u2019Connor seemed to opt for a very peculiar visual design in which the bulk of the film is soft, as though the church itself bathes anyone inside and on its grounds in a fuzzy light corona. The image seems to sharpen near the end, but it\u2019s still a film where scenes are lit very gently, and colours are slightly on the pastel scale.<\/p>\n

Twilight Time\u2019s Blu-ray features a sharp HD master, but there\u2019s a sense the house that created the transfer overused the DNR, either to reduce grain and bring out sharpness, and \/ or bring out the rich colours from the film print. The results have early shots of Firth looking a little waxy \u2013 his skin is almost baby smooth \u2013 and the scene where Firth meets Richardson is a little odd: when she blocks out the bright sun in the background upon her approach, the graduated descent from light to darkness shows active compression and smoothening. There\u2019s also a peculiar bright hallo around Firth which may have been soft in the print, but looks more like an offset created by too much smoothening of a colour channel.<\/p>\n

The audio mix is fine, with clear dialogue and music, and Howard Blake\u2019s lovely, underrated score is isolated in a separate music and effects track. All of the Film 4 productions released by TT feature isolated M&E \/ music-only mixes, perhaps the only source of enjoying otherwise unreleased rare scores.<\/p>\n

Nick Redman and Julie Kirgo\u2019s running commentary covers most of the film\u2019s production history, its stellar cast, and fine production values which fully immerse the viewer into a post-WWI township and the quiet character conflicts that exist amid verdant natural beauty.<\/p>\n

Firth\u2019s next feature film role would be the innocent in the cult thriller Apartment Zero<\/strong> (1988), whereas Richardson would star in Paul Schrader\u2019s bio-drama Patty Hearst<\/strong> (1988). Although Branagh would appear in a succession of teleplays and mini-series, he\u2019d achieve international acclaim in 1989 for his adaptation of Shakespeare\u2019s Henry V <\/strong>(1989). Pat O\u2019Connor\u2019s subsequent films include the ill-received Stars and Bars<\/strong> (1988) and The January Man<\/strong> (1989).<\/p>\n

TT\u2019s other Film 4 dramas include Neil Jordan\u2019s Angel<\/strong><\/a> (1982), Alan Clarke\u2019s Rita, Sue and Bob Too<\/a><\/strong> (1987), Paul Greengrass\u2019 Resurrected<\/a><\/strong> (1989), and Nick Hornby\u2019s Fever Pitch<\/a><\/strong> (1997).<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a9 2015 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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External References:<\/strong>
\nEditor’s Blog<\/a> — IMDB \u00a0<\/a>— \u00a0Soundtrack Album<\/a>\u00a0— Composer Filmography<\/a>
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\nVendor Search Links:<\/strong>
\nAmazon.ca<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.com<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After the success of Cal (1984), director pat O\u2019Connor shifted to a film version of J.L. Carr\u2019s quiet bromance A Month in the Country, in which two WWI vets strike up a moving friendship and attempt to move on with life in spite of lingering trauma from life in the trenches…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[3958,3258,3959,3957,3955,3956,3954],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-3bM","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12262"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12262"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12271,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12262\/revisions\/12271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}