MOVIE REVIEW: Glorious 39 **** (From News Shopper)

MOVIE REVIEW: Glorious 39 ****

10:54am Friday 20th November 2009

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IT IS the summer of 1939 and Britain is on the brink of war.

But a clique of government aristocrats, fearful of the perceived military strength of Germany, is determined to make a deal with Hitler and avoid losing their power, wealth and privileged way of life.

Stephen Poliakoff’s Glorious 39 is a political conspiracy thriller with a touch of noir, which tells the story of the Keyes family, a wealthy upper class dynasty living a life of luxury at their Norfolk countryside mansion.

We follow the eldest daughter Anne (Romola Garai) as she unravels the sinister and devastating truth behind the seemingly innocent and golden exterior of her adopted family.

Her father Alexander is an influential Tory MP (Bill Nighy) and her brother Ralph (Eddie Redmayne) works at the Foreign Office.

Anne’s discoveries reveal a plot to keep Britain out of the war with murderous consequences and most terrifying of all, the complicity of those she loves and trusts.

But her determination to expose the horror she uncovers puts her own life at risk.

The film bears the hallmarks of Hitchcock, deftly shooting from picnic moments of rural idyllic England to grisly scenes of murder, superbly capturing the dark underbelly of pre-war British politics.

After a placid build up the film takes on a frenetic pace as war breaks and Anne’s life is turned upside down.

Her confusion as to what is real is shared by the audience, but any misunderstanding is fleeting as she soon realises the gulf between herself and the family she thought she knew and loved.

This is no more pronounced than in a desperate final scene where she stands separated from her family staring at them through the iron bars of a fence.

While the story is fictional, Glorious 39 is firmly rooted in historical fact.

It gives a shocking insight into a largely unreported murky world of secret service operatives deploying underhand and criminal methods to quell the Churchill-led opposition to appeasement.

There are poignant vignettes of life in London as war breaks out and families prepare for evacuation, with many having to put their pets down.

History tends to remember the heroics of Churchill for standing up to the evils of Nazism.

But Glorious 39 rightfully reminds audiences of a terror lurking closer to home at the heart of Westminster and how perilously powerful the appeasement lobby was.

As Poliakoff’s film shows, the weeks leading up to war were anything but glorious, with - in the words of the director - the survival of democracy hanging by a thread.

Glorious 39 (12A) is out now.

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