World Famous Comics: Deborah Warner The Last September
Deborah Warner The Last September
Starring: Michael Gambon, Tom Hickey, Keeley Hawes, David Tennant, Richard Roxburgh Directed By: Deborah Warner Average Rating: Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Binding: DVD Format: Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC Label: Lions Gate Number of Items: 1 Region Code: 1 Release Date: September 12, 2000 Running Time: 103 minutes Theatrical Release Date: April 28, 2000
Amazon.com: The Last September opens with a title card portentously announcing that what we are about to see is "the end of a world." Not, it turns out, too great an overstatement. In 1920 Ireland, a wealthy group of Anglo-Irish, the English-descended "tribe" who historically had overseen the country on behalf of its colonial rulers, seat ensconced in their luxurious estate. Just down the road, throughout small towns and villages, the British army is arrogantly terrorizing storeowners, and isolated IRA factions are responding by killing the occasional soldier. But at Sir Richard Naylor's palatial residence no such troubles need interfere. There the daily routine is still built around tennis matches, picnic parties, nature walks, and evenings spent on the lawn watching the stars. Young Lois (Keeley Hawes), niece of Sir Richard (Michael Gambon) and his wife (Maggie Smith), has lived there her entire life and has recently caught the fancy of a sweetly earnest military captain. But when a childhood friend of hers--in hiding after his murder of an army sergeant--takes refuge in a nearby abandoned mill, the thrill of danger and daring, of finally something different after all those maddeningly pleasant years, leads her down a different path. While The Last September is sometimes overly pretty in the British fashion, it benefits enormously from its excellent cast and novelist John Banville's smart, efficient script, which is alert to the nuances of conversations in which the most horrible threats are made and fears confided just below the polite chatter. --Bruce Reid
The Ascendancy descends Although the British have famously enjoyed an eight-hundred year presence in Ireland, in the early twentieth century the feudal British-Irish lost land, home and position as the wave proclaiming the Republic of Ireland swept over and under them. Elizabeth Bowen's 1928 novel profiling the demise of Ireland's Ascendancy, caught the attention of producer Neil Jordan, director Deborah Warner and Fiona Shaw, who plays Marda Norton in the film The Last September. First released in Ireland in early 1999, the movie is rarely found on rental shelves, nine years later. Along with Ms. Shaw, the stellar cast includes England's Maggie Smith (Lady Naylor), Keeley Hawes (Lois Farquar), Michael Gambon (Sir Richard Naylor), Jane Birkin (Francie Montmorency), and Lambert Wilson (Hugo Montmorency).
Guesting at the Naylor's Cork home of Danielstown is a proper stiff-upper lip crowd who act British, but claim to be Irish. They seem oblivious to the mercurial republican violence swirling in the background. An IRA man kills a Black and Tan with barely a raised eyebrow from the Naylors and houseguests, one of whom is niece Lois, marvelously played by Hawes. The explosive violence smoldering in the IRA killer, played by Gary Lydon, arouses her and she initiates a tryst with him. "Oh, it was you that killed the Black and Tan, wasn't it?" she coyly inquires. A tragic British soldier (David Tennant) fawns over Lois and she encourages his entreaties by not discouraging them. When told by Lady Myra (Maggie Smith) that Lois will never be his, the soldier inquires why not. She replies, "You don't have any money, do you?"
Marda Norton (Fiona Shaw) dishes up considerable empathy for Lois's burgeoning sexuality and independence. "You so remind me of myself when I was young," she muses. Marda is camped at the Naylors Big House to find out if the dormant flame between her and the married Hugo Montmorency might be rekindled before she accepts a second-best marriage proposal. A "vamp" she calls herself.
The Last September remains fairly true to Bowen's work, but the novel's sense of impending doom gets somewhat lost in the film. Give cinematographer Slawomir Idziak high marks for fine framing of the Irish countryside.
This is the end, my beautiful friend, this is the end, my only friend This is a bit of a gem really if you are familiar with the British class system and have a modicum of knowledge of the struggles engulfing Britain around the turn of the twentieth century. In the film, the concern is primarily for the struggle for Irish independence but there are unspoken undertones of the struggles of women.
At first blush this is Doctor Who meets Harry Potter as the main players come on the scene. Seriously though, it is hard towatch this for a while given the proximity of the stars of the movie similar to that of the Potter movies. A bit of a distraction.
Maggie Smith has made this sort of role her own and in this I am strongly reminded of her portrayal in Private Function, a film which has many parallels here.
It is easy to mistake the setting for rural England, which to me is a deliberate perspective of the Director. There is a powerful impetus to assume that the central charcters are, in fact, English, but as the plot unfolds, the underlying sypathies are exposed as an identity, and a greater connection to the historical roots.
Of course, the romance involving an English officer (and thus gentleman) in direct contrast to the Fenian freedom fighter (Irish gentry) is very symbolic. The traditional roles are inverted and twisted but eventually, the officer is killed by his republican rival metaphorically representing the separation of the two lands and the division of the heart of the object of their affection.
The problem is, appreciation of the full scope of the film is limited to those who have read the book and who have a different perception of the story and those who have some rudimentary knowledge of history, politics and class. That is not to say that the regular viewer is left completely in the dark, but merely, that the richness of colour and tone is lost to that person.
For that reason I can only countenance four stars.
The end of something The fine stage director Deborah Warner chose for her first (and so far only) major film to adapt Elizabeth Bowen's brilliant 1929 novel THE LAST SEPTEMBER, an account of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy frittering away their time with tennis parties and flirtations just after the First World War while the Irish Revolutionary War flared around them. Warner assembled a magnificent cast, with Michael Gambon and Maggie Smith as the assured and controlling Sir Richard and Lady Myra Naylor, the charming Keely Hawes as their lovely ward Lois, David Tennant as her awkward smitten middle-class suitor Gerald (an officer in the Britsh police army during the Irish Revolution) and Jane Birkin doing splendid work as the silly insecure Francie. And the film looks gorgeous, with its beautiful-shabby country house interiors in pinks and browns contrasting with the rich leafy greens of the countryside. But the screenwriter, the novelist John Banville, seems to have thought that Bowen's ironic portrait of emotional violence stifled inside the country manners of the landed gentry (mirroring the political violence outside, only occasionally mentioned in the novel) would not be enough to sustain audiences' interests, and he adds a new wrinkle to Bowen's original scenario of Lois's relationship with Gerald: now Lois is, unbelievably, the carnal partner of the local revolutionary outlaw Gerald hunts. The melodramatic result jars tremendously with Bowen's infinitely subtler vision. Before the revolutionary (Gary Lydon) appears, the film is terrific, like a much more finely nuanced version of THE SHOOTING PARTY; afterwards everything goes astray. With two fine actors vividly miscast: the gifted Fiona Shaw, Warner's frequent artistic collaborator, radiant and warm but much too old to play Marda Nolan; and the magnetic Richard Roxburgh using a very distracting accent in a Byronic turn as Captain Daventry.
A beautiful period piece "The Last September" is beautiful period piece, set in Ireland after the Revolution when the "Anglo-Irish"--or Brits--were hanging on for dear life to the nostalgia of which they were such a part. As "Lois," Keeley Hawes is lovely in the lead; and she is as refreshing and tantalizing as an Irish spring.
Of course, Maggie Smith is her Academy Award-winning self, as terrific in this film as she is in every other movie that she chooses to be a part of. She is a gift, a worldwide treasure. Michael Gambon is brilliant as always too, and he shines brightly in this film.
Exquisitely photographed by Slawomir Idziak, with splendid acting that puts American acting to shame, it is a film to remember. A cinemagraphic work of art, unlike the tripe that Hollywood puts out. In the final analysis, Keeley Hawes controls this film and makes it. What a very lovely woman and seemingly special human being.
Fiona Shaw is splendid as "Marda." And last but not least, Deborah Warner is superb in her directorial debut in films; however, regrettably, it appears that she has not made another film since this one. Its domestic gross was $478,053, which may have been a factor, although it certainly deserved better than this.
"There are occasions when it is better to be ignorant." Atmospheric and beautifully photographed, The Last September, based on the 1929 novel by Elizabeth Bowen, takes place in Cork in 1920, at the beginning of the Irish Rebellion. Lord Richard Naylor (Michael Gambon) and his wife Myra (Maggie Smith), are the Anglo-Irish owners of a large estate which Richard's family has owned for generations. Richard's niece, Lois Farquar, age nineteen, lives with them, a bored young woman without goals, impatient to fall in love. With a stream of visitors coming to the estate, a British army unit is garrisoned nearby for protection, and the soldiers welcome the opportunity to participate in the aristocrats' garden parties and tennis matches.
Closing their eyes to the eventualities, the Naylors adhere to the idea that "It would be a great pity to have a war. There's been enough unpleasantness already." Gradually the "unpleasantness" draws closer, involving Lois, some of her childhood friends from the Irish community, and a British soldier who is courting her.
Slawomir Idziak's cinematography in this 1999 film creates a lush picture of the countryside and a mood of palpable tension. His close-ups of characters whose emotions are reflected in their faces, rather than by their words, emphasize the lack of communication between Irish and landlord, while whirling dancers and tennis players emphasize their deliberate naivete and frantic activity. Filming between cracks in a wall and through a spyglass and peekholes in the floor, Idziak's scenes are both revelatory and visually intriguing.
The film, directed by Deborah Warner, lacks warmth and a central focus, however. Though Lois (Keeley Hawes) is the main character, she is lost in the peripheral action and subplots involving aristocratic houseguests, a pallid lover, and a group of rebels whose activities are not always clear. The screenplay, written by novelist John Banville, never famous for natural dialogue, features remote characters who exclude the viewer from their thoughts.
Michael Gambon, as Sir Richard conveys some awareness of what is happening, but he seems incompatible with Myra (Maggie Smith), who plays her usual aristocratic role with panache. David Tennant, as Gerald Colthurst, Lois's suitor, so much resembles a deer in the headlights that is it difficult to imagine him either as an army captain or as Lois's suitor, while Gary Lydon, as the Irish rebel to whom Lois is supposedly attracted, is portrayed as a violent criminal with few redeeming qualities.
Those familiar with Bowen's novel will enjoy seeing rural Cork through Idziak's stunning photography. Those unfamiliar with the period, however, may have difficulty figuring out what is going on and why. (3.5 stars) Mary Whipple
Anything Goes Trivia
Last Kiss
Megaton Man
Trevor
