Reviewing Movies

When newly graduated Nick Guest arrives at the opulent London home of his Dorm mate Ted he commits a faux pas that betrays his Middle Class sensibilities in mistaking the housekeeper for his hostess. This is just the beginning of a series of social gaffs around which Nick must navigate; nimbleness of mind being no substitute for an ingrained sense of noblesse oblige. On another occasion that same housekeeper reacts when Nick tries to clear the table after lunch with, “What else would I do?” When a fellow dinner guest confidentially advises him that he should never speculate with more than 12% of his capital he is forced to admit that he doesn’t have any.

Although Nick has been put up in the garret in what were obviously meant to be servants’ quarters he is accepted into this upper crust home as a privileged guest. He gets to use the locked private gardens; rub shoulders with knights, lords, and ladies; and attend lavish parties. Evening clothes are de rigor. This is the Mid-Nineteen Eighties and openly gay Nick is learning about the ‘marriages of convenience’ of his new upper crust liaisons. Even members of the aristocracy die of Aids, suffer from manic depression, abuse cocaine, and get drunk.

This is a BBC series based upon the Booker Prize winning novel by Alan Hollinghurst. It would appear that “the love that dare not speak its name” is now considered appropriate fare for public television though in polite society such liaisons are still conducted in the closet. This mini-series is accorded the full BBC quality treatment. Although we are made vaguely aware of the nastiness that goes on in the background for the most part we are treated to the good life and everything glows with a golden patina until Nick’s world comes crashing down.

Heartland is a quality CBC production shot on a horse farm in the foothills of Alberta. Killing off the principal character in the first episode of a series is a novel approach to scripting but the writers seem to make it work for them. Shot in Kananaskis Country on a family farm that has passed through six generations of the same family Heartland features grampa Jack and his two daughters, a juvenile delinquent hired hand Ty, and a First Nations Vet Scott. Scott it seems is a former guest who was given a leg up by the deceased mother Marion. Rescuing wayward people and physically and psychologically damaged horses seems to be a theme here. Making it pay is quite another matter though and having a large competitive neigbour next door doesn’t help. Matriarchal families seem to be another theme that runs through the series. Men seem to get busted up on the rodeo circuit, divorced, or otherwise excluded from the picture.

Horses are high-strung animals subject to all sorts of maladies whose lineage is probably not aided by over-breeding. Although veterinary science has come a long way in treating these conditions there is a long tradition of folk medicine, native healers, and so-called horse whisperers who succeed where science fails. The premise of Heartland is that fifteen-year-old Amy has inherited her Mother’s innate gift for treating damaged horses and learned the tricks of the trade by osmosis from watching her Mother work. The supporting cast of characters have well-developed characterizations and the supplementary website and blog are not shy about acknowledging that the horses are part of the cast. As the Native-Canadian Vet, Nathaniel Arcand is the only name actor in the cast.

[Be Ware; There be Spoilers here.]

As with the ash of the title there are no black and whites in this movie. No one is innocent here. Not the self-indulgent younger brother who committed a triple murder at eighteen because he thought he was protecting his older brother. Not the priest with a past who helped fake his death and escape from the neighbourhood. Certainly not Whitey the Irish hood who runs this section of Hell’s Kitchen and was complicit in the cover-up. And not Francis the older brother who worked with his father as Whitey’s enforcer.

The uneasy equilibrium of the neighbourhood is upset when the younger brother Sean decides he must return to his old haunts and commits the indiscretion of appearing in public. He wants to re-establish a relationship with a wife who has thought him dead for three years and had intercourse with his older brother in spite of the fact that she has a son. As with so many Irish tales there can be no happy endings here. Yes, the younger brother appears to make a getaway with his wife and the child he didn’t know he had; but at the cost of his Brother’s life. Throughout the music casts a pall of foreboding on a movie that proceeds inexorably to its ultimate end. Nothing happens quickly here. Ed Burns who wrote and directed this opus finally gets to script the hit that ends his life.

In concert with the Ash Wednesday theme the closing music is a free translation of the Irish Hymn, Be Thou My Vision, performed in a minor key.