Wetherby (1985)

User Rating:

7.1/10   

Director:

David Hare

Writer:

David Hare (writer)

Release Date:

19 July 1985 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Mystery

Plot Keywords:

Street Market | Father Son Relationship | Storytelling | Estate | Bar

Awards:

Nominated for BAFTA Film Award. Another 5 wins

Cast

Vanessa Redgrave	...	Jean Travers
Ian Holm	...	Stanley Pilborough
Judi Dench	...	Marcia Pilborough
Stuart Wilson	...	Mike Langdon
Tim McInnerny	...	John Morgan
Suzanna Hamilton	...	Karen Creasy
Tom Wilkinson	...	Roger Braithwaite
Marjorie Yates	...	Verity Braithwaite
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Katy Behean	...	Young Marcia
Ted Beyer	...	Police Sergeant
Patrick Blackwell	...	Derek
Ian Bleasdale	...	Neurotic Teacher
Howard Crossley	...	Policeman
Penny Downie	...	Chrissie
David Foreman	...	Young Malay
Christopher Fulford	...	Arthur
Matthew Guinness	...	Randall
Robert Hines	...	Jim Mortimer
Mike Kelly	...	CID Policeman
Bert King	...	Mr. Mortimer
Richard Marris	...	Sir Thomas
Peter Martin	...	Helpful Parent
Norman Mills	...	Drama Teacher
Guy Nicholls	...	Mr. Varley
Joely Richardson	...	Young Jean Travers
Vanessa Rosenthal	...	Pretentious Parent
Marjorie Sudell	...	Lily
Paula Tilbrook	...	Mrs. Mortimer
Diane Whitley	...	Policewoman

Runtime:

USA:102 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Certification:

Australia:M | USA:R | West Germany:16

Filming Locations:

London, England, UK

Company:

Film Four International

Trivia:

Rumor has it that _David Hare (I)_ created the role of June Travis, played by _Vanessa Redgrave_, in order to examine Prime Minister _Margaret Thatcher_ as a product of British history.

Quotes:

Stanley Pilborough: I remember once my father, also a solicitor, said, "I have learnt never to judge any man from his behavior with money and the opposite sex". Yet it is my own saddened experience that those are the only ways to judge him.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Krótki film o zabijaniu (1988)

Heartbreaking

I've always loved this movie deeply. I just watched it again for perhaps the sixth or seventh time. I fully agree with the Japanese reviewer that the mention of Nixon is in sympathy, not ridicule. His yearning to be loved by another, is very much meant as a parallel to the young and older Redgrave character - as well as to the young man at the dinner party.

David Hare has a wonderful scene here that is very similar to the very end of Plenty - when we see Joely Richardson writing in her diary in 1947 or so (think of Plenty's flashback to Meryl Streep in 1944 or 1945 speaking to the French farmer). The scenes might be full of bathos - but gee, I was overwhelmed both times.

This movie has much in common with other Hare ventures - movies like Strapless and Plenty, plays like Skylight and "Amy's View".

Hare's deep sympathies are with the romantic, the compassionate, the sensitive, the foolhardy, the collective-minded and the lost. He is antipathetic toward the self-sufficient, the ambitious, the laconic, the individualistic, the successful. I only partly share his sympathy and his antipathy but he makes me appreciate his attitudes through dramas he creates with real living characters.

Hare is sentimental in a nostalgic way, and can write wonderfully vivid, intelligent and lost protagonists. I think him a far more intelligent and better dramatist than such left-wingers as Mike Leigh or Ken Loach.

Many of us will see much of ourselves in his protagonists' loneliness, our wonder at mistaken hopes from our past, and sense of our own frailties and faults as we grow older.

Others speak of similarities to Pinter - I don't see them. Hare is more essentially romantic - even if he doesn't want to be - and I'd place him more with a Jacques Demy than with a Pinter-Mamet and their cold keen patterns of speech and behavior - though granted, he's more concerned with social and political background than Demy.

This is essentially a sad movie about one who was once happy - and her wonder and self-realization about another sadder than she.

This movie also started me off on two decades of strongly favoring Joely Richardson in any role - as I had always loved Ian Holm and Vanessa Redgrave. (I realized recently that among my several dozen favorite movies since the mid-1960s, about one quarter seem to have Ian Holm in them!).

If you like movies like Sunday Bloody Sunday, Butley, Plenty, A Kind of Loving, Quartermaine's Terms - and I do - you'll love Wetherby. I love this movie.