Fresh off seeing this one, and I’m struggling to evaluate quite where I fall on it. On the one hand, the story, however well it connects, is clunky and awkward in its opening act, perhaps this was intentional to help capture the ‘anticipation followed by the let-down’ that is directly referenced in the text, but it certainly is not a captivating start. However, as the story coalesces there is certainly something of value to how the film tackles the instinct of lying; getting the idea of not telling the truth so embedded in your mind that you become obsessed with it and it therefore becomes impossible to distinguish the difference between the truth and lies in any social situation is certainly ambitious. Whether or not this was intended as a metaphor aimed at self-obsessed teens, and yelling at them to get a grip and pay attention to the real world could be a stretch, but considering there’s no other reason why the scene where the pair come out of the theatre having seen a war movie discussing how ignorant teenagers might assume that is what war is, the same ignorant teenagers who would likely be stuck in their phones at every opportunity.
And, to be brutally honest, the extent to which you accept that critical layer of subtext is likely to impact how much you like the film. Because, if you don’t accept that, you might find the film a little lacking in substance and overwritten to enjoy all that much. At the end of the day the plot can be summed up very simply: greedy man wants money and ends up getting what was coming to him. Of course, that’s not everything. Betty McLeish (Helen Mirren) and Roy Courtnay (Ian McKellen) are the two characters you follow, but part of Betty’s elaborate plan is her ‘grandson’ Steven (Russell Tovey) who might end up as the most immediately problematic character in the story. If he is doing research for Betty on Roy, why be so upfront about it with him and reveal everything that he’s found out about him right to his face? Surely the best thing to do would be to ignore telling him all this and give him that false sense of security. Maybe it serves as a plot device to simply reveal to the audience how convolutedly written Roy is as a character, but even so, it damages the illusion that this is all calculated on Betty’s part.
And the ending is particularly poor. I get the twist of Betty wanting to get Roy back for what he did to her when they were younger, but the abruptness with which the twist is revealed with, completely devoid of subtlety, kills the tension entirely. And when the film presents us with so few little enigmas to enjoy giving us any idea that something might be off with Betty (the man in the white Audi being the only one of note), the film feels less enigmatic and mysterious by the shot. That being said, for however convoluted the characters can feel, the story does mostly connect, and there is drama in the reveal that Roy raped Betty as a kid, drama that is completely undercut as director Bill Condon falls into the trap of presenting his audience with a very closed ending, completely unwilling to leave any enigma on the table, once again cannibalising any tension there could have been.
And that’s why I’m conflicted with a film that seems to undercut itself at every major opportunity that I would otherwise be inclined to dismiss, if it wasn’t for good acting and some fascinatingly framed subtext, but even that subtext feels more than a little clichéd, especially considering the actors. The story might be generally strong, but I’d have to be incredibly forgiving to call this any better than kind of decent. And given how fixated the narrative is on historical events, perhaps that’s a sign that this one is destined for the history books.
6 / 10
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