Film review: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (108 mins), Screening in cinema

Directed by Hettie Macdonald

Here’s a film about a lost soul saving a dying person, but don’t be put off. It’s not one of those worthy films and it’s not morbid. It’s uplifting, hopeful and, although the two main characters are ponderous older people, the story is invigorating.

Harold Fry unexpectedly receives a letter from Queenie, with whom he used to work, years earlier, telling him she’s in a hospice, dying, 500 miles away in Berwick-on-Tweed. Harold lives quietly, in an extremely humdrum way, with his wife Maureen, in Kingsbridge, on the south coast of Devon. Spontaneity is foreign to Harold but, for reasons that will become clear, he decides on the spur of the moment, without a word of explanation to Maureen, to walk to Berwick-on-Tweed to save Queenie.

If Queenie will only wait for him, her cancer will abate, Harold knows it. Her hope of seeing him will do the trick. It’s nothing romantic. Despite Maureen’s scathing dismissiveness of Harold’s mission for most of the film, Harold is loyal to Maureen.

Penelope Wilton as Maureen and Jim Broadbent as Harold give a masterclass in acting. By the way, you’d be on the button if Harold and Maureen’s tormented Goth son David reminds you of Nick Cave: David is memorably played by Nick Cave’s son, Earl.

Harold’s pilgrimage is titled “unlikely” but is surprisingly believable. What the story has to say about belief in one’s purpose is powerful. Under Hettie Macdonald’s direction, as with her TV mini-series Normal People, the film is likely to immerse and move most audiences.

Rachel Joyce wrote the international bestseller with the same title as the film, translated into 36 languages. She’s also written dozens of plays and classic adaptations for BBC Radio 4, her skill as a playwright showing clearly in her Unlikely Pilgrimage screenplay, in which the words are as spare as the spoken words in her book.

For emotionally cut-off Harold and Maureen, a spare script is essential. They’re both hiding enormous pain, their anger at what life has dealt them only twice surfacing, in silent rage. On their own, they hurl things.

Harold says he’s not a Christian pilgrim, but there’s no doubt that valiant, constant Harold and John Bunyan’s pilgrim are cut from the same cloth. They are the faithful, although for Harold, it’s not heaven he’s progressing towards, it’s just Queenie. He has to save her.

Along the way to Berwick-on-Tweed, Harold gives hope to a few young people, all of whom bring insights into contemporary England, beautiful on the surface, troubled beneath. The supposedly clean addict and the Slovakian doctor who can only get work as a cleaner are standouts. Others from all walks of life are looking for something that’s worth following, even a charming Border Terrier. They follow Harold, in droves. Audiences everywhere will see why.

Must see.

The first person to bring an image or hard copy of this review to Starlight cinema Taupō qualifies for a free ticket to “The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry”.

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