Glorious 39 (2009) User Reviews

Be very careful with your praise...!

[zombequin · 6/10 · 24 April 2011]

Glorious 39, when I first heard of it, ticked all of the boxes for what I would normally like in a film - Romola Garai, David Tennant, Bill Nighy, 1930s setting, war drama, so on and so forth. In what now seems a somewhat exaggerated tidbit of praise, Company called the film "This year's Atonement". As somebody who has both seen and read Atonement in great detail, these are big words that create big expectations, not all of which were met, unfortunately.

Acting-wise, I felt that the cast as a whole worked well with the dialogue and character types that they had been given. Bill Nighy is, as always, a delight to watch, but his dialogue was not so much of a delight. If somebody finished every single sentence to me with "darling", as did their children, I would become suspicious of them long before Anne ever did. However I rather feel that Romola Garai has been, of late, a sort of amorphous mystery woman who is at first playful to the point of annoyance, followed by quivering and tearful, concluded with blankly staring into space. 'Emma', 'Daniel Deronda' and even to an extent 'Atonement' seem to follow this much of the time. As much as I like her as an actress, I never feel that there is any real defining trait (nor intelligence?) to her characters, though perhaps this is because of input other than her own.

Hugh Bonneville and David Tennant were excellent in slightly lesser roles, although their close relationships to the main characters remain the most intriguing mysteries of the film. I found myself repeatedly wishing that they hadn't died, if only to have two likable characters to watch by the end.

My main gripes with the film were the ridiculous framing of the story with modern-day, and of course the ending. The story-telling by the cousins was both unnecessary and implausible, and I would have been content with the 1930s parts on their own, as I gained nothing from the modern day section except that Walter remained a weirdo right up until old age. His character as a whole seemed like a cardboard insert to remind us that yes, we should be scared, and yes, this is a very creepy situation. Did he have parents? Did anybody ever know where he was at any given moment? How did he manage to have his own personal bubble wherever he went? The ending was, undoubtedly, the most pointless attempt at a dramatic ending that I have seen yet. I dislike being so harsh about it, but the Atonement comparison had set me up for a surprise ending that really hits home and makes you see the whole story in a new light. Instead I saw an elderly lady sneering at her cousins, presumably for having been in the same place as some people who did bad things.

To summarise, I guess I must say that Glorious 39 felt like more of a patchwork of filmic ideas (and clichés) than a coherent plot. Very few surprises were actually unexpected - you cannot expect an audience to have the same emotional connections to characters as your lead does, nor their naivety. We will suspect anybody and everybody, more so if they seem good on first appearances. And of course, this applies doubly when we have rented it out because it is a mystery! The film had its good points, naturally - as has been mentioned, it was visually "sumptuous", particularly in regards to costuming. I felt that the subject matter and, to an extent, the characters had potential, but Poliakoff would have done well to approach a few friends with the script and ask "Does this make sense to you guys?".

Sorry Company, but Atonement this most definitely is not.

Taut Thriller With a Few Flaws

[Blockhead22 · 7/10 · 15 September 2009]

I had the privilege of attending the world premiere of this film at the Toronto International Film Festival last night. It tells the story of the aristocratic Keyes family in the days leading up to the outbreak of WWII. The father played superbly by Bill Nighy is an influential MP and an all round "good egg" of a dad to his three children. The oldest daughter Ann, played by Romola Garai is an adopted child but seems to fit in perfectly with her younger siblings and is the life and soul of the family. The film starts as a classic English period piece with lavish settings in Norfolk and London involving picnics and parties. However, as war gets closer, dramatic and strange events involving the family and friends slowly change the mood of the film. Other reviewers have made comparisons to Hitchcock's films and I have to agree with them. I enjoyed the film but there were definitely a few situations that did not ring true. The ending was particularly clumsy and there were some strange scenes that just didn't seem to fit. At 130 minutes it was probably 20 minutes too long. There were good performances by Julie Christie as a batty aunt and Jeremy Northam as a sinister government official. A good watch if you like British mysteries

Entertaining but flawed

[ebkennedy · 6/10 · 27 January 2010]

One of the weakest parts of this film was that it began (and ended) with a rather pointless visit to the future, introducing a young descendant of the family in the main plot, who is apparently investigating their family history. It is very unlikely on meeting elderly relatives (apparently only for the second time ever) that within a few minutes they would launch into an extremely complex story about an estranged relative. There are not too many teenagers who would be interested and confident enough to approach relatives they don't have a relationship with, about the 'family tree'. The film could stand alone without this subplot.

Also the implausibility of Anne reuniting with her adoptive family in old age and looking relatively pleased about seeing them, ruins the conclusion of the film. The plot did not need this complication. A far more effective ending would have been Anne disappearing in her nightdress (with the audience unsure whether she has lost her mind or whether she has escaped an adoptive family who are poisoning her).

Ultimately disappointing

[rogerdarlington · 18 October 2012]

I first came across the captivating young British actress Romola Garai in the 2004 movie "Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights". Since then, most of her work has been for television, but she was back on the large screen in the 2009 film "Glorious 39". The '39' refers to 1939 when Britain was on the edge of war with Germany. 'Glorious' relates to both the nature of that year's summer and the affectionate name for Garai's character Anne, the adopted daughter of the aristocratic Keyes family which is headed by an influential Conservative Member of Parliament who is appalled by the notion of the country going to war for the second time in only a couple of decades.

Written and directed by Stephen Poliakoff as a kind of Hitchcockian thriller, this is a work replete with well-known British character actors spanning the age range from Christopher Lee & Julie Christie through Bill Nighy & Jeremy Northam to David Tennant & Eddie Redmayne. With so much talent available, one has a right to expect more than is actually delivered. The plotting is rather silly and often slow and the characterisation somewhat stilted, while the ending is most unsatisfactory. The locations - mostly in Norfolk - are fine though.

Glorious 39

[jboothmillard · 6/10 · 23 August 2011]

From renowned writer and director Stephen Poliakoff, I spotted this film purely because of the actors in the cast, but I was willing to give it a chance because it was rated well also. Basically in present day London, Michael Walton (Toby Regbo) is meeting his older cousins Walter Page (Christopher Lee) and Oliver (Corin Redgrave) to find out more about the sister of his grandmother Celia Keyes (Juno Temple), his great aunt Anne Keyes (Romola Garai). We are taken by flashback to 1939 where Anne is an actress in the beautiful British countryside, and this is at the time when the World War II was beginning. She is in love with Foreign Office official Lawrence (Stardust's Charlie Cox), but after the discovery of some secret recordings on vinyl records, containing conversations of political matter. Soon after hearing and revealing these, and trying to find the origins of the records, the perfect life of Anne starts slowly falling apart, including the death of a good friend, fleeing to London, and being imprisoned by her own father Sir Alexander Keyes (Bill Nighy) and others. The story is a little complicated, because you are not sure if she is going mad, and why it has happening to her, but she is seen alive and elderly by the end of the film in present day. Also starring David Tennant as Hector Haldane MP, Julie Christie as Aunt Elizabeth, Jeremy Northam as Balcombe, Eddie Redmayne as Ralph Keyes, Jenny Agutter as Maud and Notting Hill's Hugh Bonneville as Gilbert. I will admit first that I didn't understand the full story by about halfway through, but the performances by the all British cast, especially Garai, are very good, and there are some memorable moments, so it is certainly not a bad wartime drama. Good!

An interesting movie set in pre-war England about appeasing Hitler. Slow but will keep you entertained and watching. I say B-

[cosmo_tiger · 6/10 · 18 February 2011]

After finding secret pro-appeasement (for the Nazis) recordings Anne (Garai) becomes involved in a secret, violent conspiracy, set in England in 1939. After one of her friends who speaks out against Hitler is found dead, Anne begins to dig deeper into the reasons for his death. This is a very interesting movie. It is both compelling and slow moving. It is tense but it drags in spots. It kept me watching but my mind did wander a bit. This is overall a good movie but you need to be in the mood for it. You really feel for Anne and the way her life begins to fall apart. I am a fan of historical movies so I really liked that aspect of it. This movie had the feel of a made-for-TV movie, although it would have been an HBO movie with the quality of it. I recommend this but again, it's not for everyone, and you need to be in the mood to watch a movie like this one. I give it a B-.

Would I watch again? - Probably not

Puzzling plot holes

[jjamison-2 · 6/10 · 18 October 2013]

I enjoyed this movie because it took a turn I wasn't expecting when the family started acting strangely. I didn't start to think about the plot holes till it was over--I kept thinking it would all come clear. But I gotta admit it didn't make sense.

(1) Anne was adopted. Then we learn she was a gypsy. The English have always been so class conscious that an upper class person hardly speaks to anyone except those in their circle, so I find it impossible to believe they would take a Roma child into their family as a full member.

(2) Before the war started, England was divided on their opinion of going to war. This is easily documented in any history book about WW 11. Some people wanted the war, some people didn't, some were sympathetic to Hitler (The Duke and Duchess of Windsor), and some just wanted him to go away.

(3) At that time, (like now) the opinions of young women were regarded lightly. What they had to say did not account for much. Especially in politics, they were ignored.

In view of (1) (2)and (3), please someone tell me why the Keyes family went to so much trouble, murder, lies, deception, cruelty to animals, and darn near killing Anne, just because she might hold a different opinion on the war. When her father was explaining it all to her, all he could come up with was she was a Roma (gypsy) and didn't fall in with the families' opinion of the war. It's pretty darn strange and puzzling to me. What did I miss? She wasn't political at all till they started their odd behavior.

A bit strange

[alda-delicado · 6/10 · 2 March 2012]

I always enjoy watching BBC films, always very well acted and usually an interesting story that makes you think. This one promised quite a lot: a great cast including Jeremy Northam, Bill Nighy and Romola Garay, a plot in the first year of the second world War, it seemed like a recipe for a great movie. Unfortunately may parts of the story seemed to weird to be true and in the end I didn't understand if the girl was simply crazy. Dead bodies all around her, people talking about secrets and dropping dead afterwards without a lot of explanations, her being locked up in a room and drugged, characters that appear without explanation and stare just as if it was a horror film and in the end nothing is quite clarified... Just totally mystifying...

A superb performance from Romola Garai

[perkypops · 8/10 · 14 August 2011]

Anne Keyes disturbingly uncovers a sinister plot without apparent motive in a story told as a flashback in a way that is helpful to its audience.

This is a very British film about guilty pasts, family values and inner strength set around the outbreak of WW2. As with much British mystery drama on screen there is a lavish dedication to quality acting, strong story telling, and brilliant cinematography. It is a compelling watch despite some plot flaws and moments when the story doesn't quite flow as convincingly as it should. But there is tension, intrigue, suspense, and menace in just the right quantities to keep us gripped and interested.

Romola Garai gives us a superbly convincing portrayal of Anne with some great support notably from Jeremy Northam (Balcombe), Sam Kubrick-Finney (young Walter), Hugh Bonnevile (Gilbert) and Juno Temple (Celia). Some familiar faces also provide strong cameos.

My one reservation about the film, and what stops me from awarding more than eight out of ten, is that it is slightly too cold, too austere, too abrupt when, perhaps, we are in need of a little warmth and camaraderie. But this is a story about the outbreak of war and the destruction heaped upon truth, privilege and family values and so it is a matter of subjective judgement. You should go and see it for Romola Garai's performance alone.

An original movie, with good acting, marred by a confusing plot

[jeremy3 · 6/10 · 25 July 2018]

This movie had all the ingredients for an unusual movie about World War Two, but failed to do so. Firstly, the star of the film plays a woman adopted by a wealthy landed aristocracy family, but we never know who she really is other than that she is strikingly pretty. She has a baby, but who was the father and why when the baby is briefly kidnapped does the baby disappear completely from the plot? Secondly, the main plot is about British aristocrats who decide to support Hitler in their delusions that it will protect their positions and places. The movie never really solidifies what their move to fascism is all about. One character accused the adopted woman of being "part gypsy", but this only confuses things leading one to believe that the fascists have a lot more motives than protecting their self interest. Thirdly, it is never explained to what extent these fascists have power to control a whole rural area of England. The heroine cannot escape the fascists, which include her brother, but it is never explained why. How deep is the fascist conspiracy? At one point the heroine flees but British soldiers capture her and one soldier says that habeas corpus has been suspended and the soldiers can imprison her indefinitely. Missed opportunity to suggest that overreaction may have helped the fascists take advantage of the situation and be more powerful. Lastly, it is never explained at what time this teenager is looking into what happened back in 1939. It is because his mother was now taking care of the heroine, but we do not not even see the face of the teenager's mother's. What was her motivation in finding out what happened in 1939. Bill Nighy was great. He plays a seemingly very nice and harmless man who is really leading the fascists. I also liked the beginning where an inspiring politician stresses the point of confronting Hitler and supporting Churchill. Even if he was not unknowingly speaking to a group of fascists, it compellingly showed how the perceptions of World War Two changed over time. In 1939, it was still sort of a partisan issue between the Labour and Conservative Party. Many people remembered the horrors of World War One and were anxious about getting into another war. Overall, a good movie, but a lot unexplained. Why were all the animals being killed? I think I remember reading something about this, but the movie does not explain it to the audience at all. Was the local vet in collusion with the fascists or just obeying government orders? The fascists we're a really menacing and creepy bunch, but the movie does not provide much historical basis and evidence so the audience can be more engaged.

Less than the sum of its parts

[steven-222 · 4/10 · 19 February 2011]

On its surface, this is an old-fashioned paranoid thriller about a woman who's suddenly afraid to trust anyone, including her nearest and dearest. For window dressing there's a stately country mansion and pre-WWII vintage costumes and cars, plus a top-notch cast of British actors.

But writer-director Stephen Poliakoff is known for off-beat storytelling, and that's not always a good thing. This film is much too unpleasant to serve as an "entertainment" (warning: dead pets!), but has too many lapses in credibility to be taken seriously as a political statement, and way too many plot holes to work as an intellectual puzzler.

There is atmosphere to spare, and some scenes succeed at producing goosebumps...as long as the viewer doesn't actually think about them. Consider the scene where our actress heroine is in a screening room, doing voice-overs, and an actor on the movie screen suddenly breaks character and seems to speak directly to her, from beyond the grave. Goosebumps! But plot-wise, this scene makes no sense at all. Why didn't the actor just speak to her in person when he had the chance? Duh! It's a contrived scene that exists only to produce a transient effect, not to advance the story (or even make sense). There's a lot of this flimflammery in the movie.

The biggest gaff of this sort is the story-within-the-story framing device: how could the two narrators (played by Christopher Lee and Corin Redgrave) possibly know the details of the story that unfolds? One was a child at the time, and the other an infant, and even if they were later told copious intimate details of the goings-on (unlikely), they still could not have known the secret activities and state of mind of our heroine. The frame is there for another reason, so that we won't guess until the final moment that our heroine is still alive; and because the director knows the frame really makes no sense, we never actually hear Lee and Redgrave narrate a word of the story, because at crucial points the viewers would realize that the framing device is nonsensical. This kind of narrative trickery lacks integrity, and it's fatal to a movie with the high moral pretensions of Glorious 39.

This glossy movie is engaging from scene to scene, but the whole is less than the sum of the parts.

I found this movie absolutely gripping

[big_O_Other · 10/10 · 11 September 2011]

Reviewers simply don't "get" the underlying tension of the film, which probably relies too much on viewers' understanding that many, many aristocrats/Tories were trying to avoid war with Hitler and often sympathized with him. If you don't know that, then you don't grasp the stakes of the film. Few British people would NOT know this, given that their abdicated king Edward and his wife Wallis Simpson openly admired Hitler, and many other high-borns found him quite right to attack democracy in its heart.

Romula Garai, one of the world's finest new actresses, carries the movie with her endless shading of emotions, her eyes opening to the horror that her family really is despite its large, warm embrace of her. And Bill NIghy is absolutely transcendent as her loving father and Tory MP who is supposed to negotiate American aid to Britain and who lets us know he is fiercely anti-war because of the destruction and death it deals. Is he what he seems, though?

I found this one of the few grounded portrayals of the British upper class attitudes pre-war than anything else I've yet seen.

Could have been better

[Petey-10 · 7/10 · 13 April 2011]

Two old gentlemen reminisce the year 1939, the time just before World War II.Anne Keyes realizes she can't trust her own family.Glorious 39 (2009) is a conspiracy thriller directed and written by Stephen Poliakoff.The cast is very nice.Romola Garai plays Anne Keyes, also known as Glorious.Bill Nighy portrays her father Sir Alexander.Jenny Agutter is her mother Maud.Julie Christie is Aunt Elizabeth.Eddie Redmayne is brother Ralph.Juno Temple is the younger sister Celia.David Tennant plays Hector.Charlie Cox plays Lawrence, Anne's lover.Jeremy Northam is Joseph Balcombe.It's a real thrill to see Christopher Lee (b. 1922) playing older Walter Page.The late Corin Redgrave plays Oliver Page.Muriel Pavlow is Old Anne.I guess this one goes to the category OK.It doesn't quite live up to expectations.It's only slightly thrilling, but not as much as it should be.But it's not a total waste of time to watch this movie.

Such a disappointment

[MieMar · 2/10 · 1 August 2010]

I am a big fan of Poliakoff and this should have been great atmospheric piece but important parts are just off key, most of all the script that seem couple of drafts away from being what it could have been. Now it is just slow and quite unbelievable, things happen because the plot needs them to happen, and you can see the cogs turning. Just tighter editing might have helped at times, like when the first record (oh so conveniently) got broken.

Camera and editing seem a little off too, not as stunning visually as his last work on TV was... Cast are doing their best but somehow hang over nothing - usually Poliakoff manages this miracle, so little happens and is said but the tension and the sense of mystery (of life) underneath is palpable beneath - like puppets in the air, bit uncertain of their moves. Poor David Tennant was particularly badly served, left in our minds just a awkward over acted scream on the gramophone record... Maybe because there now is, in plot terms, a mystery too: what is going on with the records and the Jeremy Northam character and does Bill Nighy know. So the usual Poliakoff treat of sensing the strangeness of life in general doesn't manage to surface from under all this plotting. Also, the main character became at time quite annoying, always whining about not being believed even before anyone said anything...and then, when she realises she's in a nest of asps she keeps talking most unguardedly at places where she's clearly overheard. One thing that thriller's tolarate very badly is a hero/ine who comes across much dummer than the viewer...

What a missed opportunity!!! Just not good enough I'm afraid. Made you feel it was LAZY film making.

Self-parody

[paul2001sw-1 · 17 August 2011]

Stephen Polliakoff's work has shown some consistent concerns: two of them are a nostalgic view of the aristocratic past, and an interest in the aftermath of Nazism. These two come together in 'Glorious 39', which one may describe as a '39 Steps' kind of thriller; and in its middle portion, it's briefly gripping, albeit in a style that seems a deliberate pastiche of an earlier style of film. But overall, it's a rum beast, almost a parody of Polliakoff's earlier work. There are lines of incongruous or anachronistic dialogue, and much of the acting is exceedingly flat. Polliakof often casts Bill Nighy, and seems to order him to underact; in my opinion, all of Nighy's performances for this director are awful. The child acting is also exceedingly wooden. Ramola Garai in the lead role is OK, but she really gets almost no help; yet from the overall feel of the piece, it's hard to avoid concluding that this is intentional. The plot is incoherent and hackneyed: the good guys all want to fight the Nazis, the nasty people don't; even the use of an adopted child as the lead character seems to be a cheap way of having a cake and eating it, as it allows the director to revel in the aristocratic excess while simultaneously suggesting there was something terrible about it. The concluding scene, meanwhile, makes something out of nothing, a crescendo of music hiding the fact that there's no real drama in the ending. It's a shame, as for a number of years, Polliakoff's work was consistently interesting; but this is a mess.

Mysterious, thrilling movie with an element of surprise!!

[arsocnet · 7/10 · 27 September 2011]

So the movie its confusing at some point o it, at first it seemed things in a way in the middle u get a little unveiling and at the end you get a full disclosure of what the hell its going on. Great movie if you like to be surprised of things that don't look what they are, certainly something you should watch if you like WWII related movies but be aware this one has no shooting at all but yet it gives you and idea of what the rich people might have been doing at the beginning of the war. Now if u gonna spend 30 minutes on this movie you might as well stay the whole show... because the ending its just nice and nothing like you expected.

A true mystery

[synevy · 7/10 · 7 January 2012]

So, here's another pre-war (WWII) film for the mystery - crime enthusiasts. Put some political/ national matters, a high-placed family in a British countryside and a few fatal events and you have your mystery case drama.

As expected, the protagonists and supporting actor's performances were stunning. I wouldn't expect less from Bill Nighy, or Romola Garai and -for the love of God- Christopher Lee and David Tennant have a small part in this film! Hugh Bonneville was amazing, too.

What could go possibly wrong? Well, i found the duration quite tiring. The second third of the film had plenty of long and slow scenes. I was patiently waiting for something to happen, because i really liked the whole story/ idea and the way things revealed. There's a lot of suspense and the ending is rewarding.

A Gloriously Old-school Conspiracy Thriller, Taut and Gripping

[eric_lawrence · 7/10 · 6 May 2012]

Glorious 39 is an engaging atmospheric conspiracy thriller. The story unfolds in a very involving manner keeping the suspense intact until the very last frame. Tension is really well maintained through out the movie, as soon as the story kicks and the paranoia sets in it just increases and deepens with each frame until the final credit rolls.

As the lead Romola Garai gives this gripping piece of work its intensity. She never hits a false note and is the key reason because of which the paranoia and tension are so incredibly palpable.Glorious 39 is period piece and a engaging conspiracy thriller, that is narrated in a old-school manner of film-making were the script complements the visuals and the performances lends in to make the narration even more engaging.

Glorious it is not.

[TweetyonIMDB · 6/10 · 16 May 2018]

I struggled with finding a reason that this film is so flat - and now believe it is Stephen Poliakoff. Replace his script and direction, then this film should triumph, because I couldn't fault the cast, the scenery, the musical score or the concept. Read the reviews by zombequin and Burgess-Hulme, and you have the detailed analyses with which I concur. I can only imagine the film in the hands of Hitchcock or Spielberg; what a difference that would have made. It's worth a watch, if only to see your favourite actors, but definitely no encore!

England's Own Drama in WW II

[gradyharp · 8/10 · 21 February 2011]

Though there have been books and other films that deal with the dissidence between the aristocrats and the general populace of England around the topic of WW II, this beautifully executed 'historical thriller' brings many aspects of those discrepancies of opinion to light in a manner not unlike the similar thought processes in Germany at the same time: the gentry of Germany turned a blind eye to the events surrounding them (The Final Solution) in order to believe in what they chose to believe as a promise for stabilization and world importance as a genteel country. Writer/Director Stephen Poliakoff has based his examination of this problem on focusing on the life of one particular character whose fate was the standard of the dispossessed.

The year is 1939 and the aristocratic family of Sir Alexander Keyes (Bill Nighy) and his wife Maud (Jenny Agutter) are living what seems to be an idyllic life with their children Ralph (Eddie Redmayne), Celia (Juno Temple) and the eldest, Anne (Romula Garai) who we soon discover was adopted before the Keyes discovered they could bear children on their own. Anne is a beautiful creative actress who seems to make the family proud. The family is visited by an old friend Hector (David Tennant) who at dinner is very vocal about the fact that Hitler is a threat to England and that England must stop Hitler before he destroys them instead of pursuing a course of appeasement of Hitler that would prevent disturbance of their elegant way of life on the island of England. It is obvious that Sir Alexander is more concerned with his duties as a member of parliament and his maintenance of his family history and wealth, and his responses to Hector as well as to the mysterious Balcombe (Jeremy Northam) from the Foreign Office and the young Lawrence (Charlie Cox), a new member of the Foreign Office who is courting Anne, suggest subterfuge.

The family is visited by the very proper Aunt Elizabeth (Julie Christie) and while the entire family is on picnic, an infant transiently disappears while under Anne's care. From this point the story takes a dark turn: Anne continues filming in London with her close friend, actor Gilbert (Hugh Bonneville), and Anne discovers some phonograph records in the basement of the Keyes home, records that contain not fox trots but instead 'conversations' from meetings. Suspicions about evil derring-do arise when the family learns that Hector has committed suicide soon followed by the suicide of Gilbert and eventually the bizarre discovery of Lawrence's body among the pet animals ordered to be put to death to make the people of England more ready for abrupt changes. War with Germany begins and changes the atmosphere and results in changes in the Keyes family: Anne is imprisoned by the family because 'she is really not one of us' and unravels the harrowing mystery of the Keyes' family involvement in the dark events of the present and the past.

The mood of England of 1939 is beautifully captured by cinematographer Danny Cohen and the musical score by Adrian Johnston illustrates the dichotomy of the free-spirited Anne and the dark underpinnings of the Keyes family. Romola Garai is excellent in her treacherous role as are the other stars. Small roles by Toby Regbo, Christopher Lee, Corin Redgrave and others make this a cast rich in some of the finest British actors of the day. GLORIOUS 39 ('Glorious' is the nickname given Anne) is an enlightening film that addresses many significant issues too infrequently addressed by works of history.

Grady Harp

A Gloriously Old-school Conspiracy Thriller, Taut and Gripping

[ericlawrence-134-953627 · 7/10 · 27 October 2014]

Glorious 39 is an engaging atmospheric conspiracy thriller. The story unfolds in a very involving manner keeping the suspense intact until the very last frame. Tension is really well maintained through out the movie, as soon as the story kicks and the paranoia sets in it just increases and deepens with each frame until the final credit rolls.

As the lead Romola Garai gives this gripping piece of work its intensity. She never hits a false note and is the key reason because of which the paranoia and tension are so incredibly palpable.Glorious 39 is period piece and a engaging conspiracy thriller, that is narrated in a old-school manner of film-making were the script complements the visuals and the performances lends in to make the narration even more engaging.

A poorly executed attempt at something that could have been great

[brendan-821-654855 · 5/10 · 25 May 2014]

Glorious 39 has everything necessary for the makings of a great film, but for some unknown reason things got lost in translation and the finished product failed to deliver (and no, this is DEFINITELY not on par with Atonement!)

The film starts slow and the first 20 minutes just don't seem to hit their beats. Then, once the plot begins to engage the viewer a lot of plot holes and unanswered questions begin to arise.

We also get this rather strange attempt (or at least, what appears to be an attempt) to draw parallels between WW2 England and the modern war on terror (most notably the indefinite detention without charge, and the overarching state surveillance). These things just don't make a lot of sense though - were they a poorly executed attempt at commentary on post 9/11 geopolitics? Or were they meant to be plot devices to ramp up the tension and threat to our main protagonist? Either way, neither version of events is executed particularly well.

Then there is the death of Lawrence - an event which should have really mattered to us as an audience, except it didn't, because Lawrence was barely developed as a character and as a result the audience never has a chance to care about him or even connect with him. He just doesn't get anywhere near enough screen time (in a film that has a running time of 2 hours!) and so his death doesn't have any real impact for us.

To top things off, the movie concludes with an ending that is an anti-climax, and makes little real sense (the use of a final shot of young Anne even seems to indicate that at least someone involved in this film was concerned that the execution of the plot may leave some viewers confused about who the elderly woman in the chair was, so they had to spell it out as obviously as they possibly could).

It's a real shame, because the atmosphere, acting and story concept are all top shelf - it's just a shame that the execution was so flawed.

A glorious triumph of the drama of anxiety and suspense

[robert-temple-1 · 10/10 · 9 April 2010]

Stephen Poliakoff, Britain's own resident television drama genius (both writer and director), has really outdone himself this time with his first feature film in ten years. This film bears all the traditional hallmarks of Poliakoff obsessions: the evocative power of the past, the magic of memory, the mystical bonds of extended family connections, the hidden energies of secrets kept buried for too long, and the shattering consequences of the revelation of truth which has been suppressed. This film is set in 1939 in Britain, and what it reveals is one of the most terrifying of all the untold stories in which the true and secret history of Britain abounds. The British are remarkable for their ostrich qualities, and they have always been experts at not knowing what they do not want to know, and also at thinking the unsustainable. Here Poliakoff partially strips the veneer from the genteel surface, but I wish he had gone further and been more explicit even than this. His subject is the aristocratic Nazi sympathizers of the Neville Chamberlain clique who tried to prevent Britain entering the War, and wished not only to appease Hitler but to submit to him in the fashion of the Vichy Regime. We must never forget that Chamberlain had been a member of the Eugenics Society, and just imagine the fate of the British Jews if these people had succeeded in their aim. What Poliakoff does not state, and perhaps does not even know, is that the more fanatical of the pro-Nazis in Britain were members of the secret society known in Germany as the Vehme (pronounced 'fame-uh'), which carried out ruthless campaigns of assassination of political enemies, such as are shown in this film. During the 1920s and 1930s, the Vehme assassinated more than 6,000 leading members of the political opposition inside Germany, thereby so enfeebling the opposition parties that they had no effective leadership left even before the Reichstag fire which Hitler arranged as his pretext for the Enabling Act which gave him the supra-legal powers to establish his absolute dictatorship and dispense with the opposition altogether by arresting and executing their leaders with the official sanction of the state. A typical Vehme-style execution on the continent was carried out by hanging, and an example of one of those which occurred in London in our own time was the assassination by hanging of Roberto Calvi in 1982 ordered by the P-2 Masons of Italy, who are linked to the Vehme. (It was no accident that Blackfriars Bridge was chosen for the hanging, as the Black Friars are the Dominicans, who were the order who presided over the Inquisition, and Calvi was 'banker to the Vatican' as the newspapers have often called him.) It is interesting that one of the victims of the British Vehme shown in the film is someone we see hanging upside down in a sack. The leading members of the Vehme call themselves the 'Wissende' ('knowing ones'). One of their secret signs of recognition is to turn their knives round at the dinner table so that the points are towards themselves. This harrowing and extremely nail-biting film shows the slow and painful discovery of the British Vehme at work, as perceived by the adopted daughter of one of them, who is a British MP played by Bill Nighy with his usual brilliance and effectiveness. The terrified and totally apolitical adopted daughter who discovers the truth is played with rising levels of hysteria and terror by the amazingly talented Romola Garai. Her eyes get wider and wider with each passing minute of screen time as her fear mounts. Her sinister aunt is played by Julie Christie with menacing effectiveness, and her brother and sister (not adopted, but 'blood family' to Nighy) are played by Juno Temple and Eddie Redmayne. All of them are horrifyingly convincing at being blood-conspirators working for Hitler inside the British Establishment. The scariest of all the cast, as the spy Balcombe, is Jeremy Northam, more sinister and menacing than I have ever seen him before, and that is saying something, as he only has to remove the pillow case from his head when he wakes up every morning in order to frighten the very flies on the wall. The British Foreign Office in 1939 probably contained a proportion of civil servants who might be divided as follows: one third Nazi sympathisers, appeasers, or 'Petainists', one third Soviet agents, and only about one third simply loyal to their country. The Home Office had in proportion fewer communists but more fascists than the Foreign Office. Britain in the 20th century produced traitors of all kinds at such a rate that there was simply no way of keeping track of them all, and few of them have ever been publicly acknowledged. (The handful the public knows about were not necessarily the most important ones anyway.) Just why the anonymity of the fascist traitors is still being protected today is something of a puzzle. This film goes a long way towards ripping the lid off this scandal, but the film is in no way a political film, it is a personal drama in the format of a hyper-tense thriller. Poliakoff was too clever to turn this into a didactic piece, and keeps it very much as a typical Poliakoff-style personal and family drama. The production values are marvellous, the music is good, the locations are absolutely staggering, everyone is brilliant, and the Poliakoff script and direction are the best of all. If anyone is looking for British television drama to rival the American MAD MEN (2007-2010, see my review), Poliakoff's TV series are the answer every time. And for a thriller feature film with real depth and meaning, how much further can anyone go than this one? Poliakoff is the Rembrandt of contemporary British filmed drama, who paints the light magically and miraculously with a uniquely dark and Manichean brush.

A well acted British drama timepiece but thats about it!

[mrcibubur · 6/10 · 13 April 2010]

This falls into the category with Atonement and Brideshead Revisited but falls short for quality against both the other films. It is a fairly boring film although interesting and entertaining at the same time. It does not have the finishing touches and real mystique of Atonement and is only comparable with Brideshead Revisited on grounds of heritage and culture class, nothing more.

The 'appeasement' theme was an interesting and Romola as the leading lady was definitely the star, although I think an opportunity was definitely lost to develop a love story between her and Hector played by ex doctor Who David Tennant who was excellent in the limited role given to him. Yes Bill Nighty and Julie Christie are excellent also but the story is already lost by the time they really feature in the movie.

Mr Poliafoff is clearly a talented director and working with talented actors and actresses but this fails on the back of a poor script and I absolutely agree, an appalling manufactured ending. If it really was a mystery thriller, why on earth give us an ending like that. When she disappeared, that should have been it.

The young Michael Walton visiting his two Uncles Ralph and Walter was somewhat bizarre and 'Glorious 39' was a desperate title for a film which could and should have been so much better.

Dreadful

[sergepesic · 3/10 · 28 April 2013]

I happen to be a big fan of British period dramas. Of course, when they are done well. Alas, this is a dreadful mess of a movie. Almost nothing makes any sense whatsoever. To begin with the obvious, what in the world possessed the director to film with the drunken, skewed camera lenses. After ten minutes of watching, one feels noxious. Then the characters, randomly walking around, tattling some nonsensical lines, and not a one of them looks real. Next, for example, complete lack of suspense or logic. Pro-Nazi supporters among the British upper classes are a well known fact, but that part of history deserves serious handling. This Gothic, under-thought dribble is a huge disappointment.