Maven's Nest
Reel Life: Flick Pix
Dawns, sunsets, and horizons of the lovely English countryside and distinctive towns frame Harold Fry’s moving experience.
By Nora Lee Mandel
THE UNLIKELY PILGRIMAGE OF HAROLD FRY
Directed by Hettie Macdonald
Written by Rachel Joyce, adapted from her 2012 novel
Produced by Juliet Dowling, Kevin Loader, and Marilyn Milgrom (BFI)
UK. 108 mins. Not Rated.
With: Jim Broadbent, Penelope Wilton, Earl Cave, Joseph Mydell, and Linda Bassett
Quiver Distribution releases in U.S. on September 20 in theaters and On Demand platforms
Like the tale of Harry Potter, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry begins with a surprising letter delivered past a privet hedge. But this letter is a blast from the past rather than portending a hopeful future. The recipient is bored 65-year-old retiree “Harold Fry” (the heartbreaking/heartwarming Jim Broadbent). Sparking a fast flashback, “Queenie Hennessey”, a co-worker he hasn’t seen or heard from in over 20 years, is the sender of this farewell from a hospice.
“Harold” dashes off a bland note that even he realizes is too awkward. His wife “Maureen” (tensely expressive Penelope Wilton), the lonely widower next door “Rex” (Joseph Mydell), and townspeople are surprised to see him going to the post office. He is so flummoxed that he tells the young woman snack shop cashier about his quandary. She casually empathizes by saying how she encouraged her ill aunt when all hope seemed lost.
“Harold” takes her literally and spontaneously calls the hospice with a crucial message for “Queenie”: “She has to wait. I’m going to walk. All she has to do is live.” For the American audience, a detailed map of England is too quickly glimpsed for the significance of his goal (let alone some unfamiliar spoken Britishisms). But “Harold” lives in Kingsbridge, in the Southwest; the hospice is in Berwick-Upon-Tweed, in the Northeast – a 450-mile distance. With no preparation, supplies, mobile phone, nor telling his wife, he sets off.
The varieties of encounters “Harold” has with the young and middle-aged, hippies, romantics, immigrants, and religious fanatics, social media followers and self-aggrandizers, are ironic and revealing. Sleeping rough strains his aging body, but frames the poignant flashbacks that haunt his days and nights, along with the calls to his bitterly confused, then in the moving climax, gradually understanding wife.
While there are some similarities to David Lynch’s The Straight Story (1999), Harold’s pilgrimage started as a BBC Radio play, then Rachel Joyce fleshed him out in a Booker Prize-longlisted novel; Broadbent voiced the audiobook. In her screenplay adaptation, there are a couple of points that now don’t quite make sense, but the pains the couple went through are sadly realistic.
What makes this a fresh, richly immersive experience to see is how director Hettie Macdonald with cinematographer Kate McCullough (both did Normal People) film the dawns, sunsets, and horizons of the lovely English countryside and distinctive towns. They shot on location in chronological order – through the paths, roads, and streets of the counties of Devon, Somerset, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Derbyshire, South and West Yorkshire, Durham, Tyne and Wear, Northumberland – so that Broadbent really looks weathered. (The credits include the motor homes rented for him and Wilton.) Released last year in the U.K., Forestry England prepared a downloadable map, that unfortunately is not available for the U.S. release.
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is beautiful looking and touching, without being sentimental or mawkish.
9/20/2024
Nora Lee Mandel is a member of New York Film Critics Online. Her reviews are counted in the Rotten Tomatoes TomatoMeter:
Complete Index to Nora Lee Mandel's Movie Reviews
My reviews have appeared on: FF2 Media; Film-Forward; Lilith, FilmFestivalTraveler; and, Alliance of Women Film Journalists and for Jewish film festivals. Shorter versions of my older reviews are at IMDb's comments, where non-English-language films are listed by their native titles.
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