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GLORIOUS 39. Dir Stephen Poliakoff. 2009

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Glorious 39 strips away illusions. Poliakoff presents the apparent idyll of an English aristocratic family headed by genteel patriarch Lord Keyes (Bill Nighy). He presides over a country estate in Norfolk and his elegant townhouse in London – a world of golden light, romantic ruins, servants, house parties and happy children.

But this is 1939, a mere 21 years since the Great War, the war to end all wars, in which millions died, Britain was crippled with war debt, and the English country house system which he so values was almost annihilated. There are many references to the ancientness of his family and tradition, but now, few male servants remained alive or unmaimed to work the English landscape or to be in service to the old families.

Fearing domestic and political upheaval, appeasers such as Keyes sought to prevent Churchill leading the country and taking Britan to war, and to buy off Hitler to preserve British cultural and national identity. Nighty is excellent, controlled, benign. His wife (Jenny Agutter) has absented herself from the family into the garden and the other mother in the film is also virtually invisible. Strangely empty landscapes, buildings and houses add to the discomfort.

Romola Garai plays the much loved, dutiful, adopted daughter who carries the role of hostess with ease and grace, until she inadvertently discovers evidence of something underhand going on in her own home. This is Pandora’s Box; if only she had left the lid on her charmed life would have continued. She becomes alone and friendless, there is no-one she can trust, and the suspense is unrelenting.

Odd sequences with the eerie adolescent boy cause emotional unease which imply supernatural influences simply because he physically couldn’t move around from place to place, soundlessly, in the time allowed. Previously described as a Hitchcockian psychological thriller, events and coincidences are increasingly unnerving and there is always the feeling that the sinister Mr Balkam (Jeremy Northam) is always one step ahead of Anne. But, without Hitch’s touches of humour and romance, the maintained tension is quite hard to bear, at over two hours.

This is a visually rich film, with excellent performances throughout, marred slightly by an unnecessary framing device of a teenager going to visit elderly relatives and asking about the family history and, in particular, Anne (Garai). He needs to be in his forties or fifties for this device to make sense. However, plenty of menace and intrigue and shining a spotlight on the conspiracies at work at the beginning of World War II give much food for thought.
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