In Danish woman director Lone Sherfig’s new film, Their Finest, we watch Mrs. Catrin Cole (Gemma Arterton) carefully making her way through a rain of dust and over snaking fire hoses on a street where houses were recently transformed into funeral piles of deadly brick, wood, glass, and furniture. Everyone scuttles along with their heads down to avoid stepping on something sharp or squishy. For the audience, Catrin’s somber sojourn is an effective way to immerse ourselves into how things were in Blitz-bombed London.
She doesn’t make much writing ad copy for newspapers, but it’s more than her Socialist-artist husband (Jack Huston) earns. No one buys his dark, brooding images of smoke-belching factories so when she is offered a job writing “slop” (female dialogue) for government-funded propaganda films, you would think her “2 Guineas a week” would be welcomed. But with a gimpy leg from the Spanish Civil War, the growling Mr. Cole is only able to see Catrin as the naive girl he “rescued” from her native Wales to make his meals, share his bed, model occasionally, and stay quiet.
This film is a throwback of sorts, the kind of clever, satirical, comedy-dramas with a moral center that British studios made from the late 30’s to the early 50’s. As a result, many characters are introduced as broadly-drawn caricatures who eventually meld into distinct individuals. This is especially true for those working for the Ministry of Information. It helps that these roles are filled with the familiar faces of actors we typecast long ago. Richard E. Grant is perfect as the officious Ministry toady, Jeremy Irons is ramrod straight as the Secretary of War who quotes patriotic poetry, Sam Claflin is the embodiment of a chain-smoking, hard-drinking, workaholic screenwriter just as Paul Ritter is the calm and steady co-writer, and Rachel Stirling is slightly off-putting as the Ministry “mole” spying on what the writers are doing.
But it is long, lanky, Bill Nighy who steals every scene he is in. He plays a past-his-prime, former matinee idol who balks at taking the role of a “doddering drunk uncle” in a proposed film. And no wonder. On paper, this uncle is intended to provide comic relief for a “based on a true story” movie about twin sisters who “borrow” their uncle’s fishing boat to join the flotilla that rescued 340,000 British and French soldiers from the beaches at Dunkirk. The Ministry is so delighted with this uplifting tale of British heroism, that they not only give a green light to the project, but include a lavish budget and color-film stock.
It is inevitable that the government will interfere. At first, script changes suggested via “the Mole” seem logical, like rewriting the scene where the boat’s motor fails because that might project a negative assessment of British engineering. Soon, however, the filmmakers are summoned to offices higher and higher in the government hierarchy—even hearing that Winston Churchill has expressed interest in their film’s success. Seemingly out of nowhere, comes the “brilliant” idea of casting an American as the film’s hero to help lure the USA into WWII.
As the plucky and talented female scriptwriter, Catrin becomes more and more involved in the film, even going so far as to spend several weeks at the beach location standing in for Dunkirk. This increased importance doesn’t sit well with her husband, who celebrates a letter inviting his paintings to be exhibited with a case of wine, and lots of friends—but without Catrin. In fact, every single male in this film is a product of the era’s chauvinistic mindset. For example, when she is first offered the job, it is couched with the phrase, “of course, we can’t pay you as much as the blokes,” and an offer that is less than half a man’s salary. Only the strong-minded Ministry mole seems to have figured out what is happening: “They’re afraid they won’t be able to put us back in the box when this is over, and that makes them belligerent.”
Scenes from the movie being made are effectively intercut with events surrounding its construction, including several tragic deaths that necessitate rewriting the movie script at the last moment. As a result, handkerchiefs often appear in Their Finest, both onscreen and in the darkness of the movie theater. I suggest you bring some Kleenex yourself.
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