Film Review: The Great Escaper

 

Two acting icons take their final bow

In 2014 a pensioner sneaked out of the care home where he resided and took himself to France to attend the seventieth anniversary of the D- Day landings.  Bernard Jordan’s story soon attracted international media attention and he was dubbed `the Great Escaper` but as this film shows he also had a more personal reason to make the pilgrimage. Penned by William Ivory and directed by Oliver Parker this film tells the side of the story that a lot of the media missed highlighting the lingering effects of being in a conflict and the ultimate senselessness of war. In a scene at the French cemetery Bernard casts his eyes over the site and declares “What a waste” whereupon the camera pulls away to reveal just how many graves surround him.

 

Not that this is an overly melodramatic film, rather it sets out to place Bernard’s story in a wider context. He lives in a care home with his wife Rene though it is she who is terminally ill though she has kept the severity of her condition from him. The two dawdle through their daily lives of aches, pains, and pills but due to a hitch Bernard’s application to attend the centenary celebrations is too late to qualify. Yet encouraged by his wife he goes anyway, slipping out at six am and making his own way to the ferry where he becomes acquainted with another veteran, Arthur, who has ghosts of his own. As they make their journey and arrive at their destination it transpires that both have other reasons for coming here, darker memories of wartime experiences they need to confront one last time.

This is a film about strength of character and how that generation, more than any since, carried things with them that you and I cannot imagine. Perfect casting ensures how this comes across on the screen, Michael Caine was always good of course but it has been remarkable that the older he’s become the more nuanced an actor he has become. His demeanour here retains a little of that cheeky Cockney who was such a presence in the Sixties but it is born of experience now. You can absolutely see the younger Bernard, that vigour and determination played in flashbacks very convincingly by Will Fletcher and Laura Marcus. 

As his wife Glenda Jackson embodies her sharpest attributes, her character’s sardonic approach stops the film ever falling into over sentimentality and her flinty cheek is deployed to fool the staff as to her husband’s whereabouts for quite a while. One scene where she dances by herself would in any other hands, seem sad as she clearly had trouble moving yet she makes it a defiant sort of dance. And we do have one scene- which probably Glenda Jackson did not like given her reported dislike of sugary material- in which her love for Bernard is displayed as she stares at a sunrise reliving an early memory. Still, I’m glad it’s there because it is a vital moment in the story and evidence of her acting skills.

 Bernard and Rene clearly adore each other and you can absolutely believe in that romance whether in the flashbacks or the present day. Because the two are apart for a large portion of the film we also have a marvelous chemistry between Rene and her carer Adele player by a terrific Danielle Vitalis. John Standing as Arthur has a sizeable role in the film and both he and Victor Oshin’s Iraq war veteran Scott benefit from Bernard’s matter of fact wisdom, the same quality he tried to embody during the war itself. I’m not entirely sure the flashbacks to the war itself add much because an actor of the calibre of Michael Caine can convey all that is needed, the audience does not really need to literally see it. There are movies like Dunkirk for that sort of thing. Lovely though it is I’m also a little sceptical about the care home Bernard and Rene inhabit which seems rather lavishly supplied with staff and attention something that I know for a fact even the best care homes struggle to afford.

A decade in from when this film is set and eighty years now since D Day, I suppose we will never learn the lesson that ultimately war takes more than it gives. Its an oft repeated message of course and yet always worth being said. The film neither sugar coats nor over plays the effects of war and shows that in the end life goes on for those who survive.  It’s more a film about the after effects of war than war itself. I don’t know if it happened in real life but we see Bernard and Arthur give their tickets over to two German veterans who are there. Not a lot is said but is an appropriate acknowledgment of how there can be some healing through what was ultimately a horrific shared experience for that generation.

The Great Escaper is the las bow for both these acting icons; Michael Caine has said he is now retired while Glenda Jackson passed away nine months after filming. They both leave a tremendous body of work that ends on a significant high.