062Y55A03 24/03 Mrs. Henderson, WW2, Good Movies

I said I wanted to show the same movie to two classes because I was sure that the reactions would be different and they were, to a certain extent. What ended up being completely different was where the discussion ended up going.

The Monday class ran into such a different direction that I would like each of you to read it as well as this one. You will find it posted under the heading of062Y55AFX 23/03. I have also asked them to read this one because we didn't talk about any of this stuff at all in that class and yet it all came about from the same movie.

We got a little more involved in discussing the actual qualities of the film and what makes a good movie or bad one.

Although, of course, not everyone like the movie (its pretty hard to find a movie, a book or a poem that everyone will agree or disagree on), I think that, in the end, we did conclude that this had been a good movie. Being a good movie does not necessarily mean that we'll like it, of course.

One of the reasons for calling Mrs. Henderson Presents a good movie was its breadth. In this case the word breadth means all the different things it presented. Of course, just because a movie present lots of ideas does not in itself prove its a good movie either. It could end up being too broad and just leaving us confused. Or never actually making any particular point at all.

But a good movie is one which presents different issue in a subtle way. By subtle what is meant is not being too obvious or, as I called it, in yer face. This movie brought in not just the things I had asked you to think about: sexism, ageism etc. but the whole (almost) vanished world of British class privilege, language and the futility of war. Those scenes where Mrs. Henderson went to visit her son in France were very subtly done.

Her son could have been buried in the local church yard or a family grave in England. But instead, all over Europe and the Pacific, there are these huge war graveyards set out as reminders to us of what war is really about. Often the are constructed at the sight of different particular battles. We might read in a book that 60,000 soldiers died in a particular battle but the number don't make much of an impact.

Yet, when we go and visit a war grave site there will 60,000 graves all set out in identical rows and rows of headstones and stretching across the quiet countryside. It is impossible for anyone to stand in the middle of one of them and not feel how stupid and obscene and even immoral the idea of war is. Especially as so many of them don't actually have a name on them: they just say "The grave of an unknown soldier". This means that there wasn't enough of a body left for anyone to recognise it. It was just a collection of bits and pieces of flesh and, without a uniform no-one could even tell which side it had fought on.

Also, rather subtly done was when Mrs. Henderson asks the soldier who brings her something to stand on where he is from and he says America: "Oh, America" she says "Strange people. Lovely manners." These few words actually said so much about colonialism and the British attitude towards America that a whole article could be written about it, yet it was approximately 2 seconds in length and easily missed.

The other things that made this a good movie was that it strove for realism. Mrs. Henderson was not a beautiful young woman and Mr. Van Damme was short, fat and elderly. Yet there was no doubt that this too, was a story of a love affair. A love story that challenged all our ideas about older people and our own ageism. The scenes of Mrs. Henderson standing naked in front of her mirror playing with the feathered fans were cut with scenes of the young and doomed girl who was doing the same in front of an appreciative audience.This was, in fact, one of the saddest scenes in the whole movie and, if we think about what it was actually saying we could also write an essay about this - even though it made several people actually laugh out loud.

Actually, I think it was this scene that got us talking about the whole subject of The Hollywood Dream, and societies acceptance of old men married to twenty year olds but its outrage if an old lady marries a young man of 20.

In fact, it was the number of things and the different subjects that were brought up, and the disagreements about the movie which all went to prove the point: this really was a good movie.
Any movie that makes us think - either positively or negatively -, that challenges us, that presents things we haven't thought about before, that teaches us something, that shows a different part of life to us that we didn't know existed....that's a good movie.

So, love it, hate it or be unable to make up your mind. Mrs. Henderson Presents showed what makes a good movie.

Finally: I was amused that so many of you couldn't understand much of the dialogue. The other thing about this movie was that it presented the English language as it is supposed to be spoken. Actor Judy Dench who played Mrs. Henderson is a very famous and highly regarded actor and her diction in this movie was wonderful - as was that of Bob Hoskins, equally famous and a wonderful actor. The way they both spoke is the kind of precise, cultured and educated English that was once the standard that elevated those that spoke it far above those who spoke it any other way.Yet it was almost incomprehensible to most of you. Ahh, that says a lot too!

Vocabulary:
catch-phrase...a phrase that becomes popular for a period of time then disappears
trashy...rubbishy; bad; second-rate
toy-boy...the very young sexual partner of a much older woman
protagonist...the main her or heroine of a story
the Hollywood Dream...a fantasy world that exists nowhere except in movies
in-yer-face...something very obvious; impossible not to understand or to ignore
inconclusive...room for doubt; impossible to make a definite conclusion about
objective...presenting the facts without sentiment or trying to influence us
subjective...presented with the intention of making us think a certain way; propaganda
class distinctions...differences in social divisions