Worth: $15.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Michael Caine, Glenda Jackson, John Standing, Victor Oshin
Intro:
… a breezy lightness throughout, but still delivers impactful moments …
We only end up looking back on the road we’ve travelled when we reach its end. Oliver Parker’s latest film The Great Escaper is based on the real-life human interest story of Bernard Jordan, a retired Navy veteran who pulled a Timothy Cavendish and broke out of his nursing home to attend the 70th anniversary D-Day ceremony in June of 2014. It is a reflection on the ways that we ourselves reflect on things, treating the cerebral open wound of war trauma similarly to the unstuck-in-time aesthetic of Slaughterhouse-Five.
The notion of meeting the end of the road applies here in a real-world context as well, as this serves as the swan song for its lead stars Michael Caine (who formally retired in October of 2023) and Glenda Jackson (who sadly passed on in June of the same year). Knowing that one of Caine’s most recent film roles was as an inflation fetish genie in Four Kids and It, it is both comforting and relieving that he made his final bow with something far more worthy of his talents. He shoulders the more melancholic side of memory with a lot of quiet devastation, and while he still offers cheeky charm (like his remarks to a group of drunk Americans), he’s at his best when he’s just… sitting there, contemplating what led dear Bernie to this point.
And yet, even he ends up bowled over by Glenda Jackson as his wife Rene, to the point where her on-screen presence alone is worth the price of admission. Every bit as introspective as Caine, while imbued with enough vim and vigour to power every single projector this film gets shown through, Jackson balances a more positive side of thinking back on past glories with a wry sense of humour and the film’s central, and vital, perspective. One which skewers the doublethink that the older generation is both invincible for having survived wars, yet still feeble because that took place decades ago; it’s the kind of grumbling fire that makes for the better grey pound dramas.
Anchored by their respective emotional power, the film manages as the characters (not just Bernie and Rene, but also John Standing as Air Force vet Arthur, and a breezy lightness throughout, but still delivers impactful moments Victor Oshin as the much younger vet Scott) come to terms with both their own histories and how everyone else has processed them. It’s a composed reckoning against a culture that only views armed conflict in terms of who won, rather than what became of those who came back, if at all. The perverse sensationalism of ‘once again storming the beaches of Normandy’ vs. the personal hell of their minds, and even some of their limbs, still being on those shores.
It is pure synchronicity that this film first saw wide release in the UK the very next day after conflict in Gaza officially became a hot war, but with the current global climate now in yet another line in the sand ‘us or them’ war-time fervour, this film and its message of truly remembering past wars (and how we shouldn’t want to repeat them) feels especially necessary.
The Great Escaper is a cup of tea served with a cheeky splash of harder spirits. Its lead performers allow for a soothing and pleasant romantic experience, while its statements on the nature of war and the ways that both individuals and societies reminisce on those events give the whole package a surprising amount of punch. Both for its stars and one of its main production studios in Pathé UK, it allows them to meet the end of the road not with regret but with accomplishment. We should all be so lucky.
