The Great Escaper
Michael Caine. Glenda Jackson. Like Dame Maggie Smith, pop them into a movie and watch them work magic infront of the camera. Put them in a movie together — perfection.
Based on a true story, Michael Caine and Glenda Jackson play a married couple in a nursing home somewhere in seasidey England, Bernard and Rene Jordan. Having literally missed the veterans organised tour boat for the 70th D-Day Landings reunion, with his wife’s loving and forceful encouragement, Bernard does a bunk and is soon on his way to the beaches of the France.
Much of his journey is about who he meets along the way as well as his search for peace with himself and his war memories/PTSD concerning his feeling responsible for the death of his friend as well as his helping others to find peace with their was memories too. Incredibly nuanced and partly told in flashbacks with their ‘younger’ selves, the production team have done an incredible job in creating a life outside this film for the main protagonists, with boxes of memorabilia, family photographs and the look of their rooms within the nursing home.
Beautifully acted and carried along, whilst this is very personal, I’m not sure it treats veterans fairly. The basic message is, when looking at 5000 young men dead from the Landings as a sea of white military grave markers in a cemetery: ‘what a waste of life’. And it is, of lives unlived, of losses and being missed from others lives. Yet, in its focus on the trauma of war, the film misses the wider point that the Second World War had a point and purpose, and was justly restoring freedom to oppressed people and stopping fascism from engulfing the world and killing off anyone they didn’t want around, (which was an awful lot of people). I get that the character is bewailing the loss of his peers and friend, but at the same time it means the great sacrifices made for World War Two, (both from Caine’s character and the friend he makes along the way) are pretty much ignored and almost trivialised into we shouldn’t have fought World War Two because war is bad. The friend’s bombing of Caen is due to personal reasons made comparable with the bombing of Dresden, but strangely silent is why they needed to desperately bomb Caen in the first place. Who or what were they trying to stop? Here the movie almost seems to say is that World War Two shouldn’t have been fought — and well history shows us how the appeasement policy worked out in the 1930’s.
That sacrifice and necessity for fighting back, for justice, for stopping Hitler are embodied in the real life veterans in the background as extras and in the late Queen Elizabeth, who famously got to do her bit. The film overall seems skewed towards the loss, rather than the bigger picture — that they were fighting for something which was necessary, needful, right. I couldn’t help but wonder why the UK (particularly England) still makes so many movies set around World War Two? (National psyche outworking?)
Intriguingly they meet some former German soldiers along the way. Bernard has been very prejudiced towards all things German up until this point. Here he seems to forget all of that and suddenly be really open and tolerant. Neatly sidestepped too is the fact that any of the former soldiers could have been actual Nazi supporters. Bernard’s own nightmares and PTSD enable him to help a guilt laden German soldier here, as well as his friend for the road and an Iraq War veteran accompanying them. I’m not against tolerance or the emotional warmth of the scene, just it seems to be a clunky emotional shift in a film which is overall very nuanced and often leaves the viewer with unanswered questions and threads to think about. For example, children are never mentioned — giving an extra layer of how precious the couple are to each other.
Meanwhile, back in the UK, Rene rises above the dismal elder care system and often rudimentary and patronising ways we treat our elders as they grow frail. Fully competent, although physically frail, she keeps Bernard’s secret long enough to give him time to ‘escape’ and whilst the nursing home staff flap about protocol, calmly tells them all they need to know and smugly tucks into delicious fish and chips! Fighting Angina, she dances to jazz, reminisces about her favourite flowers and romance with Bernard, their love of pet poodles, as well as comforting him in his survivor guilt. As well as sorting out Bernard’s mess (she’s the tidy one), she comforts an abrasive new care worker, providing some motherly love and wisdom, as well as life hacks and beauty tips. (At the same time this is not all care and nursing homes, and some places did and continue to provide amazing work — perhaps this is where the film goes into stereotype a bit here). Overall there’s a hidden backstory about what it means to be an elder in the UK, on how to age with dignity and humanity — despite the care system around you — and how ‘escapee’ Bernard is almost treated like a naughty child to begin with.
Whilst more could have been said about survivor guilt, and what it means to be a survivor from a war, I want to applaud Michael Caine and Glenda Jackson for the charm, vivacity, class, dignity, fullness, depth and emotional pull they bring to these roles. I’m here for the elder banter — and so glad they got to snog at the end. While should their younger selves have all the fun?
(Loved too an elder French lady offering heartfelt thanks to the veterans for their service, and the Americans who pay for everything and bring the wine!) Yes more could have been focused on that service too — although Caine’s character would not see it like that, he was focused on the loss of his friend, blaming himself, rather than the service he had given to and for others. And what a service it was — the choppy sea launch of tanks onto the hedgehog and wire protected and gun covered beaches is an impressive feat — it was so arduous and yet they did it. Whilst not developed here, this is part of the charm — Caine’s Bernard is a reluctant, abashed hero, yet hero and survivor he is.
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