BY ROGER WATSON
If you have a tendency towards depression, your lifelong marriage is on the rocks or if there are family skeletons that have long been locked up in a cupboard, this is not the film for you. Like most of the films in which he stars these days, this is another ‘Jim Broadbent and some other people’ film, such is the extent to which he overshadows, or is allowed to overshadow, the rest of the cast. However, his wife of many years is played admirably by Penelope Wilton.
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is about a long walk from Devon to Berwick-upon-Tweed made by the elderly and retired Harold Fry, played by Broadbent. The premise of the film, the reason for the long walk, is somewhat unlikely and the plot lurches rather than flows with many flashbacks and cinematic sidebars.
An advert for the English Tourist Board it is not, as Harold makes his long walk, the eponymous ‘pilgrimage’, along lonely country lanes and beside busy, litter-strewn and unkempt dual carriageways. The scenes in the towns he passes through are a chewing gum dot and pigeon dropping views of these towns. Bucolic scenes are sparse, and even then, the lighting, the weather and the camera angles convey a sense of dreariness. But the film is compelling, and you never get the feeling that it is time to get up and leave the cinema.
Harold, who lives in Devon, receives a letter from an old work colleague ‘Queenie’ who is dying in a hospice in Berwick-upon-Tweed. He decides that if he tells her to wait and then walks instead of driving there that she will stay alive. He also believes that he can save her. Leaving his mobile phone behind, he goes without telling his wife, leading to some anguish-ridden scenes back home until she hears from him. When she does hear from him there are recriminations and tears which she regrets as soon as she puts the phone down.
The pilgrimage is an excuse to spin out the back story. What is Harold’s connection to his female former colleague? What had happened to their son who features often in the flashbacks? Along the way, Harold encounters a motley assortment of eccentric waifs and strays which led Peter Hitchens in his comment on the film to title it: The unlikely Britain of Harold’s pilgrimage…. An encounter with a young man in a pub who takes his photograph leads to an appearance on the front page of a local newspaper and then on television, until Harold is recognised wherever he goes and begins, unwittingly and unwillingly, to gather a band of fellow ‘pilgrims’.
These are a noisy lot who march alongside him and to whom free pizzas arrive and special ‘Pilgrim’ t-shirts are supplied. The rare moments of levity all feature the pilgrims. Inevitably and predictably, Harold’s discomfort with the situation and especially the publicity leads to a parting of the ways, and he continues the journey on foot alone.
Very close to the end he nearly gives up (surprised?) and his wife, who has a change of heart (surprised?) encourages him to go on. Does Harold continue the pilgrimage? Does he see Queenie? It would be nothing but an ungenerous spoiler alert to tell you what happens when the film ends.
Just be glad that it does.
Roger Watson is a Registered Nurse and Editor-in-Chief of Nurse Education in Practice.