BEFORE: And here's where things get a little tricky, because I don't have to watch this film, if I were to skip it the chain would still work, Ralph Fiennes would then just carry over from "The King's Man" to tomorrow's film. But I choose to include this one, with Matthew Goode carrying over from "The King's Man", because I want to get a few World War II films in before Memorial Day. But the IMDB says this is also a romance film, so there's an argument to be made for saving it for next February - already I can see that it could link to "Easy Virtue", the film I dropped from this year's romance line-up, and also "Quartet", a romance film currently connected to only ONE other romance film, so THIS one could make a connection on the other end. Damn, it's hard to decide on this sort of thing, but for my sake I'm going to treat this as primarily a World War II film and not look back. I'll deal with next February come December and work something out, my linking line-up could look completely different by then, and if not, I'll track down new films to close the gaps.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Their Finest" (Movie #4,056)
THE PLOT: In the aftermath of World War II, a writer forms an unexpected bond with the residents of Guernsey Island when she decides to write a book about their experiences during the war.
AFTER: OK, time for today's history lesson - remember this is primarily a World War II film, the romance bit is in there but let's focus on the learning first. Guernsey is one of the U.K.'s Channel Islands, meaning that it's a British island in the English Channel, and it turns out to be much closer to France than to Britain, so it turns out that it was occupied by Nazis, starting in 1941. The Brits managed to evacuate most the children to the mainland to live with relatives, but the adults stayed behind and endured Nazi occupation, all their livestock was taken for soldiers to eat, and the farmers were told to grow potatoes instead. You know, for German potato salad, Nazis love potato salad with their stolen pork. And if any of the Guernsey residents showed defiance, they were shipped off to camps, and I don't mean summer camps.
The framing story here takes place in 1946, when an author received a letter written by one of the Guernsey residents, asking for the address of a bookshop in London in order to make a purchase - the letter writer had found the author's address in a book he'd bought second-hand, I guess it was the custom back then to write your address in every book you owned, just in case you lost it, and then you could never change houses, or else people wouldn't know where to return the books that you'd lost. (Yeah, this part of the plot is just a bit contrived.). The author, Juliet Ashton, corresponds with the man, Dawsey Adams, tracks down the book he was looking for, but also learns about the secret book club that formed during the war so that some friends had an excuse to get together and eat the last pig that hadn't been taken by the Nazis. They also started a custom of making pies from potatoes and potato peels, which seems a bit weird because they could have just made mashed or fried potatoes, which actually both go better with pork than potato pies do. (Yes, this part of the plot is also quite contrived...)
Of course, Juliet is engaged to a rich American soldier. And of course spending time away from him changes her view on marriage just a bit. And OF COURSE as she learns more about the stories of the Guernsey residents, she finds herself drawn toward Dawsey, who's raising the young daughter of another member, Elizabeth, who appears to be missing, and everyone is anticipating her return, someday. Maybe. Hopefully? Really, this is an excuse to set up a giant love triangle between Juliet, her fiancé Markham, and the down-to-earth farmer raising his surrogate daughter - you can probably guess right where this is leading, provided you've seen a romance film or two or a hundred over the years.
And as we slowly learn the stories of what took place on Guernsey during the years of Nazi occupation, we figure out why the members of the book club didn't want their story to be told, not in the London Times, anyway. But as Juliet gets closer to them, befriends them and learns their secrets, she eventually realizes she HAS to write their story as a book, and she slowly wins them over by pointing out that it should make a cracking good movie about 70 years down the road. Oh, well, by all means, proceed with the book then. Yep, it's another movie about a writer who's writing a book within the movie which will eventually become the popular book on which this movie is based. Wait - no, that's right, I think.
I'm sick of movies about writers writing - you may come to this film for the romance, I'll allow it, but I'm here for the history lesson. Matthew Goode plays Juliet's publisher or agent or something, which is fine, but it's a bit of a waste of his talents. He's got the token gay role here (see also "Jungle Cruise") as any movie made these days about the 1900's to 1940's has to have at least one gay character to prove that they existed back then but were marginalized.
Also starring Lily James (last seen in "Yesterday"), Michael Huisman, Glen Powell (last seen in "Set It Up"), Jessica Brown Findlay (last seen in "Victor Frankenstein"), Katherine Parkinson (last seen in "Pirate Radio"), Tom Courtenay (last seen in "45 Years"), Penelope Wilton (last seen in "Carrington"), Bronagh Gallagher (last seen in "The Personal History of David Copperfield"), Nicolo Pasetti, Clive Merrison, Bernice Stegers (last seen in "My Life in Ruins"), Andy Gathergood (last seen in "The Death of Stalin"), Kit Connor (last seen in "Rocketman"), Florence Keen, Alexa Povah (also last seen in "The King's Man"), Tom Owen (last seen in "Goodbye, Mr. Chips".
RATING: 5 out of 10 bottles of homemade gin
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