Mark Farnsworth is currently reviewing selected films from the London Film Festival.
As a child, British director Stephen Poliakoff would drive around with his father at night, looking into rich people’s properties. “I’m curious about the life of those buildings,” he told The Guardian. “From the 1930s right through to the 1950s, the aristocracy and the politicians were running the country from those London townhouses.”
His latest film, “Glorious 39,” a political thriller set in such houses in London and Norfolk on the eve of The Second World War, is certainly voyeuristic. We observe the thousand-year-old Keyes family as they desperately cling to their immense privilege. Poliakoff shows this ancient lineage right from the off; the grown up children’s playground is their ancestral ruins. This is a Narnia-like existence under a crimson sky, or else an eerie omen from the future of the Luftwaffe’s impending Blitz.
Anne, the adopted elder daughter of “the most charming man in England,” the conservative politician Alexander Keyes, is a young starlet featuring in what could be Gainsborough studio melodramas. Alexander seems to prefer the bohemian Anne to his biological children socialite Celia and Ralph, newly promoted to the foreign office. However, it is never clear if Alexander is over-compensating for Anne’s mysterious background, or harbouring a darker family secret altogether.
The controversial question of appeasement seeps through the entire picture like a malignant cancer. Anne throws a lavish dinner party for Alexander’s birthday and the polite chit chat quickly turns to the policy that daren’t speak its name. Hector, a young conservative MP, is positively Churchillian in his condemnation of appeasement, his spirited rant watched coldly by the impenetrable Balcombe, a shadowy government official.
Poliakoff delicately unravels the aftermath of this conversation as the overly “dramatic” Anne is politely but defiantly marginalised while getting embroiled in a monstrous conspiracy that threatens to shatter her cut glass existence. Her flamboyant persona is eroded by sinister cyclists, creepy vicars and over zealous military police that “have the power now to detain anyone indefinitely” – a nod to present day extraordinary rendition.
“Glorious 39” is full of Poliakoff’s trademark lavish visuals and upper class decadence, but it never achieves the shade of black required to be a truly dark thriller. The problem is its 12a rating that renders it more akin to a “Famous Five” novel (How about Five Escape Appeasement?) rather than being a companion to “Riddle In The Sands” or “The 39 Steps.”
The Keyes themselves also hamper the film. Do we really care enough about some over privileged toffs trying to save their idyllic world? When the East End and Coventry were being hammered by the Nazis, the ruling elite were safe in their country estates, scathing about Churchill – that “half-breed American” – who now lead them. Poliakoff tries to portray them as petty and pathetic, but the contrived ending and the revelation of Anne’s highly convenient background robs “Glorious 39” of the rancid climax it richly deserves.
I like your statement: “The controversial question of appeasement seeps through the entire picture like a malignant cancer.” I also like your comment about the detainment scene. A Most Wanted Man (2014) is a good film about detaining terrorists. I wrote a short essay on Glorious 39 called “The Policy of Appeasement.” If you would like to read it, here is the link: https://christopherjohnlindsay.wordpress.com/2015/05/12/glorious-39/