Watch Another Country For Free

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

This film is ageing brilliantly well. OK, the end might, the chat about accepting your sexuality etc, be very much of its time and of the stage where the film originated, but the film is crisp and, despite its slowness, wonderfully alive. The classically beautiful photography also helps the timeless feel of it. In the scenes of Everett and Firth the film really comes alive, and the actors have hardly since been better. Firth of course has less to do but the strange Firth hallmark reserve - which Tom Ford exploited for A Single Man but for me, in most roles including that one, makes him somehow permanently fake - has not yet set in. Judd, the character, holds himself back but is present in a way that older Firth rarely manages. Everett, without a doubt, has never been better. Which, in itself, is a bit of a tragedy. Its a fantastic role but he is stunningly good, subtle and showy at the same time. No wonder that Orson Welles was impressed. His Guy is insolent, vulnerable, naive, world-wise, cynical, poetic, open, deceptive, gentle and ruthless. I was a bit of an admirer of Everett's work and persona even before seeing this film - he seems one of the last real people out there, in the homogenised, we're all just lovely people, really, fame-game arena - but find to my disappointment that his acting work is too often the least interesting thing about him. Which, truly, is a pity because as this film shows, he really has the goods as an actor - and clearly enough experience and emotional honesty in real life too - to actually really grab us, draw us in and make us feel for him, with him. But in a lot of his work it seems he rarely brings the full package of emotions to work, happy to perform a facet of a man for us - often a rather glib one - rather than a full creature. I'd love to see him do something brave again, as I am sure that the man and the actor he is now could wash the floor with his younger self, in terms of complex, deeply felt emotion.Another Country, with is milieu of extreme constraint, beautifully frames the feeling and behaviour of the boys it observes, and the focus on the endless rituals of the boarding school life also work to remind us how world is out to shape these boys (a kind of an anti-Harry Potter/Trinian's, in that aspect) and works still as a metaphor for society at large. In some ways times have changed less than we'd hope - or less than it looked like it would change, a few decades ago - even if caning is a distant memory. I wanted to give Another Country 9 stars but unfortunately, although the cast in uniformly very strong I feel that the third key role, Guy's love interest James, hasn't dated well and the performance is flat, leaving Everett to do all the work in their scenes. For the film to overcome the slight staginess of the ending and to give real meaning to the innocent way that Guy and James choose to conduct their romance when boys around them are clearly habitually doing much more would have needed an actor who could match Firth and Everett in terms of interpretation of a role. Oh, and people who can be bothered to complain about the old-man make up on Everett at the end - get a life. This is a film, all latex looks fake, even today, how ever much you choose to believe it, for what ever reason.

As far as I can tell, this sums up the lucid moral of the film, for to brush what the film actually contemplates is a risky business. Perhaps it achieves a discreet, demonstrative style in the scenes with the juniors, who may actually be the true Marxist, lilliputian counterweight to the ideological tirades, a style which is best allied with the performances' muted quality. As another reviewer shrewdly noted, one wonders if Colin Firth was ever a boy, that is how haunting a note he strikes, and with a sneer in his voice that maybe outshines even Michael Cane's, given his age. Rupert Everett turns a cautious, elegant performance; have we actually come to appreciate his distinct comic, perhaps signature Wildean, timing (well, better serving him in dramatic films)? But what will stay with me is the first amorous meeting between Benett and Harcourt, the first lines spoken and framed ideally by Elwes' flushed face and the - already enamored - slight twitches that betray him and convey a feeling of unspeakable beauty, a feeling of first -.Excuse me for being rhapsodic, excuse Cary Elwes for afterwards portraying an inexperienced, somewhat floppy youth (yet with a charismatic aura due perhaps to the fact that this is his first role, and with a platonic passivity that retains all the ambiguities of this kind of love). Forget the confusing matter of the film's ideological, biographical, theatrical or what stitches, see how it frames first love (we only come to see a handshake - has a handshake ever been so evocative? - and an embrace, not a kiss, nor a caress) in the premises and remember how wisely the director makes James Harcourt exit: he does not reciprocate Everett's distant salutation.If the film achieves an intuition, I think it is this grim one.Along with stating that thick makeup of Victorian proportions cannot convince the youthful body underneath to be old enough, or irrelevant enough in the U.S.S.R..

You'd think a movie making a point about treason would allow some room for depth and ideas. But this movie is a shallow, wealth and privilege-envy piece. Pretty boys traipse through this would-be drama that adopts the viewpoint of a petulant, oblivious, vain, homosexual snob away at school in Jolly Old. The twee goings-on advance the preposterous premise that Guy Bennett (based on Guy Burgess) went Commie because he was gay, and was thrown out of school before he got to wear his foppish upper-classmen vest. Oh brother! ...oh, and he received a caning once. He was OK with the canings others received as a routine part of the English school system, but HIS caning hurt. This is roughly analogous to saying Guy Bennett became a roadside bandit, a pirate, or an evil scientist because he had a bad experience at Cambridge. Yeah, everyone has a bad experience at Cambridge. As depicted here, Bennett becoming a Communist in response to his social structure is as likely as Martha Stewart becoming a Sumo wrestler after she burnt a soufflé. Bennett is interested in nothing but himself, as played by Rupert Everett. "How dare you think about the script? Just look at those high production values!"

"Another Country" is a hodgepodge of different ideas, social inconsistencies, and covered with an obscure layer of homosexuality. It is a film about nationalism, about education, about love – but it never even scratches the surface of any of these – it just puts them on the table and expects the viewer to "get it". As an outsider looking in, I was confused by the structure of the school, the intertwined love connections, and the purpose behind the bookends with the aging Everett. "Another Country" was dull, trite, and overly presumptuous of itself without giving the viewer any foresight into the world created. It is a dated film about a culture that doesn't exist everywhere, yet oddly the DVD does.Insult my intelligence if you must, but what sort of education were these students receiving? For the course of 90 minutes, students read book nonchalantly, played dress up for the guard, insulted little boys, ran out of windows, spent money, yelled about Marxism, and made out with each other. There was no visible structure; outside of being caught doing something wrong would mean lashes by the "Gods" of the House. There were no teachers, there were no assignments, and there were no exams that one could see, merely the openness to allow these students to do whatever they wanted to with rules that seemed as archaic as this film. Twenty-four years later, being an American with a structured University understanding, I was confused by this example. This was a major issue with this film, because instead of focusing on the underlying themes, I was too caught up in the basic structure of this school. It starts with a "teacher" finding two students making out, but from there these "teachers" become mere spirits of the mind – looming in the background as threats, but never seen. From a believable standpoint, I was disappointed. The confusion muddled the point, and the misunderstanding of how anyone could choose to stay longer merely to become a "God" of a house left the central focus lost in my eyes.With the unexplainable introduction to British education bewildering me at every turn, I must also question the validity of director Marek Kanievska's choice to bookend this film with an aging Everett attempting to explain his reason for being a traitor by using his boyhood school days as an analogy of life and love. Was it necessary to convey the story by using a real historical figure as the narrator? This initially gave me a false impression of what this film would be about. I assumed it would be about his turn to Russia, while instead it focused on his love of Harcourt (a very floppy Cary Elwes) and disgust for hypocritical friends. The use of the bookends felt like it gave the film a more authentic feel at first, but when they were revisited at the end, I felt slightly cheated and still confused. Did the reporter get her story? What story was she after? Should "Another Country" have this many questions upon its conclusion? Perhaps the play was better structured, but as a film adaptation, I must admit it fails.Leading us through the murkiness of "Another Country" are currently well respected actors in the British community. Colin Firth plays the only strong character in this entire film, Tommy Judd. His hatred for everything really exemplified my feelings about this film, which is why I connected to him the most. He was the Salinger-esquire character that was well defined, strong, and understandable. The rest, well, the rest were as disappointing as this film. Everett was as weak as a wet paper towel. His character was unknown, attempting to be himself as well as a character, I kept seeing Everett be Everett – he was never Guy Bennett (Burgess – whatever!). The bewilderment of where Madonna was kept me at bay, but the sure comic genius of the film was that of Cary Elwes playing someone who caught the attention of Everett – somehow. Everett seems to attempt to play a smart, charismatic student that bends the rules and flaunts his homosexuality; Elwes is completely different – if one could even say that. He is awkward, boring, and honestly, a nothing. He is not a character, not Harcourt, not Elwes, nothing. During a first time dinner where Everett attempts to pour out his story about his romantic death of his father, Elwes responds with a grunt of a "No way" or something along those trivial lines. Elwes is reminiscent of a dog in this film, no real motive; he just follows Everett around pushing the plot into another dismal avenue.Overall, "Another Country" was a disappointment. The lack of a focused direction, informative introduction, and defined characters sunk this film before it even had the opportunity to leave port. The characters were abysmal. A pre-Mr. Darcy Firth was fun to watch, but everyone else played themselves out of character, out of entertainment. This was a film about so many ideas that no real idea was able to surface. The onslaught of homosexuality was impressive to see in a film released in 1984, but midway through the feature it became cliché. Having recently viewed Alan Bennett's "The History Boys" as well as read the play, it was tough to watch "Another Country" sink into the water. Why couldn't there be teachers that understood, students that were less forceful with their homosexuality (perhaps just seeing it as the norm), and loves that broke the barriers, instead of jumping out of nowhere. Being a Cannes Best Film nominee, I had high hopes for this film, but the lack of everything solid soured it immediately. Kanievska's direction was more made-for-TV than worth of film. "Another Country" was just another cliché British schoolboy film that went nowhere, gave us lucid characters, and confused us by being too smart than what it is. Could not suggest it to anyone, nor would I! Grade: * out of *****