Their Finest (4½ Stars)

In summer 2017 two films were shown in the cinemas about the battle of Dunkirk. This is the better of the two. To be precise, "Their Finest" is a film about a film about Dunkirk, but it's still better than Christopher Nolan's effort. It's less pretentious, it's more emotional and it has a strong feminist message.

The film within a film is called "The Nancy Starling". It's about twin sisters, Rose and Lily, who sail to Dunkirk with their drunken father to rescue Rose's boyfriend Johnny. At the beach they don't just pick up Johnny, they take ten soldiers and an American reporter on board, the maximum their boat can hold. The boat can't sail home because a rope is tangled in its propeller. Both Johnny and the girls' father are killed by aircraft fire while trying to free the propeller. Rose is a brave English girl and doesn't let her sorrow slow her down. She dives below water and cuts the propeller free.

The film itself is about the struggles of the screenwriter Catrin Cole to make "The Nancy Starling" the film she wants it to be. She's forced to make compromises. In the original script the two sisters left the harbour without their father because they wanted to rescue British soldiers. Johnny had to be added because Catrin was told that no women would be selfless enough to risk their lives for complete strangers. The father had to go along because it was considered unrealistic for women to sail a boat by themselves; they needed a man, even if he was a drunk. To put it in other words, a drunk man is a better captain than a sober woman.

There are many scenes in the film that made me laugh because of the ridiculous male prejudices of the 1940's. I shouldn't laugh. These attitudes might seem like a joke to me 75 years later, but those were the attitudes that women have had to endure for centuries. The women of the 1940's had nothing to laugh about, they had to suffer in silence.

This is an excellent film that I'm sure I shall watch again many times in the future.

Success Rate:  - 0.9

	Order from Amazon.com
	Order from Amazon.co.uk
	Order from Amazon.de