Wetherby (1985)

What a waste of my time!!!

Very Cool!!!

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Besides qualms with the musical score, Wetherby has a killer script, intriguing editing, fantastic acting (Vanessa Redgrave is incredible), and a compelling idea driving the film. The echoes of film noir in the intense, high-contrast lighting and the starkness of the violence was perfect, especially when combined with naked silence. It is more than a story about a disturbed young man who shoots himself in front of an aging school teacher, Jean Travers (Redgrave). That comes early in the film. It is about the psychological consequences for Jean in her life and past, violently revealed through that shocking act. Life can never be normal again. Beneath even the most pleasant veneer lurks sadness, secrets, and dark sexuality.

This is a great film. I just saw it for the first time. The comment above is completely wrong, however. I must set the record straight. The military scenes are not US soldiers, but rather a flashback for Vanessa Redgrave to a love lost. Royal Air Force, sir, in Malay. I whole-heartedly recommend the film. It has a great dramatic score. It also has tackles some real dark ideas about love and life. And it has a pace that doesn't exist anymore in many films, especially those with stars. Great performances from Ian Holm and Tom Wilkinson. Also a fine performance from a very young Joely Richardson (Vanessa Redgrave's daughter), who now stars on FX's Nip Tuck.

A Pinteresque landscape of a movie. Not quite upper upper class, but upper middleclass, educated, intelligent people, endlessly talking, and trying to "relate". An opening scene that jarred me: Redgrave describing the "sly" look of a student in a literature class. I responded to it as a average thirteen year old nerd would. "Please don't call on me, AND PLEASE DON'T DISCUSS MY LOOKS IN THIS CLASS, OR IN ANY PUBLIC FORUM. YOU'RE KILLING, AND EMBARRASSING ME, TEACHER!" This is a young Judi Dench, and Ian Holm no longer twentysomething, entering middle age. I wonder if they could forsee the international superstardom that would be theirs in a few years? The Richardson and Redgrave clan turns out yet another great contribution to the British stage in the delightful Jolley, Vanessa's daughter in real(not reel) life, playing, you guessed it Vanessa as a young girl. If you had any doubt why I rate London over Hollywood watch this movie. Even if you think it's boring, and, "they talk with funny accents" you can see that these people are artists and are so good the "art" hardly shows. It's not supposed to.

David Hare's quiet masterpiece conveys a genuine sense of alienation and dislocation while covering a great deal of social and political ground. It never loses sight of the human story, though; the loneliness of the characters comes through in this startlingly intelligent drama which unfolds slowly, like a flower under time lapse photography. We watch the bloom, flowering and eventual withering of the characters' bodies and minds over several decades of social discord, emotional disappointments and lost dreams.It's stunning how Hare constructs such an involving character study under the framework of a conventional mystery. The inexplicable suicide of a young man draws the viewer in but it's the characters that involve the viewer in a greater mystery of the heart; how did these people get to this point in their lives and the history of a nation? Hare delicately examines the spiritual decay of late-20th century British society and how it impacts all generations, from the haunted post-war generation to the alienated, disconnected contemporary youth. Ultimately both groups are unable to reach out to each other, trapped in the inescapable malaise which spares no-one.Vanessa Redgrave carries this film. In her eyes a dazzling spectrum of emotions infuse her scenes with joy, heartbreak, hopelessness, elation, and everything else in between. It's a brilliantly written film but no words are necessary to understand the despair. It's all in her eyes.