Sandra and Brian in FOR LOVE & LIFE: NO ORDINARRY CHAMPAIGN. Courtesy of Amazon/MGM Studios
FOR LOVE & LIFE: NO ORDINARY CAMPAIGN is a moving documentary about one couple’s fight for legislative changes that could offer hope and life to anyone battling ALS, commonly called Lou Gehrig’s Disease. This fine documentary follows Brian Wallach and his wife Sandra, in the aftermath of his ALS diagnosis, as they fight both the disease and the barriers to treatment that all those with ALS face, a battle they fight with courage, energy, creativity and hope.
Remember the “ice bucket challenge?” Yeah, they are the ones who created that.
At age 37, Brian Wallach was on top of the world, with the rosiest future, awaiting the birth of his second child with his wife Sandra. The couple had met while working on a progressive political campaign, and they seemed to be the perfect match. With a new job inside government, Brian’s future was bright and the world was his oyster. Until it wasn’t.
What changed everything was Brian’s diagnosis with ALS. Even more devastating was the short time he was given to live – mere months. As one of the many doctors featured in the film noted, ALS is not as uncommon as people think and it progresses quickly. And it’s prognosis is not just dim – it is 100% fatal.
But Brian and Sandra were no ordinary couple, and faced with this devastating news, they did what they do best: they got busy – crafting legislation to remove barriers to benefits and potentially life-saving drugs and treatments, and building a movement to fund that effort, and raise awareness. It was no ordinary campaign, but one his life might depend on.
In director Christopher Burke’s well-made and eye-opening documentary, which runs a brisk hour and 23 minutes, we learn a lot about the disease commonly called Lou Gehrig’s disease, including that it is far more common than thought and far less likely to be linked to a family history. We also learn, shockingly, that the government requires those diagnosed with this fast moving disease to wait weeks for benefits – for no logical reason. The result is that ALS patients lose a lot of ground before they can even get started on fighting it. Further, there are restrictions on accessing experimental medicines and treatments, even though the disease is always fatal, taking away from ALS patients the power to make their own choice about the risks. These two barriers are what this brave, creative, determined couple turned their skills towards.
And skills they do have. This couple know the ins-and-outs of getting things done in government like few others, and it is inspiring to watch them work. Both are powerhouses of determination but they also exude charm and appeal, along with an uplifting optimism despite daunting odds. Still, they are up against the ticking clock of the disease. Resourceful and determined, they were both good at finding ways to extend his time – going far beyond what was originally predicted – but they could not stop that clock, which kept whittling away at Brian’s physical abilities.
Among the familiar faces you will see in this skillfully-constructed documentary as President Obama, and you get the sense that they are a well-liked and well-respected couple, and we quickly fall under their spell too. The documentary offers a good mix of expert interviews, footage of the couple in action on this campaign, plus looks back at their youth and their love story. There are also quiet moments of reflection for each of them, as they grapple with the situation.
The resulting documentary is admirable, and more inspiring than you might expect, along with the heartbreak, in a portrait of a couple who just won’t give up – for themselves or others facing ALS.
FOR LOVE & LIFE: NO ORDINARY CAMPAIGN is available streaming starting Tuesday, May 28, on Amazon Prime.
Mid-century high fashion and an irresistibly charming Lesley Manville add sparkle to the sweet, light-as-air MRS HARRIS GOES TO PARIS, an uplifting tale in which an older British house cleaner falls in love with a Dior dress and decides she must have one of her own. It is a grown-up fairy-tale that fits neatly into a familiar genre of British films dealing with the divide between the working class and the aristocratic one. Set in 1957, MRS HARRIS GOES TO PARIS also showcases mid-century couture fashion, with recreations of actual Christian Dior period dress designs, with other visual delights by costume designer Jenny Beavan, the creative force behind the fashions in last year’s CRUELLA.
An outstanding and nuanced performance by Lesley Manville lifts this film, and along with the wonderful mid-century period fashions, is the major enjoyment and reason to see this film, which is a sweet but unsurprising feel-good fantasy, despite a team of writers who tried to interject a little reality, with mixed results. Fans of Mike Leigh’s films and British dramas already know how excellent the talented Lesley Manville is, but she gained some wider recognition for her Oscar-nominated turn in PHANTON THREAD and hopefully with this film, that rise in recognition will continue.
In 1957 London, Ada Harris (Lesley Manville) has been waiting for her beloved husband Eddie to return from WWII, ever since the plane he was flying was shot down. Twelve years later, he still is listed as missing-in-action and Mrs Harris continues to hope for his return, as she ekes out a living by cheerfully cleaning the homes of more affluent people who hardly have any awareness of her beyond her job. The days of this sweet, kindly, unassuming working-class woman revolve around her work and life in her tiny basement apartment, although her lively best friend, neighbor and fellow cleaner Vi (Ellen Thomas) tries to draw her out.
One day, while cleaning the home of an aristocratic but cash-strapped client, the wife (Anna Chancellor) shows Mrs. Harris a beautiful Dior dress she just bought for an upcoming social event, despite being several weeks in arrears to her cleaner, a 500-pound purchase she plans to conceal from her husband. Instantly, Mrs Harris is smitten by the dazzling dress, and despite the high price, she determines to buy one for herself, as her one splurge in her drab life.
That she has nowhere to wear such a fancy dress does not matter to Mrs Harris. She sets out to scrimp and scrub to raise the money to buy her own Dior couture dress, despite the absurdity of a working-class cleaner spending her money to own such a expensive frock. That she has nowhere to wear a couture dress is brought up to her over and over again as she shares her dream, but it does nothing to dampen her ambition or ardor. With help from with her friend Vi (Ellen Thomas) and a roguish Irish bookie named Archie (Jason Isaacs), Mrs Harris finds a way to try to make her dream come through. After a few set-backs and some strokes of good luck, Mrs Harris does head for Paris and the House of Dior.
There is a lot of wish-fulfillment fantasy in director Anthony Fabian’s tale of later-life dreams, based on the 1958 novel by Paul Gallico. This is not the first filmed adaptation of Gallico’s story – in fact, it is one of several tellings of this working-class, middle-age fantasy. However, co-writers Carroll Cartwright, Olivia Hetreed and Keith Thompson worked on the script to inject some surprising, even sobering, moments of reality into the fairy tale sweetness, although with mixed results.
One of the refreshing parts of this story is Mrs. Harris’ single ambition. The down-to-earth Londoner only dreams of owning a fabulous dress, not remaking her life, social-climbing or finding late-life love. This gives her a freshness and grounding that Manville uses to give the character depth as well as making her lovable and inspirational. Of course, some of those other possibilities are raised along the way, but Manville’s performance elevates the character above the script.
Once in Paris, some of the script’s mix of reality and fantasy crops up, with the clueless, optimistic Mrs. Harris having no idea how to even get to House of Dior, much less any awareness of the audacity of her plan to simply walk in. But Manville ensures we can’t help both believe what happens and be charmed and amused by her character’s pluck, as her good-natured directness and kindness win her allies to help her to do just that.
But there are obstacles to overcome. Isabelle Huppert plays Dior’s stern manager and gatekeeper, Claudine Colbert, who tries to head off the working-class widow when Ada Harris tries to sit in on a showing of the new Dior collection. Huppert’s gatekeeper is overruled by a wealthy patron, the Marquis de Chassagne (Lambert Wilson), an Anglophile widower, who offers Mrs. Harris a spot as his plus-one as well as his arm, and by the surprising fact that the charwoman is planning to pay with cash – and flashes the bills to prove it – which persuades Dior’s accountant Andre (Lucas Bravo, EMILY IN PARIS) and even the designer himself (Philippe Bertin) to let her in, as cash-flow has been a bit of an issue of late.
Of course, we get a fashion show, and here costume designer Jenny Beavan gets to shine as audiences are treated to eye-candy in the form of diverse and gorgeous models in flood of beautiful period Dior couture, dresses recreated with the cooperation of House of Dior from their archival collections. Beavan supplements those visual delights with her own luscious designs, making the whole Paris sequence particularly colorful and visually pleasing.
Mrs. Harris expected she could pick out her couture frock and then zip back home, clueless about the need for fittings for the custom dress. But like in any good fairy tale, she gets help. Accountant Andre who offers her the use of his absent sister’s room in the Montmartre apartment they share, and she gets a ride there from model Natasha (Alba Baptista), whom the kindly Englishwoman helped when the model stumbled while rushing into the design house entrance, and who it turns out is the “face of Dior.” While arriving for daily fittings, Mrs. Harris endears herself to the Dior staff, particularly the seamstresses and ordinary workers (and being handy with a needle herself, even helps out a bit), becoming a kind of folk hero to them. However, the top tailor, Monsieur Carré (Bertrand Poncet), is less taken with the frank British cleaner, who makes no attempt to conceal her working class background, but Mrs. Harris is aided by showroom assistant Marguerite (Roxane Duran) who sees the positive effect the unstoppable Ada Harris has on the staff, and intercedes between the haughty master fitter and the working-class client.
Isabelle Huppert’s character is Mrs Harris’ nemesis but ironically, Manville nabbed her Oscar nom for her performance as a similarly chilly gatekeeper to a house of fashion in PHANTOM THREAD. An indication of Manville’s remarkable level of acting skill is in the smooth ease with which she fits into each role. While some have long been well aware of Manville’s considerable talents, PHANTOM THREAD raised the underappreciated Manville’s profile more generally, and hopefully she will at some point gain the same kind of recognition given similar talents like Judi Dench and Helen Mirren. In fact Manville’s performance far exceeds the film she’s in, exploring nuances and aspects of that character well beyond the simple plot.
All the supporting cast are good, although Huppert’s character is so brittle that she does not work as well as a foil for Manville as might be hoped. Lambert Wilson’s Marquis offers a hint of romantic possibility for Mrs Harris, and Lucas Bravo as shy accountant Andre and Alba Baptista as model Natasha offer a little budding romance, although their discussions of Sartre veer rather towards cringe-worthy. Ellen Thomas as Ada’s Caribbean-born pal and Jason Isaacs as an Irish charmer do well as Ada’s friends, although hampered by some unfortunate datedness in the characters.
MRS. HARRIS GOES TO PARIS is a feel-good, all-ages tale with an uplifting and inspiring message, that might be too saccharine for some but which is elevated tremendously by a wonderful performance by Lesley Manville and also is filled with gorgeous delights for fashionistas.
MRS HARRIS GOES TO PARIS opens in theaters on Friday, July 15.
Mark Rylance as Maurice Flitcroft in THE PHANTOM OF THE OPEN. Photo credit Nick Wall. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
In the charming true-story comedy PHANTOM OF THE OPEN, Mark Rylance plays the worst golfer in British Open history, Maurice Flitcroft, a middle-aged working class bloke who accidentally got into the storied competition, and then became a folk hero for trying to do it again and again, haunting the tournament. Mark Rylance (BRIDGE OF SPIES) and Sally Hawkins (THE SHAPE OF WATER), as Flitcroft’s supportive wife Jean, are both absolute charmers in this very funny yet uplifting British comedy about a very British eccentric who believed anything was possible. Although Flitcroft’s performance in the British Open earned him the moniker “worst golfer in the world,” it actually was the first round of golf Flitcroft had ever played, having just taken up the sport after being laid off from his job as a crane operator, another amazing aspect of this unlikely true story.
No need for an interest in golf to be tickled by this hilarious yet warm stranger-than-fiction tale, but it does help if you are charmed by British eccentrics like the irrepressible Flitcroft. PHANTOM OF THE OPEN features a pair of outstanding British actors who bring the quirky personalities in this unlikely true story to life. Like THE DUKE, another true-story tale about an eccentric Brit that stars a pair of great British actors, Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren, much of PHANTOM OF THE OPEN’s success rests those great actors leading it. Rylance and Hawkins are indeed marvelous in this appealing comedy, with Mark Rylance’s sweet, unassuming but determined Maurice Flitcroft and Sally Hawkins’ equally optimistic, supportive wife Jean making a very winning pair. The hilarious film succeeds comedically but the story is as inspiring and warm as it is funny, an uplifting, heart-warming story, about the Little Man battling class bias and daring to chase his impossible dreams, no matter the odds.
Underdog comedies like this tend to follow some familiar paths but director Craig Roberts interjects freshness and fun, as well as visual delight, with several comical, charming dream-like fantasy sequences, daydreams where the moon in the night sky becomes a giant golf ball or a smiling Flitcroft is propelled into space by a giant golf club. The fantasy flights are sprinkled throughout the film, adding spikes of color (besides Flitcroft’s comically loud golf attire) and a little magic.
Before playing in the British Open, Flitcroft (Rylance) had only ever practiced his golf strokes on the beach and in makeshift set-ups. Maurice Flitcroft had grown up in a working class family in northern England where everyone was expected to go to work in the mines. Being a pro golfer was not something working class boys aspired to do. But WWII sent the boy off to a country estate, like so many other city children, for his safety from wartime bombings. There the young Maurice was asked a question no one had ever asked him before: what do you want to be when you grow up? The question changed the way Flitcroft saw the world, making him someone who believed in dreaming big, no matter who you are.
Life and love intervened, when he fell for Jean (Sally Hawkins), a secretary and part-time theater director. The likable, easy-going Flitcroft’s dreams now shifted to encouraging his stepson and his twin boys to dream big, while he took work in the mining industry, becoming a crane operator. The twins, Gene (Christian Lees) and James (Jonah Lees), take an unconventional path but grown stepson Michael (Jake Davies) finds success in the business side of mining. When the middle-aged Maurice is laid off from his job, his wife encourages him to finally follow his own dreams. A chance viewing of the British Open on TV sparks the idea that he could become a pro golfer – even though he’s never played the game.
There is something too crazy to be true in this idea but the fact that there really was a Maurice Flitcroft is part of why this film is both so funny and so appealing. Maurice’s practice sessions encourage his belief in himself but he needs access to a golf course. Turned down for membership in the local country club, the plucky Brit enters the 1976 British Open, partly as a way to access a golf course. He doesn’t quite get the significance of his decision.
That Flitcroft gets in is both a mistake and a fluke. Rhys Ifans plays a British Open official, Keith Mackenzie, who is appalled by Flitcrof’ts appallingly-bad performance on the links, becomes determined to keep him out of future tournaments. At home, his stepson James is appalled and embarrassed by his dad’s sudden “fame,” while the rest of the family can’t see a problem.
A kind of cat-and-mouse face-off develops between Rhys Ifans’ gatekeeper official Mackenzie and Rylance’s unstoppable Flitcroft, who tries various ways to sneak back into the British Open, often with the aid of a pal with a shady past. It makes for laugh-out-loud comedy, and director Roberts and the cast make the most of that in some classic-comedy bits. But the director’s imaginative fantasy sequences add a contemporary feel and a touch of magic and magical realism.
Mark Rylance plays this odd character with considerable sweetness and appeal, a man whose determination just can’t be undermined by the facts. Themes about class and snobbery in golf run through this film, as well as a Don Quixote thread, both of which the director and cast handle with a perfect touch which brings out both the humor and a spirit of human hopefulness. In Flitcroft’s world, dreams conquer all, as he repeats little inspirational mantras to himself. His limitless optimism sparks some loopy, creative stunts and wins him admiration from others, particularly amateur golfers.
A complete charmer, PHANTOM OF THE OPEN is light and lively fun, with wonderful warm performances by the marvelous Mark Rylance and Sally Hawkins, and filled with both hilarious moments and warm uplift as well as delightful, colorful flights of visual fantasy.
Left to right: Tracy Edwards and Mikaela Von Koskull, in MAIDEN. Courtesy of Tracy Edwards and Sony Pictures Classics.
Surprisingly exciting, with the narrative drive of a fiction film, the documentary MAIDEN tells the epic tale of the first all-women yachting crew to challenge the men in an around-the-world sailing race. With the spirit of high adventure, this documentary follows a young British woman, skipper Tracy Edwards, and her scrappy international crew as they take on the all-boys’ club world of yachting in the 1989-1990 Whitbread Round the World Race. This polished documentary is filled with exciting footage of the grueling, nine-months-long sailing race, as the women shatter assumptions about what women can do, in the fiercely competitive, physically-demanding world of sail racing. The docu also features archival interviews with Edwards and her crew, their opponents in the race, news footage and interview, combined with present-day interviews of Edwards and others.
The documentary’s title MAIDEN is the
name of the sailboat that the crew led by British Tracy Edward and
her international crew entered in the Whitbread race. It was a clever
choice for a name, referencing the all-female crew, the re-built
sailing ships’ maiden voyage, and their first-ever challenge to the
all-male world of sail racing. The media eagerly followed the women’s
attempt to break in to that highly-sexist world, but often with a
gleefully expectation of failure. That changed to astonishment, when
the determined women upended that pre-conceived notion.
Young Tracy Edwards fell in love with
sailing in an era when women were excluded routinely from crews.
Edwards talked her way on to her first crew by offering to serve as
ship’s cook, although she was a rarity even in that lowly position.
Despite the opposition, she managed to learn the craft largely on her
own. After being repeatedly being excluded from joining an all-male
crew in the era’s hyper-male boys club of competitive sailing, the
frustrated young Brit decided to form an all-women crew to compete in
the 1989-1990 Whitbread around-the-world sailing race. Tracy Edwards
figured there were other women out there who were skilled sailors but
who also had been relegated only to the role of ship’s cook.
Boy, was she right! When she put out
the call for women to join the yachting crew, highly-capable women
sailors showed up from around the world. Despite a lack of funding,
opposition from racing officials and fellow yachting crews,
false-starts in melding a team, and a crisis shortly before the
race’s start, these admirable women came together to get the job
done. Through pulse-pounding sailing footage, the docu details the
the Whitbread race, a grueling competition, which required the
competing crews to cover 33,000 miles spanning the globe in three
stages over a total of nine months.
MAIDEN is an inspiring underdog tale, a story of determination and grit against myriad enormous challenges. No one made things easy for this tough team of resourceful women. The thrilling documentary MAIDEN tells their story,in entertaining fashion, in the tradition of tales of high adventure long associated with the sea.
Director Alex Holmes skillfully builds
drama in telling the story of this little-known race. The sea-going
sequences are undeniably thrilling and watching these young women
scramble to meet the force of the sea is exciting. The women faced
daunting conditions at sea but hostility in the yachting and sports
worlds as well. It is amazing to see the amount of sexism these
women, who only wanted the chance to sail, faced in the late 1980s.
The documentary includes jarring archival footage of sports
commentators and sailing officials disparaging the women and news
footage of Edwards diplomatically responding to the attacks.
The press were eager to cover the
all-women team, but often with a smug expectation they would fail.
The media were happy to put the photogenic Edwards on camera, but
this tiny, pretty young woman was also bold and outspoken Edwards, a
small woman with an iron will who would not back down.
Media flocked to cover the story, many
clearly revealing their sexist bias, peppering their coverage with
mocking comments about mused makeup, cat-fights, and silly musings
about who would fix the engine. While it sounds odd to contemporary
ears to hear Edwards refer to herself as a girl or to decline to call
herself a feminist, it is clear her focus is on breaking down
barriers to women in sailing and that nothing will stop her, not the
sea and not the men in media, sports organizations or the other crews
in the race.
But tiny but mighty Edwards and her
talented crew had a steel in them that the media didn’t guess but
which comes across clearly. The crew of the Maiden set out with the
goal only to finish the race, keenly aware that if they did not it
would negatively impact women sailors ever after, but they did much
more. It wasn’t easy, as the documentary shows, and the women faced
both the challenge of finding sponsors, rebuilding a dilapidated sail
boat, and public ridicule and more. And then they faced the
life-threatening, unpredictable challenges of the sea.
MAIDEN is a tale of determination and high adventure, showing that you can’t keep a good woman down. It opens Friday, July 19, at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Cinema.
