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05/18/2017 12:01 AMRated R
During war, those left behind must get on with their lives, even as their neighborhoods are being decimated. When Their Finest opens, Catlin Cole, a young Welsh woman, winds her way through London’s rubble to interview for a job. Gemma Arterton (The Girl with All the Gifts, Quantum of Solace), as Catlin, does a lot of walking through World War II’s devastated city, sometimes self- absorbed, sometimes waking up to the death around her. Where’s the comedy in that? As it happens, she stumbles on an unusual job. The Ministry of Information, film division, is creating a propaganda story to “inspire a nation,” and their motives aren’t noble. Catlin and two others must embellish a true story without heroes and turn it into a drama to capture the hearts of the British and bring the producers profit and attention.
Enter Bill Nighy, playing a narcissistic aging actor, Ambrose Hilliard, who hasn’t yet faced his fading glory. What is Bill Nighy of Love Actually and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, with his signature snort for a laugh, doing in a World War II film that continuously explodes bombs in the background? He is, as usual, doing what he does best, interjecting his appealing duality of jaunty humor and underplayed solemnity into broadening a character and boosting a film’s appeal.
In one of his sharpest scenes, he tries to convince Catlin to return to work after she has suffered a huge loss. He asks, when she refuses, “Wouldn’t that be giving death dominion over life?”
He reins in his campy persona, and, with no lofty tone, just plain honesty, delivers the crux of the film. Life, with all its twists and turns, is meant to be honored.
Danish Director Lone Scherfig of An Education and The Riot Club mingles genres, using comedy in the face of war, traditional romance between Catlin and her co-writer, Buckley—played deftly by a quick-witted Sam Claflin (The Riot Club, The Hunger Games, Part 1 and 2)—much drama, and even melodrama lathered onto the propaganda film. Nighy stitches all parts together, maneuvering from one to the next.
The set ups for the film-within-the-film take too much time, but still don’t distract from the multiple happenings. Catlin struggles (Gemma appropriately pouts like a teary-eyed ingénue) with her less-than-loving husband and Buckley’s attention. Rachael Stirling (TV’s The Bletchley Circle, Detectorists) takes a turn as a strident Phyl Moore, who adds some unexpected bits of wisdom, making them memorable by using her sturdy voice to counteract her porcelain face. Henry Goodman (Notting Hill, Taking Woodstock) as Gabriel Baker, stays in the background, but sears through the action with a profound presence. Jeremy Irons (Reversal of Fortune, TV’s The Borgias) appears as the Secretary of War, an odd addition, since he’s on screen momentarily. One wonders about his motivation to play the slim part.
Catlin discovers later how much she has affected others. She sits between two viewers in the theater, watching the completed film. The others laugh, cry, cheer, and gasp at her words, and find a purpose or an escape from the realities of war. Here, they can respond freely to their losses and, at the same time, forget their sorrows. The simple truth of Their Finest is that even those at their less-than-finest or most flawed can still create something that will help lift up others.
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