Glorious 39 (2009)

Too much of everything

Just perfect...

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Classic Poliakoff - VERY slow and ponderous, Political with a capital P, and yet strangely watchable. At times it feels more low-rent psychological thriller than period drama and it has a seriously clunky ending with some really terrible acting, but otherwise there are some good bits. It evokes the chilling atmosphere of unease of "The Phoney War" very well.

I'm sorry, but this movie was a pile.Yes, the acting and filming were well done, but anyone who believes that this was in any way suspenseful or a "taut thriller" is WAY too used to old-school, glacially paced British dramas.Heck, I can't say for certain that there was any true drama to this rare combination of political intrigue AND plodding storytelling.There was neither a single twist nor genuinely suspenseful moment right up to the end, which I imagine was supposed to leave us gob-smacked but only served to make us feel good that we were able to predict it about two hours earlier.If you are wavering between this and something else, pick the something else. Even "Monuments Men" is preferable to this film.

I've heard this movie is considered a thriller. This movie is many things but a thriller is the least of them. Like the great movies this movie has a theme and a overall moral that is vital to learn. This movie is really about the nuances and many forms of racism and bigotry. A subject Stephen Poliakoff in his genius has shown in the past with many of his other films. Of course many of the Great Films were not recognized at the time of their release. And unfortunately Glorious 39 is one of them.This movie is beautifully filmed in wonderful locations. In this once again Poliakoff does not disappoint. Anne begins her journey in the English countryside a member of one of the great aristocratic families right before the events of World War 2. Amazingly during this journey she see's the insidious nature of racism and bigotry as it takes possession of her family and eventually robs her of them (it may have been there all along with the times). One of the most potent scenes of the film is when Anne's observant cousin warns her "they don't really love you". With the revelation of Anne's ancestry and the showing of their true regard for Anne during the course of the movie Anne begins to realize this fact and at the end makes her escape from the strange, racist and corrupt family.Were they in the right to try to appease Hitler? Looking at England at that time it is doubtful that they would have won a war with Hitler's Germany. America was supremely isolationist. And Russia had signed their own peace treaty with Germany. But looking back and seeing how events played out it shows more that ever the importance of always doing the right thing. Still this takes almost a back stage to the real theme of this movie. The genius of Poliakoff has always been his theme's and how he reveals them over the course of the film in his own marvelous way. Be sure to check out his next work "Dancing on The Edge" a five-part series set to debut new years 2013.

I first came across the captivating young British actress Romola Garai in the 2004 movie "Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights". Since then, most of her work has been for television, but she was back on the large screen in the 2009 film "Glorious 39". The '39' refers to 1939 when Britain was on the edge of war with Germany. 'Glorious' relates to both the nature of that year's summer and the affectionate name for Garai's character Anne, the adopted daughter of the aristocratic Keyes family which is headed by an influential Conservative Member of Parliament who is appalled by the notion of the country going to war for the second time in only a couple of decades.Written and directed by Stephen Poliakoff as a kind of Hitchcockian thriller, this is a work replete with well-known British character actors spanning the age range from Christopher Lee & Julie Christie through Bill Nighy & Jeremy Northam to David Tennant & Eddie Redmayne. With so much talent available, one has a right to expect more than is actually delivered. The plotting is rather silly and often slow and the characterisation somewhat stilted, while the ending is most unsatisfactory. The locations - mostly in Norfolk - are fine though.