Another Country (1984)

Wonderful character development!

The acting in this movie is really good.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

Whatever others think of the superficiality of the story, I can't think of another movie that explores so provocatively the interaction of sexuality and politics/ideology. We have had stories that show characters blackmailed or led by passion to deny their beliefs, but here we have a character whose alienation from classist, homophobic, hypocritical upper-class English society in a boarding school that can't but be Eton proceeds to betray his country. Those who criticize the script seem not to appreciate the sharp critique of English society in comments like "They are not empire builders, the are empire rulers." Yes, there is snarkiness and bitchiness, but that goes with the territory, underground public-school gay underculture of the period. The film is a landmark in frankness and insight into the psychology of treason. Burgess, McLean and eventually Blount carried out the most destructive spying of the period, and they were inspired not by greed (they were after all insiders) but by principle, however mistaken that was, and as the movie shows, by social and sexual ostracism.

Another Country was one of those films that both captured the spirit of an era and helped define it - in the best possible sense. While one can easily lump all 80s pop music and fashion together as over-styled and kitschy, it is not possible to do so with the films of that decade, certainly not the British ones, not with Chariots of Fire, Educating Rita, My Beautiful Launderette and Another Country so vividly remembered. These were works of art, perfectly weaving style and substance together. Another Country presents a complex tale with - what was/is to some - unpalatable subject matter, and indecipherable detail (the life of the British upper class is, and always was, amusing, bizarre, implausible. Gilbert and Sullivan built careers on this fact). Yet, there is no sign of attempts to simplify, or strip out the seemingly unnecessarily intricate, or to moralize - either way - beyond the context of the story, the homosexuality depicted. The result is a film that is detailed, rich, compelling and (in a strange way, despite the historical facts upon which the story is based) apolitical.

Guy Burgess became a communist, spied for the Soviet Union, and lived there for the rest of his life after he was found out. Why? Because, as far as we can tell from this movie, he was a homosexual, and British law was extremely harsh toward male homosexuals. That makes no sense at all. Soviet law was also extremely repressive against homosexuals in those days. No one would have chosen the Soviet Union because they thought it was more hospitable for gays. Since Guy Burgess was a real person and this film is based on his life, he must have had some other reason for becoming a communist (he wasn't one in his school days) that has nothing to do with his sexual orientation. What was it? The movie doesn't tell us.

I was living in France when this film was first released. I had seen the stage play and thoroughly enjoyed it. The film was so good I actually saw it twice over it's opening weekend.The bulk of the action is set in an English boarding school in the 1930s. This is marvelously portrayed - school bullies, inter house rivalries, the cadet force, cricket - and there is some marvelous interaction between Rupert Everett and Colin Firth. The latter's impassioned defence of Stalin is understated comedy at its finest.This is a film of great subtlety and beauty, well acted, and underpinned by a haunting soundtrack.