Danae Cassandra (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} danae_cassandra) wrote,@ 2008-11-10 23:13:00 |
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| Entry tags: | movie reviews |
movie review
Ring of Bright Water
Quick Info
Director: Jack Couffer
Starring: Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna
Year of Release: 1969
Country: United Kingdom
Language: English
Awards: none
Genre: Drama/Comedy
MPAA Rating: G
My Rating: **** (meaning?)
Synopsis :
Graham Merrill, a white collar worker bored and unhappy with life, adopts an otter from a pet store. Finding that his flat is no place to keep an otter, he moves to the Scottish Highlands and buys a cottage on the seashore, to escape from the rat race and write the book he's always planned on. There he and Mij make friends with the local doctor and her dog.
Review :
The kind of warm, gentle (mostly), slow-paced, charming family film they don't make any more. Mij is adorable and finds his way into your heart immediately, and the Scottish scenery is absolutely breathtaking. Ring of Bright Water is a film about the things that really matter in life - friendship, beauty, love. I found it very refreshing to see a romance based in friendship (rather than sexual desire) between two people who look like real human beings (Graham and Mary). The messages of the film, both about what matters in life and what doesn't, and about the responsibility we have toward all the life around us, and the rights of those other lives around us, is even more necessary today than it was forty years ago. Ring of Bright Water is a wonderful film, and generally recommended all around (at least if you're over 8 or so).
Mary McCarthy once said about the US that "the happy ending is our national belief." If you need one, subtract two stars from the rating above.
However - it's a big however - the ending is bittersweet. Or brutal, depending on how you look at it. The film ends with hope and promise, but it does not end the way you want it to end, and the ending will reduce you to tears (it did me). I had to remind myself that this is a European film, where completely sheltering children from reality is not a necessary belief. Ring of Bright Water is a family film, it is a film for children, but it's not an escapist film and the ending will leave a mark.
