Cast: Anne Bancroft, Anthony Hopkins

Director: David Jones

Screenplay: Hugh Whitmore

Running time: 1 hr 40 mins

Genre: Drama



CRITIQUE:


The history of cinema has witnessed numerous unconsummated romances. From the grand old epic (Gone with the Wind) to the intimate (Brief Encounter), from the tragic (Titanic) to the matter-of-fact, real-world practicality (Casablanca) – they are specially designed to make women swoon, men pucker their lips and your mothers weep an ocean the size of Atlantic. For as much as realism is concerned, that you-and-me-against-the-world dogma is really bullshit and lovers don’t really end up together as they do in Disney world (romantic diehards will be reminded that even Romeo and Juliet didn’t even make it at the end). Throughout the moviegoing decades, audience had grown to be more cynical and sharp, as Bob Dylan once crooned, “Times they are a-changin’.” But in 84 Charing Cross Road, a low-key, unassuming drama of an unusual relationship between two people, the lovers do not even get to meet, neither battle with sinking ships and tragic circumstances (although here, there’s the post-World War II recuperation in the backdrop) nor proclaim wistful, bittersweet lines like they do in those black-and-white celluloid, usually followed by a sigh, a clinch and the requisite smooch. None of that is present here. The main constraint that stakes between these two engrossed individuals is distance; she an avid reader and lover of second-hand, less-read books and he a bookseller engaged in a quiet marriage. The love of literature launches them both into a correspondence that develops from business letters to a shared communication that explores hopes, dreams and longings.


We ask ourselves, why didn’t one of them just get on a damn boat and see the other? Well, why do they have to? As intelligent, thoughtful romances go, it’s all easier said than done. Anne Bancroft’s bibliophile Helene is comfortable with her singlehood, and Anthony Hopkin’s repressed Frank avows nary a complaint to his marriage with Judi Dench’s Nora, whose table conversation never goes beyond his compliments to her prepared dinner as “tasty”. The transatlantic distance practically holds them back for many unspoken reasons – and in a way, it strengthens the film because it does not need to speak things loud. The two key players are superb in expressing their thoughts. Bancroft makes sure that her strident, feisty character, who often absurdly talks to herself whilst typing, has moments of quiet sincerity, whilst the always brilliant Hopkins sustains an almost expressionless face throughout broken by transitory hints of sorrow, disappointment and acquiescence of the status quo. His wordless reaction when he reads the letter that Helene cannot make it to London is a fine measurement in acting.


VERDICT:

An unassuming, unpretentious look at communication and unfulfilled romance, with nuanced performances by Bancroft, Hopkins and Dench. What might appear as a You’ve Got Mail for the middle-aged turns out to be a thoughtful, well-performed film that does not pretend to be more than what it is – a gentle relationship between two misplaced humans with an ocean in between.



RATING: B+