National Treasure

Earlier in the week to an afternoon viewing of a National Treasure in 'Philomena', for once at the Odeon rather than the Epsom Playhouse.

House fairly full, mostly pensioners like ourselves. We took seats in the front of several rows of premium seats, only to find that this particular premium bought seat width but not leg room. There were also large metal hoops at the end of the armrests, designed to hold large buckets of sugary pop corn (I used to quite like the unsugary version of childhood, made in one's very own glass roofed popper) but which made the armrests rather unrestfull. What with that and the absence of legroom, did not start off too impressed. And then we had the noisy introductory advertisements.

Perhaps I nodded a little at that point, but the advertisements seemed to morph into the film, which turned out to include that well loved ploy of a story within a story: a story about making a story about a natural mother hunting down the son she gave up for adoption. The complications of all of which added a bit of zest to the basic human interest story.

Well enough made and the heart strings were duly played on. But I did feel slightly offronted that the film got me all worked up about things I had no business getting worked up about, a feeling that I was being manipulated. Well enough made, but there were various slips in that things were done or said that did not ring true. Not things that were terribly important, but they did disturb the flow. The sort of things that crop up regularly in serial dramas and soaps which have not been very carefully scripted or rehearsed. I mention a couple of examples. First, the young mother managed to have a rather nice hair do despite slaving away in the nunnish laundry. Second, the retired nurse had quite a lot of conversation which seemed a bit improbable given what we were told of her story; far too knowing and articulate.

A cunning ending, with us being taught that forgiveness is better than hate, but also that the truth ought to come out, even if it has to come out in a mass media wrapping. I wonder how it will play in Ireland or with the Irish..

No mention at all of the rights and wrongs of allowing adopted children to hunt down their birth parents or of those of allowing parents who allowed their children to be adopted more or less at birth to hunt them down, many years down the line. A hunting down which this film just assumed was OK.

Back home, BH decided that she would like to read the book which spawned the film, so checked with Amazon to find that the original (paperback) book now commanded a hefty premium and was going for around £25, while I could have a new version, helpfully synchronised with the film for around £5. No worries then about discrepancies between the book and the film, never mind between real life and the book. I settled for the synchro. version, leaving the clearly small number of originals for the media study folk to get their teeth into.