Select language, opens an overlay

Comment

Feb 06, 2015Nursebob rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
Richard Harris and Rachel Roberts are perfectly matched in this bleak working class drama about a well-meaning lout vainly trying to rise above his station in life. When a brash young miner is given the opportunity to make it big as a rugby star his reckless pursuit of fame and fortune threatens everything he ever valued, including the tenuous relationship he’d been forming with his widowed landlady. Harris’ character is a complex contradiction of arrogant cockiness and painful vulnerability that brings to mind a young Marlon Brando. Roberts portrays the grieving widow as a woman who yearns to be loved yet cannot let go of her husband’s memory, terrified to get close to another man lest he leave her as well. Their scenes together swing wildly from cold civility to frustrated outrage to a desperately intense passion. Anderson’s gritty B&W tragedy is beautifully filmed and its central story of a beleaguered Everyman raging against the forces that oppose him is ageless.