THEIR FINEST
Director: Lone Scherfig
Cert: 12A, 1hr 57mins
In early summer 1940 a plucky pair of twin girls took their father’s boat from Southend across the English Channel and rescued, while under enemy fire, British soldiers stranded on the beach at Dunkirk. What a story!
In the wake of the colossal Dunkirk debacle and retreat, when ultimate defeat seemed a more likely outcome for Britain than victory, and when London was under almost continuous bombardment, the Ministry of Information grabbed the twins’ daring exploit as an opportunity to make a film which would boost the flagging national morale.
There was only one problem: the story was not strictly true. But hey – when did facts have to get in the way of a good story?
So the film was scripted and made. And this film, Their Finest, is all about the making of that one. And guess what? This film is not strictly true either. Ironies abound.
Among the team of scriptwriters is a young woman from Ebbw Vale, Catrin (played by Gemma Arterton), who is employed to write the ‘slop’ – the word used for female dialogue. We follow her tussles – with conscience, domestic complication, office politics, and the constant fear of Luftwaffe bombs.
Levels of fabrication
This is a most engaging story with some clichés, a lot of humour and a few surprising, tear-jerking twists. Catrin has to deal with the ego of an ageing matinee idol (impeccably and hilariously played by Bill Nighy) and with the political pressure from a government which is desperate to get America on side in the war. And along the way, the audience discovers that there are many levels of fabrication going on.
And yet in this fiction there is truth. C.S. Lewis was a famous proponent of the idea that there can be a greater truth carried in a fantasy than in an apparently realistic narrative. The truth that the film-makers within the film intend to convey is that little people in dire circumstances are capable of stepping up to incredible acts of courage, even heroism. The truth that current audiences of Their Finest can learn is that life is precarious and death apparently random (cf Ecclesiastes). Buildings and people, like film sets, are here one minute and gone the next. But life in this world is a precious gift. How will we use it?
