Hope and Glory

1939, suburban London. For nine-year-old Bill the start of the war is not a disaster but a gift: his school is bombed, his father joins up, shrapnel is collected in the streets and ruined houses become playgrounds. His mother and sister live the same war entirely differently. The subject is not the bombing but the same event changing according to who you are. What is an adventure for the boy is continuous fear for his mother; the film shows both at once and corrects neither. The form is warm and bright, unusually colourful for a war film. The fires and the night raids look beautiful, and that is deliberate: we are looking through the child. John Boorman wrote it out of his own childhood; Bill is him and the events are largely what he remembers. The house in the film was rebuilt to the dimensions of his actual house. The production was nominated for five Oscars including best picture and best director. Sebastian Rice-Edwards plays Bill, Sarah Miles his mother and Ian Bannen his grandfather. Who it is for: viewers who like war seen through a child and autobiographical cinema. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the weight of war; the film chooses to stay cheerful and does not treat that as a question.