Is Anybody There?

A film set in an English care home in the 1980s. Edward is ten. His parents have turned the house into a care home and the boy has had to give up his own room to the residents. He is fixed on death. He records tapes, watches through doorways, and tries to work out whether the residents who die leave a voice behind. Nobody pays him attention. His mother runs about the kitchen, his father is busy with something else, and the boy has no friends. Then Clarence arrives. A retired magician; he comes in his caravan, refuses to settle into the home, and quarrels with everyone on the first day. The two of them start badly. From there the film is a story of friendship. Learning tricks, a box of belongings, old posters and a garden. Clarence forgets. The illness advances and he starts losing his own past. What the narrative is interested in is not death but being remembered: the boy asks where the dead go, the old man what he has left behind. The residents are not only background. The narrative gives them scenes of their own and makes none of them charming. Michael Caine is barely sympathetic in the part. The character is coarse, hurtful, and unloads his regrets onto others. The tone is light but the subject is heavy. The film takes its humour from the daily absurdities of the home. Michael Caine, Bill Milner, Anne-Marie Duff and David Morrissey are in the cast. John Crowley directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes small-scale British drama and stories across two generations. Who it is not for: anyone looking for something new; the structure is familiar and some of the resolutions come too neatly.