The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain

In 1917 two English cartographers arrive in the Welsh village of Ffynnon Garw to measure the hill the locals proudly call the first mountain in Wales. The result is bad: it falls sixteen feet short of the thousand-foot threshold, making it officially a hill. The village refuses to accept this and, while stalling the surveyors, sets about carrying earth to the summit to make up the height. Hugh Grant plays the cartographer, Colm Meaney the village's most insistent man, and Tara Fitzgerald the woman assigned to delay him. Christopher Monger heard the story in his family. He assembled it over years from an account told in pieces among his grandfather, his parents, his aunts and uncles; the village's name is invented. The idea is the arbitrariness of measurement: whether a hill is a mountain depends not on nature but on a number someone wrote in a ledger, which is exactly why the village decides to change the number. Who it is for: viewers who like courteous English rural comedy and stories about communities. Who it is not for: anyone wanting pace or real conflict, since the film stays calm throughout.