Waterland

Tom Crick teaches history at a high school in Pittsburgh. One day his wife Mary takes a baby and is hospitalised. Around the same time the school decides to drop history. Crick abandons the syllabus and starts telling the class his own story instead. What he describes is the marsh country of eastern England: he grew up there, met Mary there, and a boy was found dead in the water there. A family history going back three generations comes out, and the students slowly work out why they are being told it. Stephen Gyllenhaal directs; ninety-five minutes, with Jeremy Irons as Crick and Sinéad Cusack as Mary, and Ethan Hawke and Lena Headey in the cast. It is adapted from Graham Swift's novel. In the book everything takes place in England; the film binds it to a classroom in America.