Just watched: The Great Escaper (2023), written by William Ivory and directed by Oliver Parker. “Sweet without straying into sentimentality,” reads Rotten Tomatoes. “Moving relationship stories,” reads one of the movie’s genre tags on Letterboxd. They’re both right. But where’s blurb that reads: “Never has a cozy movie carried so much potential for human moral development”? “Never has a cozy movie carried so much potential for human moral development”? A culture grows hale and virtuous if we all watch this film.
Now, none of its lessons are novel:
- Kindness goes a long way—but it often requires courage.
- War is hell.
- Lifelong commitment to another human is heaven.
Yet the lessons came to me in an inspiring, beautiful way that made me cry tears of guilt and gratitude: Guilt for my lack of gratitude in life, and gratitude for the guilt.
And of course, the other lesson is that if you’re directing Michael Caine and Glenda Jackson (may she rest in pace), you’ll probably do just fine if you tell your cameraman to just point his camera in their direction and let the film roll.