The Essentials: John Boorman’s Best Films

“Hope & Glory” (1987)
After years spent with flying heads, round tables and emerald forests, it’s satisfying that Boorman’s second Best Picture and Best Director nominations came for the strongly autobiographical “Hope & Glory,” one of his warmest, most personal and very best films. Set during the London Blitz in the Second World War, it follows 10-year-old Bill Rowan (Sebastian Rice-Edwards), a thinly veiled surrogate for Boorman himself, as he grows up in the London suburbs, dodging the risk of nightly death, watching his sister fall for a Canadian airman, discover secrets about his mother, and generally comes of age. Stunningly and meticulously recreating the period without ever feeling like a museum piece (Boorman and his team built a half-mile long suburban street with seventeen houses, one of the largest sets in British cinema history and then gradually destroyed it with ‘bomb damage’ over the course of filming), the film is nostalgic but happily unsentimental. It might have the trappings of a comforting BBC period piece, but Boorman made “Point Blank,” and there’s more of “The 400 Blows” than Masterpiece Theater to his reconstruction of his childhood, even if the film remains charming throughout. That’s partly thanks to excellent performances from the whole cast, few of whom were ever big names outside or even within, the UK —“Ryan’s Daughter” star Sarah Miles, who’s particularly excellent here, being the most notable exception. “Queen & Country,” which picks up the story, is a fitting follow-up but it doesn’t quite recapture all the magic of this lovely little film.

“The General” (1998)
Boorman may be English, but his longtime residency in Ireland is evident in this authentically grimy, occasionally raucous biopic of the notorious/beloved Irish crime lord Martin Cahill, also known as The General. Accurately capturing the vast contradictions inherent in a man who was simultaneously a feared gang boss, a loving family man, a violent thief and an impishly anti-authoritarian trickster, Boorman’s film also illuminates the weird impulse within the wider Irish public to embrace and protect this scoundrel. Unfolding in unglamorous black and white, in middle-class kitchens and sewer shafts and grey suburbs, it’s also a showcase for an understated cat-and-mouse game between a definingly terrific Brendan Gleeson as Cahill, and as the cop on his trail a dogged Jon Voight, here reteaming with his “Deliverance” director and turning in one of his best late-career performances. Somehow the familiar “policeman gaining a grudging respect for his adversary” narrative is given a fresh coat of paint, in part down to the simple groundedness of Boorman’s approach, making “The General” at times oddly moving as the net closes in and the audience is caught in that same loop of admiration versus condemnation for this impossible character. If you don’t believe that this is Cahill’s story definitively told, just check out the awful “Ordinary Decent Criminal” starring Kevin Spacey for comparison. That film tackles the same basic material but lacks Boorman’s handle on the drama, as well as his surprising facility with tragicomedy and ear for the natural cadences of Dublin speech, and ends up a spectacular misfire.

Honorable Mentions: As we said, Boorman’s one of those directors who has always been worth checking out even when he’s off-form, and there’s very little in his filmography that’s skippable. His 1965 debut film “Catch Us If You Can” is a “Hard Day’s Night” rip-off focusing on the Dave Clark Five, and though it’s highly derivative, it more than demonstrates the young filmmaker’s promise. He returned to Britain with 1970’s “Leo The Last,” a fascinating, deeply flawed crime picture about the deposed heir to a European country (Marcello Mastroianni) living in exile in West London that won Boorman Best Director at Cannes, but tanked on release and remains difficult to track down.

“Exorcist II: The Heretic” (1977) saw Boorman take over from William Friedkin for the sequel to the horror phenomenon. The film’s derided by many (including by Boorman himself) as a disaster —Mark Kermode calls it “demonstrably the worst film ever made.” It does have its defenders, with both Pauline Kael and Martin Scorsese preferring it to the original. We’re somewhere in middle: it’s not quite a good film, but as ever with Boorman, it’s interesting. “The Emerald Forest” (1985) was the film from this second-tier that came closest to being included in the above list: following Powers Boothe as an American searching for his son who is abducted by a Brazilian tribe and now living as one of them, it’s a visually stunning environmental parable with real power that nevertheless doesn’t quite sit among the essentials.

1990’s “Where The Heart Is” was his “Hope & Glory” follow-up, and is probably Boorman’s worst film: a studio comedy starring Dabney Coleman, a young Uma Thurman and Christopher Plummer as a character called Shitty. Originally meant to be a more personal London-set tale but having been moved to New York at the studio’s behest, none of the cast, material or director really gel with each other, though it’s not without its pleasures. 1995’s “Beyond Rangoon” saw Boorman back in “Emerald Forest” territory with Patricia Arquette as an American caught up in the 1988 student uprising: it has its flaws but proved politically important, helping to bring attention to the situation in Burma and helping to put pressure on the government to release Aung San Suu Kyi (though she was later rearrested).

It’s not in the top tier of Le Carre adaptations, but we’re fond of “The Tailor Of Panama” (2001), which has one of Pierce Brosnan’s better performances, a damn good one by Geoffrey Rush and an pre-Potter appearance from Daniel Radcliffe, plus a sly sense of humor. 2004’s “In My Country” sees a Truth & Reconciliation-themed romance in South Africa between Juliette Binoche and Samuel L. Jackson: it’s well-intentioned but mostly ill-conceived.

2006’s “The Tiger’s Tail” reteamed Boorman and Gleeson in an attempt to recapture the success of “The General.” Satirizing the country’s economic boom of the late 1990s, it’s not bad as such but is decidedly forgettable in comparison to its predecessor. And finally there’s “Queen & Country,” which takes up the story of “Hope & Glory” into Britains’ national service era: it’s well-drawn and moving, though has one central performance that comes close to hobbling the movie. Read more about it in our review from Cannes last year.

— Oliver Lyttelton, Jessica Kiang