The Winslow Boy
reviewed by Iain Tibbles
David Mamet's sixth film as writer-director is a reworking of Terrence Rattigan's play The Winslow Boy and appears to be a timely dramatic complement to the Clinton impeachment affair. Justice is the central issue: the questions raised are how far one is willing to humble and humiliate oneself and one's family in the pursuit of justice and, in the end, is it worth it?
Set in a rather pristine London of 1910 and based on a true tale, The Winslow Boy follows a young sea cadet who, accused of stealing a five-shilling postal order, is expelled from naval college. Convinced of his innocence, his family pursues the case against the Crown through the high courts, attracting huge media attention and almost ruin.
A seductive drama, The Winslow Boy is supported primarily by the fine performance of Nigel Hawthorne as the father Arthur. Hawthorne is at ease with the cold, clean dialogue of Mamet and endows it with a depth sorely missed in the performance of Rebecca Pidgeon, who plays his daughter, Catherine. Her delivery of Mamet's clipped lines seems to strain for Received Pronunciation but falls far short, achieving merely a Vulcan-like flatness in its tone. These shortcomings are unfortunate as Pidgeon plays the central character; Catherine's struggle for women's rights mirrors the family's struggle for justice - a lost cause, according to their sly-but-dashing lawyer, played excellently by Jeremy Northam. Meanwhile the Boy himself, an anemic young Ronnie Winslow, is played ably enough by Guy Edwards. Sadly though, his most noteworthy characteristic is his total physical dissimilarity to the rest of his screen family.
The heavy-handed inclusion of too many visual aids in the form of newspaper cuttings and posters becomes a little tiresome. As a one off theatrical device these signifiers work fine but too often an old-style cartoon alluding to the public scandal of the Winslow case intrudes into a scene.
On the whole however, the drama itself is superb and surprisingly engaging, largely because of Mamet's oh-so-witty and clever reworking of the original text.
