On Chesil Beach

Stockbridge Community Cinema Programme Notes 30 May 2018 On Chesil Beach Director: Dominic Cooke for spotlighted asides populated by the actors after Screenplay: Ian McEwan (based on his own novel) hasty costume changes to signify the memories Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Billy Howle, Anne-Marie they represent. Its authentic depiction of Duff, Adrian Scarborough, Emily Watson, and Samuel unprepared young love is delicately innocent. West. Producers: Elizabeth Karlsen & Stephen Woolley The article below by Jared Mobarak first appeared in The Film Stage on 9 September 2017 It’s 1962. Florence Ponting (Saoirse Ronan) and Edward Mayhew (Billy Howle) have just been married. She’s from a wealthy family and he a provincial one; her desire to be active in world affairs beyond her status’ ambivalence and his hope to be accepted as an intellectual with the potential of outgrowing a brawler reputation placing them at odds with the environments that raised them to seek escape. And they are in love: a true, deep, and But as the film progresses, those flashbacks unstoppable love that allowed their differences to present details moving back before they met. They take a backseat as far as community and parentage portray the answers to personal questions was concerned. It’s propelled them towards a hotel presently asked in a bid to calm nerves through honeymoon suite on the water, an isolating venue distraction. These queries are rather generic at affording them the privacy such auspicious first, each subsequent one proving more invasive occasions crave and the stifling quiet able to and crucial to mutual understanding. We’re quick intensify their utter lack of sexual experience and to wonder how none had been asked before, wealth of insecure awkwardness. forgetting the time period and the closed-off nature of Brits (and humans in general) within. This was an era where you didn’t live with your fiancé before the wedding - when it wasn’t illogical that both parties were virgins before consummating the marriage. So the simple act of asking let alone answering becomes a huge show of trust. And that which appeared like the inexperience of kids becomes exposed as a much different truth. The movie becomes a gradual peeling back of anxieties and fears, unspoken expectations, and This is the set-up for Ian McEwan’s On Chesil impossible requests. It’s a steady escalation of Beach, a script he adapted from his own novel potential roadblocks that starts with parents. brought to life by former Royal Court theatre Florence’s father (Samuel West) is a factory owner director Dominic Cooke. The latter’s choice was a hardly at home, her mother (Emily Watson) a sound one as the piece feels very much like a stage woman of specific, stuck-up tastes. Edward’s father play confined to a single locale with flashbacks (and (Adrian Scarborough) is a schoolteacher, his dual epilogues were added specifically for the film, a mother (Anne-Marie Duff) a troubled victim of post-screening Q&A revealed) providing context to brain damage causing her to be a handful for the the nervous fumbling Florence and Edward’s first entire family. Both see their parents as a night together as man and wife delivers. You can complication to overcome and both prove to the imagine the stage dressed as this room with dining other that they’re up to the task of investing above table and bed front and centre, the wings reserved and beyond. Next it’s their futures. Then their lust. And finally that very love they thought was infinite. The latter hits like a freight train, the reality of their other betrayed. It’s about love not being enough respective show of all thumbs in bed rooted in within a society dictated by impossible expectations. deeper psychological turmoil than ever anticipated. You ask adults today and they furrow their brow or roll their eyes at the mention of any vulnerability or Where it leads is an ultimatum, one that weighs psychological unrest, saying how “that just didn’t emotional love against physical love, societal happen in my day.” This is of course a lie - people conformity against an existence catered to the merely hid it from those closest to them then. They specific needs of their unique situation. Silence is saw it as weakness, as not being good enough. replaced by words - the sort that keep people up at When the stigma deems distress stemming from night for days-to-years just mustering the courage abuse or insecurity as you being broken, you hide it. to give them voice. McEwan exposes us to identities But grinning and bearing and forcing yourself to be that have always been prevalent - those our someone you’re not only leads to more problems. enlightened minds today can accept while those McEwan is throwing taboo in our faces through the fearing stigma based in public perception back then arduous process of one person overcoming it only couldn’t. The result conjures resentment and to have that strength repaid with proof of its betrayal where compassion and empathy should unfortunate, damaging power. reside. One half of this couple exposes his/her deepest and most suppressed truth only to receive And everything that may seem inconsequential a look of disgust. It’s a disgust that travelled the “colour” reveals itself to be the opposite. He has opposite way minutes earlier, but the initial shot’s drawn these characters so similarly despite their target was a surrogate who couldn’t bring dissimilarities in order for us to know they both him/herself to learn why. have the capacity to intellectually and emotionally cope with the revelations to come if they allowed themselves time. After so long a period of courtship, though - where the wedding night becomes marked as a moment of release and redemption for lack of a better term - time is hardly a commodity you’re willing to continue relinquishing. This is why the silence becomes so loud in the aftermath. It seethes with rage, self-hate, and absolute mortification. Ronan and Howle deliver powerful performances in this insular repression. And only through time - the immaculately poignant epilogues set a decade and four decades later - can they understand how it all A lot of the film’s success lies in the writing and the went wrong. meticulous process wielded to ensure we learn only what we need at the moment. You could call it manipulative as a result - McEwan’s forthrightness or lack thereof at first preventing us from thinking anything other than what we think - but I wouldn’t have it any other way considering the punch the finished piece packs. Cooke buys into this process too, never trying to be flashier or more cunning than the script demands. And the way he handles Ronan and Howle is immaculate. He lets them drive the plot through their silence as much as their words. We feel the discomfort and embarrassment in the beginning and the excruciating pain at the end. Their repression of everything they want to say We would like to thank Nick Manzi, Head of conjures as much anger as the words that anger Production and Acquisitions at Lionsgate UK, and finally lets free. And your heart breaks for them Elaine Sperber of The Bookmark Stockbridge for both. making this event possible. We would also like to thank Dominic Cooke, Elizabeth Karlsen and This is a crucial point since picking a side isn’t the Stephen Woolley for attending the Q&A session. goal. It’s not about one being withholding and the.

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