Tom Wilkinson ~ 98 Screen Credits Popular British character actor Tom (Thomas Geoffrey) Wilkinson was born in Leeds, West Yorkshire to parents Thomas and Marjorie on 5 February 1948. Though active in theatre and television from the mid-'70s and in cinema from the mid-'80s, he did not become familiar to an international audience until 1997, via surprise hit and Best Picture nominee The Full Monty. His perform- ance as Gerald, one of six unemployed men who strip for cash, collected both plaudits and a Best Supporting Actor BAFTA. His involvement in Shakespeare In Love, one of the biggest successes of the following year, helped cement his popularity. In 1986 Wilkinson appeared in TV mini-series First Among Equals as Raymond Gould. Playing alongside him as Louise Fraser was Diana Hardcastle. The couple married in January 1988 and now have two daughters, Alice and Molly. Tom and Diana have appeared in the same production on several occasions since (e.g. Resnick, If Only, A Good Woman, The Kennedys, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel). For a little more on this, see pages 160 and 164. Wilkinson has twice been nominated for an Academy Award, for Leading Actor in 2002 (In The Bedroom) and for Supporting Actor in 2008 (Michael Clayton). For further biographical information, see page 68. THE SHADOW LINE (TV, 1976) Jointly produced by Thames Television and Polish production company Zespól Filmowy, this respectful adaptation of Joseph Conrad's 1917 novel The Shadow Line, filmed in Burma and Thailand, marks the screen debut of 28 year old Tom Wilkinson, in the third-billed part of Ransome, the ship's cook with a "weak heart". Directed by Andrzej Wajda, the 100 minute film was first broadcast in the UK on 1 July 1976. TW acquits himself well throughout. In Conrad's conception, the "shadow line" is that bourn all men must cross in passing from youth to maturity. In his own case (the fictionalised captain is unnamed in the book but called "Joseph Conrad" in the film) this transition occurs during a particularly fraught voyage - his first in command - across the Gulf of Siam. Not only is the ship becalmed, but there is widespread sickness aboard (most notably in the delirious first mate), not enough medicine to go round and the crew minded to blame everything on the malevolent spirit of their previous captain, lately buried in these same waters. Given Conrad's love of metaphor, Ransome's sailor-with-a-weak-heart (who leaves ship and captain at journey's end) may well be a symbolic stand-in for the young author himself. TW, too, would move on by and by to greater and better things - but a quietly confident and impressive beginning nonetheless. IMDb: One of the great adaptations of Conrad to film. The first part, on land before the sea voyage, was filmed on location in Burma with some really fine British actors, particularly the actor who plays the older captain who gets him the job. The photo- graphy, especially the use of colour and light, is extraordinary and Wajda captures the sense of a real place and time. This is about one of those Conrad voyages where nothing goes right. It's a young man's first experience as captain: his ship becalmed, an ailing crew, and a half-mad first mate who claims the ship is jinxed by the former captain. While the essence of the story - a dead calm and nothing happening - is a difficult subject to tackle, Wajda is up to the task and his film is engrossing throughout. And the dialogue isn't plagued by the tin-ear that than can occur when English is not the director's first language. Just a terrific job all around / The early, land-set section is perhaps a little plodding. The interaction of the narrator with various other characters and the details of how he comes to assume his captaincy, serve in Conrad's novel to deepen our understanding of him, to see both his strengths and weaknesses, and observe how he was both ill and well prepared for leadership. Wajda tends to err on the side of mere scene-setting, failing to invest scenes that could easily have been reduced without affecting the essential narrative with the thematic and psychological significance achieved by Conrad. An additional mild annoyance is the over-the-top mugging by John Bennett as the supine keeper of a boarding-house - fortunately it's a small part and compensation is provided by Martin Wyldeck who is very enjoyable as a wily old mariner with a rather donnish demeanour. Once the story takes to the seas, all reservations fade, for what follows is superb cinema. It manages to capture the sense of being at sea as well as any movie I know, including the excellent Master And Commander. What makes the difference here, however, is that whereas most ocean-set films either depict the ship's struggle against the awesome, hostile elements of storms and towering waves, or delight in the bracing freshness and freedom of having a fair wind at the sails, The Shadow Line tells the story of a becalmed ship, barely drifting through the water, its crew sweltering in the oppressive heat and laid low by illness, their fate possibly in the hands of the malevolent spirit of their late captain. It's an unusual proposition for a cinematic entertainment: stillness, silence and accumulating claustrophobia. In lesser hands, the result could easily have been dull. But the fine performances (including that of a young Tom Wilkinson - although he looks middle- aged even here) and the sharp cinematography (sometimes vivid to the point of unreality) enable the power of Conrad's tale to be conveyed surprisingly successfully. The performance of Marek Kondrat (above) in the main role is extremely impressive: authoritative, yet retaining the sense of doubt and inexperience so crucial to Conrad's (self) portrayal. Taking the form of a retrospective "confession" the book deals with the emotional development of the protagonist and his traversing of the "shadow line" between youth and maturity - a change that entails both loss and gain. Conrad's narrator is significantly anonymous; this gesture towards universality is strengthened by the frequent use of the impersonal "one", as in "one thinks", "one does", etc. At the same time, the author allows us to the read the tale as a coded autobiography, with the figure of the young, sea-struck Pole a version of his own younger self - and the older, wiser narrator looking back on his rite of passage as a version of the 60-year-old novelist. The story's significance is thus simultaneously general and particular, both universal and individual. The film adaptation pushes the autobiographical element further by naming the hero "Joseph Conrad" (and I wonder if the lead actor's name is entirely coincidental); the youthful captain's conduct in command is a presage of the literary genius to come. Conrad's entire oeuvre (including the other books, such as Heart Of Darkness, that Wajda considered filming) is thus in part a product of these early experiences; the passage into leadership and maturity (though not necessarily wisdom), the passing of the shadow line, is the crucial development that enables great literature - and cinema - to be created. If only more literary adaptations displayed such intelligent engagement with their source texts instead of being content merely to illustrate them according to the genteel standards of decorum and respectability. Torpid is a handy little word much beloved of film critics who want a fancy way to say slow - but The Shadow Line is that rare movie to be actually about torpidity itself. It's based on a 1917 novella by Polish-born Joseph Conrad, the first edition cover of which posed the not-so-tantalising question: Why did the captain and the silent crew of the ship in this story of the Far East have such great and mysterious difficulty in passing latitude 8" 20'? Perhaps the book provides an answer - but the film itself most certainly does not. Indeed, this adaptation by director Wajda and co-writer Boleslaw Sulik goes out of its way to avoid any kind of definitive explanation ... [The pair] are essentially stuck with a narrative almost entirely about things not happening: there's a 35 minute mid-section dominated by grinding stasis and there isn't really enough going on in terms of inter-character development or individual psychology to properly sustain our interest. It doesn't help that, Burns and Ransome apart, the crew members remain undifferentiated peons, or that Wajda tends to falls into a cycle of repetition in terms of the visuals and the soundtrack, the latter in the form of echoing / ghostly / tinkly piano. When the ship is in motion, however, the camera soars and picturesque montage becomes the mode, all to the accompaniment of a soaring orchestral lushness - a combination which will remind older viewers of a certain popular British TV series from the same decade: not so much Shadow Line as Onedin Line, in fact. These first and third acts of the film have a dated, stodgy, airlessly conventional feel, although every penny of the budget was clearly well spent with great attention paid to specifics of period architecture, costume and design. Unfortunately the evocation of a bygone era also extends to the film's tempo: "all we can do is drift" as someone remarks during yet another period of enforced becalmed inertia. Neil Young, Jigsaw Lounge, 9 December 2007 SPYSHIP (TV, 1983) This six part mini-series (each episode circa 53 minutes long) was produced jointly by the BBC, Australia's 7 Network and The Entertainment Channel (USA).