| RATING: | 80% |
| FORMAT: | DVD |
Happy-Go-Lucky
Although this is Hollywood-Wales, there is enough authenticity here to make this treat well worth watching. The accents vary - which is strange for such a close-knit community - but is a product of the fact that few actors seem able to master a Welsh accent with alacrity.
Despite the National Geographic approach to the Celtic ethnicity, as though they were members of a strange, foreign tribe of happy-go-lucky types unsullied by the cynicism so prevalent in Western culture, this movie gets under the skin of its characters to present a believable story with convincing characters. Emotional credibility easily trumping naturalism, realism and literalism.
John Ford’s visual sense is in strong evidence here as he employs Soviet cinema techniques to stress the grinding and backbreaking nature of the coal-miners’ working routine; while verbally criticizing socialism, as such, as a form of atheism. The photography is crisp and clear.
The men are depicted as undifferentiated as if they were part of the landscape and the mining village part of the natural order of things. As ever, Ford presents women as the heart of the household and men the head. He does this without the usual gynophobic nonsense of placing females on a pedestal, instead as the eye of the hurricane of human life.
The theme here is one of community and the narrower community of family and friends - and enemies. The characters are far less important here than the political ideas they archetypically represent. Funny and heartbreaking in equal measure.
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