Why did Mark Kermode give ‘Summerland’ four stars? It was extremely irritating.

 Kermode had given it four stars and we were set to go, ready for what he called this ‘lovely, hopeful, and rather magical movie.’

 Only the photography was lovely: the characters were clichés, the plot divided and unbelievable, the underlying values at best vacuous, at worst propaganda.

 The characters, not much original here. A woman (Alice) living on her own, hitting an old type writer as hard as she could, with, of course, a cigarette drooping from her mouth; an evacuee prep school boy (Frank) who wanted a glass of milk before sleeping; and a slightly bumbling but very kind head-master who can quote Shakespeare. The only one that crashed out of the stitched up stereo type in the script was Frank’s feisty school friend, Edie.

 The plot was divided and so failed, just like ‘The Dig’ see - https://sternfieldthoughts.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-dig-strange-to-spend-so-much-money.html 

At first the story is about an evacuee ending up with Alice, the angry woman – and that ultimately is the main story line – because at the end when it is thought that Frank has lost both his parents, Alice adopts Frank. That’s very sweet. Even believable. But, again just like 'The Dig', another story comes crashing in which is much more than a sub-plot. This is the lesbian affair that Alice had with an exotic looking lady of colour, Vera (another cliché). This falls apart (Vera wants children, normal), and Frank’s story takes over when his father and mother is killed. And then the film-makers go for a stretch too far, when we find out that the mother was Vera. Hard to believe. 

 With these cliché characters and bungling story line it’s not surprising there is no catharsis at the end for the viewer; just perplexity as to why anyone invests in these films. It must be the same as ‘The Dig’. If a script ticks all these boxes – English country-side, Second World War, and – the definite must – a homosexual relationship – the fruit machine in Hollywood coughs up loads of money.

 At best this film is vacuous, for there is no antagonist to be confronted, no tension, no opportunity for moral change. At worst it is thinly disguised propaganda for homosexuality. So when Alice tells Frank that some people think that lesbianism is wicked, he is aghast. Why on earth would a boy growing up in the 1940s when homosexuality was illegal think there was anything wrong? So Frank assures Alice that it’s all fine. It is extremely unlikely that there would ever have been such a conversation, and if so, the vast majority of fourteen-year olds would feel embarrassed. The script has nothing to do with people in the 1940s and everything to do with a certain group of people in the 21^st C forever pushing the cause of homosexuality in everyone’s faces. It is irritating.

And then at the end Vera re-appears, so now we have the happy trio: two women and a son. In this story the father only exists to be killed off, so we can finish with what some want to see as the new normality, families without a mother or a father apart from their sperm or egg. 

 The side-kick to that is to be anti-Christian, perhaps because Christianity has always the traditional family and viewed homosexuality as sinful. Alice is researching pagan heavens, though she is no believer in any heaven. On a cliff walk with Frank she asks him where all the souls went to before Christ. Frank doesn’t know, and that's that. The whole of Christianity has now been weighed in the script writer’s scales and found wanting. Only Psalm 23 has to be read to see that it is the question that is flawed, not Christianity. 

 Let’s hope that someone will start making films again that follow the three-act structure, have characters of depth, absorb the viewer into another believable world, and leave them with their spirits enriched, and their morality sharpened.

 Don’t bother with ‘Summerland’ if you want that sort of film.