CINEMA: Closing The Ring

Now entering his twilight years, Sir Dickie Attenborough is one of the true heavyweights of British cinema, both as an actor and a director. However, his newest venture behind the camera is a curiously lightweight affair, over sentimental and shown through rose-tinted spectacles.

With a time line stretching from 1941 to 1991 it may be epic in scale, but certainly isn’t so in execution. It’s the story of three young American friends, Teddy, Jack and Chuck, who join the airforce together on the eve of the Second World War. They are all in their own ways in love with the beautiful Ethel (Mischa Barton), but she has eyes only for Teddy. However, their tragic romance ends when his bomber crashes in Ireland. Fast-forward fifty years and it is time for an elderly Ethel (Shirley MacLaine) and Jack (Christopher Plummer) to come to terms with events in the past and to finally ‘close the ring’.

The film has a confusing, chopped up structure that moves back and forth along the time line, which makes the narrative hard to follow and really adds nothing to the overall experience. There are one or two stand out performances (Neve Campbell as Ethel’s thoroughly pissed off daughter is a revelation) but nearly everything gets drowned in the overall mishmash and mush.

What the film really needs is a more British emotional approach. Instead it allows itself to wallow in Americanised gloop which makes it appear clunky and rather crass. Attenborough is more than capable of handling big budget movies with flair and sophistication (Gandhi), but unfortunately Closing The Ring isn’t one of his triumphs. Dee Pilgrim