The last escape 7 points
The Great EscaperUnited Kingdom/France/Sweden, 2023
Address: Oliver Parker
Script: William Ivory
Duration: 95 minutes
Performers: Michael Caine, Glenda Jackson, John Standing, Will Fletcher, Laura Marcus, Danielle Vitalis.
Premiere: Available in rooms.
On June 6, the 80th anniversary of the landing of the Allied troops on the beaches of Normandy was commemorated, an event that went down in history under the name Day D and that in 1944 marked the beginning of the end of the Second World War. It is an epic and tragic feat that claimed the lives of between 8,000 and 13,000 soldiers that day on the beach alone. A true carnage that Steven Spielberg recreated with terrifying cinematic mastery in the long overture of Saving Private Ryan (1998).
Cinema usually takes advantage of this type of excuse and that is why it is not surprising that this round anniversary served as inspiration for two films that tell the same story to be released almost simultaneously last year. On the one hand, it is about the Irish The Last Riflemanstarring Pierce Brosnan, and another of the English The last escapewhich opens in local theaters this week with Michael Caine leading the cast. Both are inspired by the figure of Bernard Jordana former British soldier who survived that historic battle, who in 2014 and at almost 90 years old escaped from the nursing home where he lived, to cross the English Channel and attend the 70th anniversary celebration.
The last escape It is built from several lines whose intersections create a powerful narrative braid. On the one hand, the present-tense story of Bernard, whose life remains anchored in what happened that morning on the sand. Because although he married and had children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, he was never able to overcome survivor’s guilt. Aware of the proximity of his end, he now feels the urgent need to return to pay tribute to those he considers the true heroes. Especially one, to whom he is tied by an ephemeral but deep bond.
The film chooses not to focus only on the man who was the protagonist of the worst part of this story, but rather broadens the range of its gaze to include those who were left waiting for their loved ones, terrified by the possibility of receive the worst news. That is the place of Irene, Bernard’s wife, who during the war worked in a munitions factory and who now lives with her husband in the same nursing home. She represents another kind of heroism even quieter, but just as moving. Navigating between the present and the past, from these two characters The last escape manages to portray in a luminous way one of the darkest moments of humanity.
That doesn’t mean that the film makes something superficial that is far from it. In fact, the frightening persistence of the traumas of the wars and the certainty of the absurd barbarism that is staged in each of them are also important elements of the plot. However The last escape He chooses the format of the adventure story, where the drama does not prevent him from playing with all the comedy that exists in that clandestine trip that Bernard undertakes to go make peace with his ghosts.
That the protagonists are in charge of the extraordinary Caine and Glenda Jackson is also part of the list of virtues of the film. These are also the latest works of both actors, who between them have four Oscars, two each. In the case of Caine, he always managed to make his characters convey a high emotional octane without losing the British phlegm, because he announced his retirement from acting after this role. And in Jackson’s, always captivating and energetic, because she died shortly before the premiere. Inevitably, both events also contribute a lot to the consolidation of the twilight spirit that nests in The last escape.
