The Happy Lands
GFT, February 17, 1.40pm; Empire Cinema, Clydebank, February 18, 11am
If commitment alone made for great political film-making, Robert Rae's movie about the struggle of the Fife miners during and after the General Strike of 1926 would sit alongside John Sayles's Matewan and Ken Loach's Land And Freedom as a classic of working-class history. Sadly, Rae's good political intentions are undone by serious aesthetic shortcomings.
For a start, there is the casting; an army of community actors from Fife is joined by a small band of professionals (including a surprising cameo from Allan Stewart as Harry Lauder). Unless you have Loach's talent for selecting and directing untrained actors, making a movie with so many amateurs is bound to lead (as it does here) to distractingly uneven performances.
That, however, is not the film's chief problem. The narrative (which is peppered with archive material and contemporary interviews with descendants of the 1926 miners) collapses under the weight of a screenplay overloaded with didacticism and sub-plots. The power of the history is undeniable, but this nostalgic and sentimental film lacks the art to express it.
Mark Brown
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