Another Country (film)

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Movie
German title Another country
Original title Another country
Country of production Great Britain
original language English
Publishing year 1984
length 90 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Marek Kanievska
script Julian Mitchell
production Robert Fox,
Julian Seymour,
Alan Marshall
music Michael Storey
camera Peter Biziou
cut Gerry Hambling
occupation

Another Country is a 1984 drama film based on the play of the same name by Julian Mitchell . The plot is based freely on the life of Guy Burgess , who collaborated with the Soviet secret service KGB during World War II . The film is a flashback to a time in which he attended high school at the English elite boarding school Eton . The name Another Country is ambiguous in that it refers both to the fact that the protagonist Bennett ends his life in another country and to the fact that the elitist world of Eton with its rules is a kind of country of its own.

action

The plot of the film follows the stories of the former spy Guy Bennett (Rupert Everett), who gives an interview to an American journalist in Moscow in the 1980s and tries to explain why he went from being an English elite student to a communist and a Soviet spy. The action takes place predominantly in the 1930s and shows how hypocrisy, intrigue, homoeroticism and opportunism really flourish behind the facade of good manners, gentlemanlikeness and sportsmanship. In the school there is a graduated hierarchy: At the bottom of the individual houses of the boarding school are the youngest pupils, who represent a kind of servants for the older pupils, and at the very top are the so-called "lords" - older pupils who decide on disciplinary questions and these Being able to enforce discipline with all rigor.

Tommy Judd (Colin Firth) is an outsider there because he is openly committed to communism and prefers to read Capital rather than to be interested in community life. He has a loose friendship with Guy Bennett, who is the only one who dares to stand up to the "Lords" because he sees through their weaknesses and is also willing to blackmail them if necessary. Both have in common their contempt for the elitist system of the school and the country and their own everyday life. Due to his social background, however, it is Guy Bennett's declared ambition to one day become the British ambassador in Paris. For the time being, his most important goal is nevertheless to become one of the “lords” who enjoy the highest esteem in the strict hierarchy of the school; acceptance into this elite group of students can be the first step in his career. At the same time, however, he harbors critical views about society and also displays them openly. For example, when his widowed mother marries officer Arthur, Bennett causes displeasure at the wedding reception when he makes derogatory remarks about serving in the military.

Between Guy Bennett and his classmate James Harcourt (Cary Elwes), whom he literally worships, a relationship is slowly developing that must be kept secret, as homosexuality is strictly frowned upon at the school, although it seems to be practiced everywhere. When a teacher catches two students masturbating in the locker room, one of the two boys who was expelled from school committed suicide. Guy in turn can even blackmail some of the lords with the fact that he has already had homoerotic experiences with them.

The teaching staff and senior students do their best to keep this away from parents and the rest of the world so that the school's reputation is not compromised. The double standard of the school becomes clear: They pretend to strictly reject and fight homosexual acts, although most of the older students, including the “Lords”, have already participated in them. His homosexuality, however, provides the conservative-puritan Fowler with a welcome excuse not to make Guy Bennett lord after all: Fowler intercepted a love letter from Guy Bennett to Harcourt. Bennett lets himself be beaten by the "Lords", since otherwise Harcourt's school career would have been jeopardized.

Although Judd clearly recognizes the system of oppression, at Bennett's request he reluctantly agrees to run for Prefect for Guy's sake, also to prevent Fowler from getting to the top of the pecking order of the house. In return, Bennett sabotaged a military parade at the boarding school, causing the house to lose a trophy. This finally earned him Fowler's hatred. Judd's candidacy as prefect is being torpedoed because a classmate who actually wanted to leave is staying at the school after all, and Guy Bennett will therefore not become “Lord” in the coming year.

Devastated by the loss of his dream, Guy Bennett realizes that his outspoken homosexuality will seriously hamper his intended career as a diplomat. He therefore turned to communism under the influence of Judd and thus took the path that made him a spy for the Soviet Union. The film explains in the epilogue that Tommy Judd died a few years later in the Spanish Civil War and that some of his classmates, predictably, have made careers. Guy Bennett himself, who worked as a spy for the Russian side for many years, fled to the Soviet Union in the 1950s.

In the film, the elite boarding school is a reflection of the English society of that time with its narrow, conservative moral standards, in which any deviation from the norm can have fatal consequences.

Reviews

With Rotten Tomatoes , the film achieved a rate of 80% with the critics.

“The moving love story is at the same time a criticism of dubious upbringing methods and the British upper class. Oppressively staged, movingly played ”is the comment from cinema.de

“A differentiated directorial debut based freely on the biographies of the defectors Burgess and Maclean, which, however, occasionally falls back on clichéd ideas.” Is the verdict in the lexicon of international films

Awards

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Certificate of Release for Another Country . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , May 2003 (PDF; test number: 57 799 DVD).
  2. ↑ Rotten Tomatoes: Another Country , accessed October 19, 2018.
  3. ^ Another Country , accessed October 19, 2018.
  4. ^ Lexicon of International Films: Another Country , accessed October 19, 2018.

Web links