Closing the Ring, Britain / Canda / USA 2007

Richard Attenborough with Mischa Barton on the set of Teddy’s house

This turned out to be Attenborough’s final film as a director. The film was scripted by Peter Woodward. He was an actor, also a stuntman and then fight arranger. He branched out into post-production, including some script writing and scripted and produced a feature film. This was his first film as the scriptwriter proper. The basic idea seems to have been prompted by the discovery of an old gold wedding ring on an Irish hill. However, quite a lot has been added in the final film version.

The film has two main settings and cuts between them during World War II and the 1990s. The flashback structure is complex but relies on cast or locations to tie the plotting together. And important aspect of the plot only become clear to the audience at the climax.

The film opens in 1991 at a funeral in rural Michigan, in the North East USA. This obsequies for Chuck Harris are attended by a number of US war veterans. The eulogy is delivered by his daughter Marie (Neve Campbell). His widow, Ethel Ann (Shirley MacLaine) sits in the church porch, apparently drunk and supported by a close friend Jack Etty (Christopher Plummer). Following the graveside ritual it becomes apparent that Marie is furious with her mother and that there is a history of marital and maternal discord in the family.

In 1941 we meet the young Ethel Ann (Mischa Barton). She is friendly with a trio of young men; Teddy Gordon (Stephen Arnell): the young Jack Etty (Gregory Smith): and the young Chuck Harris (David Alpay). All three men are enamoured with Ethel Ann but she loves Teddy. A poor boy from farming stock. Teddy is building a house for himself and for Ethel Ann. All three friends are signed up for the USAF. When Pearl Harbour happens all three are called to service. Before they leave Teddy asks that if he does not return one of the others should care for Ethel Ann and selects Chuck. It is clear that despite his apparent disinclination Jack is upset by this.

In the same year in Belfast we meet the young Michael Quinlan (John Travers), working in the fire service during heavy bombing raids on the city. And in a scene in an air raid shelter we  meet the young Eleanor Riley  (Kirsty Stuart), an attractive girl with a reputation as a flirt. We also meet the young Cathal Thomas (Matthew McElhinney), a republican activist. In Belfast 1991 Eleanor now is a single mother with a son Jimmy (Martin McCann). On the Black Mountain [more a hill, just over a 1,000 foot in height], overlooking the city, Jimmy meets the older Quinlan (Peter Postlethwaite) who searches the mountain for debris from a B-17 bomber that crashed in 1944. Helping Quinlan Jimmy finds a gold and inscribed wedding ring. A complication for the future is that the mountain is also used as an observation post by the older Cathal (Ian McElhinney). And Cathal himself is being trailed by protestant members of Special Branch.

Jimmy brings the two separate groups, Michigan and Belfast, together when he manages to identify Ethel Ann as one of the names inscribed on the ring; the other is Teddy. The couple went through a non-legal marriage ceremony before he departed for war service. Jimmy is threatened by both the IRA and the Specials so Quinlan gives him the money to leave Belfast and he travels to  Michigan. His arrival brings the ghosts of the past to the surface for Ethel Ann, Jack and Marie. We learn that Jack had do tell Ethel Ann that Teddy had died. After a number of years she married Chuck but a wall of memorabilia for Teddy was kept and covered by a partition. This is now revealed to the anguished Marie, who leaves home.

Jimmy returns to Belfast but Ethel Ann follows. We learn that Jack and Teddy were flying in the same B-17 crew. However at a dance where Jack was dating Eleanor he and Teddy fought over Ethel Ann. Jack injured his leg and so did not fly next day. It was on the return from that bombing mission that the B-17 crashed into the mountain, killing the crew including Teddy. The final revelation occurs at the climax. A street bomb explodes killing a British soldier. Ethel Ann seems to find this a parallel to the death of Teddy and goes to cradle the dead body. But there is another second bomb. Quinlan manages to pull Ethel Ann away and then tells her that he was on the mountain when the B-17 crashed. He heard Teddy’s dying words for Ethel Ann; that she should be free to choose who she loves. Qunlan’s searches on the mountain were to find the ring that Teddy asked him to return to Ethel Ann.

In parallel on the hill Jimmy stumbles on Cathal who is shot by the Specials but dying sets off the second bomb, but no-one further is injured. Freed of past traumas Ethel Ann and Jack start a relationship and they are seen walking up a hill whilst Eleanor,  Jimmy and Quinlan are last seen at a picnic overlooking both the city and the sea.

The film received mixed reviews from critics. It failed at the box office taking far less in receipts than the production costs. IMDB states that it only received a video release in the USA. The film had a number of problems, many related to the basic script. The story seems to fail with the long arm of coincidence. The ring is found by Jimmy whilst Quinlan has spent fifty years searching; and just at the moment that Ethel Ann has become a widow and is therefore free for a new relationship. Jack conveniently breaks his ankle the night before the flight that ends in a crash; and the fledging replacement navigator appears to be lost just before it happens. And the use of time and space seems especially convenient. Teddy tells his friends he is broke which is why he is building the house himself. Yet in the space of less than a year it is completed and furnished. And Jimmy travels all the way to  Michigan from Ireland, seemingly with few problems en route; his first aviation trip.

The production values on the film are fine. Several of Attenborough’s regular collaborators worked on it. Roger Pratt’s cinematography is well done and there are overhead travelling crane shots, an Attenborough favourite. One opens the film and the closing shot is a reverse away from the final family event. Lesley Walker edits the film with real skill; some of the cuts are  brief shot, often of MacLaine, and then returning to the prior setting. This is assisted by the music, by Jeff Dana, with an Irish lilt for shots presenting Belfast.

The cast performances are pretty uneven, to a degree limited by the writing. MacLaine is convincing but overall it seems a little one-note. Plummer has the best of the writing and is a strong performance. Neve Campbell seems just angry and frustrated and little else. In the past neither Mischa Barton or Steve Arnell convince; their performances are all on the surface without much inner passion. Gregory Smith as young Jack is the strongest of this quartet. The Irish characters are better. Both Postlethwaite and Brenda Fricker are interesting whilst Martin McCann does well as Jimmy but the character as written does not really seem up to the various actions in which he is involved. There are a number or minor characters; two older women, neighbours of Eleanor and Jimmy, seem just caricatures.

Martin Martin McCann and Peter Postlethwaite on Black Mountain

One problem in the narrative is that we have this group of older characters, all with blighted lives. And it all seems rather unnecessary. The promise extracted by Teddy which imprisons Ethel Ann is not really convincing. And equally Teddy’s dying plea to the young Quinlan does not carry conviction either. And there is a gender problem here as well. We have five leading male characters and three leading female characters. Yet all of the latter are objects of the male characters. Eleanor is the freest of these but even her role is as mother to Jimmy. Even at the end Ethel Ann is still tied in the friendship circle set up in 1941.

There is also a problem with the sub-plot involving the IRA and the British security services. Some reviews commented on it as unnecessary. Certainly the only point in the plot where these activities matter is at the climax when Ethel Ann cradles the dead British soldier, killed by an IRA bomb. But what is supposed to be the relationship between him and Ethel Ann’s lost Teddy? It feels like a convenient add-on in order to make a point about the war in occupied Ireland, euphemistically known as ‘The Troubles’. It is not clear from the credits if anyone involved in the production had a particular stance to follow. As usual when British film-makers essay on this war there is little understanding of what is actually involved. The portrait of Cathal is typically that of a terrorist, and whilst the Special Branch characters are also violent and unpleasant there is no attempt to give them real context or motivation. There is no obvious production member with an interest in the war in occupied Ireland. However, Richard Attenborough frequently voiced his preference for non-violent resistance; he may have wanted to critically present armed resistance in Ireland.

The film is also interesting for another facet of the Attenborough thematic concerns. The bulk of his film output is historical and biopic; and there is a some of this in this film and in the preceding three titles. But all four films also privilege romances that in some way are cut short or unfulfilled. Shadowlands seems to me the best with the love between  C. S. Lewis and Joy Gresham. It struck me as the most effective of the four, partly because the settings reinforce the emotions in the relationship. In Love and War has the young Hemingway failing and then spurning a the love of Agnes. In this film the relationship does not quite add up to the historical characters. Grey Owl has the couple of Archie and Pony leaving for the wilderness where he dies; though in fact he had already started a new relationship with another woman. And in Closing the Ring Ethel Ann and Jack only start their relationship in their declining years, blighted by the actions of fifty years earlier. What stand out about Shadowlands is that it relies on a Britain that Attenborough knew well and appreciated. The following three are all, to some degree, set in foreign territories, and this seems to weaken the romantic and dramatic thrust of the later films.

Technicolor in 1.85:1, running time 118 minutes