This is another great one for the Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction file.
On the very early morning of August 21, 1961, somebody broke into London’s National Gallery and stole Francisco Goya’s painting, “Portrait of the Duke of Wellington.” The carefully calculated crime baffled police, who assumed that the caper must have been masterminded by a professional gang of experienced Italian art thieves.
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| Kempton (Jim Broadbent) promises, after one final attempt, that he'll stop fighting the BBC over its television license fees. Alas, his wife Dorothy (Helen Mirren) isn't sure that she believes him... |
That was wild enough … but what happened at Bunton’s subsequent trial was so audacious, that it prompted an amendment of British law.
Director Roger Michell’s delightful depiction of these astonishing events, a cheeky slice of gentle British whimsy, is fueled by endearing performances from Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren, as Kempton and his wife, Dorothy. Michell, cinematographer Mike Eley and editor Kristina Hetherington deliberately emphasize a retro look, atmosphere and pacing, strongly evoking a sense that their film could have been made during the 1960s.
Screenwriters Richard Bean and Clive Coleman compress the time frame, but otherwise present the saga pretty much as it actually went down; they were blessed, during production, with hitherto unrevealed details supplied by Bunton’s grandson.
Kempton is introduced as a taxi driver and frustrated playwright — his latest opus is a reimagining of the scriptures with Jesus as a woman (!) — who has long been annoyed by the BBC’s television license fee. His sad efforts to stoke public awareness with a home-grown campaign — “Free TV for the OAP (Old Age Pensioners)” — has gone nowhere; he also has been imprisoned several times, for non-payment of the license fee.
(Tossed into Durham Prison for two weeks, for refusing to pay a television fee? Seriously?)
Not much later, a wealthy American art collector purchases Goya’s painting for £140,000, with the intention of taking it to the United States. Scandalized by the thought of losing this precious artwork, the British government buys it back for the same sum. Kempton becomes outraged, while watching the resulting press conference on (his illegal) TV, grousing the such a sum could have provided free television to thousands of OAPs.
Kempton obsesses over the painting — much to Dorothy’s long-suffering dismay — visits it often, and views it as a tangible example of everything wrong with government spending. He learns that the gallery’s sophisticated alarm system is deactivated during early mornings, so the cleaning crew can work; access can be made via a window in an upstairs bathroom.
And — hey, presto! — the painting winds up in the Bunton’s Newcastle flat. He and younger son Jackie (Fionn Whitehead) cleverly conceal it by constructing a false back to a bedroom wardrobe.
But now what?
Rest assured, things only get crazier.
As introduced, Broadbent and Mirren play Kempton and Dorothy as a couple just going through the motions. Their mutual fondness — although visible — is mostly buried beneath frustration and anguish: the latter prompted by the untimely death, a few years earlier, of their 18-year-old daughter Marian.
Dorothy still can’t face this loss; Kempton assuages his pain by trying to write a play about Marian. Broadbent and Mirren bicker, fuss and snipe — Dorothy worn out by her husband’s stubborn TV license campaign — but their performances are so delicately nuanced, that we never doubt that these two love each other.
Although ostensibly concerned with the stolen painting, Bean and Coleman’s script focuses equally on this broken relationship, and the gradual, tentative steps taken by Kempton and Dorothy to repair it.
Additional color — and complications — are provided by their two grown sons. Whitehead’s Jackie is a simple, uncomplicated lad totally devoted to his father, in part because his tougher older brother Kenny (Jack Bandeira) is a petty criminal whose antics have added to the family’s misery.
Charlotte Spencer and Aimee Kelly are Pamela and Irene, Kenny and Jackie’s respective girlfriends. The former soon influences how things eventually go down.
Matthew Goode has a choice role as Kempton’s barrister, Jeremy Hutchinson QC. At trial, both his junior, Eric Crowther (Joshua McGuire), and the judge (James Wilby) are baffled by Hutchinson’s refusal to cross-examine any of the witnesses. Ah, but Goode’s bent head and knowing half-smile suggest that he, too, is up to something.
Kristian Milsted’s production design is spot-on, having re-created the era by cleverly dressing portions of Leeds and Bradford. (Newcastle, alas, has become too modern to suggest the appropriate period.)
George Fenton’s score is a vibrant blend of swinging jazz — the title theme and a few heist cues — and more serious orchestral shading, the latter carefully enhancing the gradual resuscitation of Kempton and Dorothy’s relationship.
On a cheeky pop-culture note, this film concludes with a visit to a movie theater, where the first James Bond thriller — Dr. No — is playing. It debuted in the UK on October 5, 1962, at which time the Goya painting remained missing. When Bond and Honey Ryder are taken to Dr. No’s lair, and invited to join him for supper, Connery pauses at the foot of the dining area, and does a slow take as he spots the Goya painting among their host’s art treasures.
(As Bond production designer Ken Adam later explained in a 2005 interview for The Guardian, “We thought it would be fun for [Dr. No] to have some stolen art, so we used Goya’s ‘Portrait of the Duke of Wellington,’ which was missing at the time. I got hold of a slide from the National Gallery — this was on the Friday, shooting began on the Monday — and I painted a Goya over the weekend.”)
British viewers, at the time, would have been delighted (or appalled); they certainly would have gotten the joke … but likely not those coming to Dr. No all these decades later. We’ve now been reminded anew: the cherry on top of a thoroughly charming cinematic confection.
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