Not quite two months ago, The Duke treated us to the delightfully dramatized account of disabled pensioner Kempton Bunton, and 1961’s “mysterious” theft of a famed Goya painting from London’s National Gallery.
Maurice Flitcroft may have been even more eccentric.
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| With son Gene (Christian Lees) bringing up the rear as caddy, Maurice Flitcroft (Mark Rylance) blithely trudges to the next tee, oblivious to the catastophic score that he's racking up. |
His resulting score was — and remains — historic.
And, just as Bunton’s eventual court case prompted British law to clarify the distinction between “theft” and “borrowing,” Flitcroft’s escapade thoroughly annoyed the snooty aristocrats who ran the British Open; they quickly changed the rules, in an effort to prevent any further “incursions” by undeserving members of the lay public.
Not that that stopped Maurice, during subsequent years.
His unlikely saga has been made into a cheeky dramedy — in the irreverent style that British filmmakers do so well — by director Craig Roberts and screenwriter Simon Farnaby, the latter adapting sports journalist Scott Murray’s 2010 non-fiction book of the same title.
Their film is highlighted by yet another richly nuanced performance from Mark Rylance, whose impersonation of Flitcroft is flat-out astonishing.
Rylance is, without question, one of today’s finest, most artfully accomplished actors. I’ve no doubt that watching him in everyday mundane tasks — such as purchasing groceries — would be just as captivating as what he does on screen.
Roberts and Farnaby begin their film with a prologue that sketches Maurice’s earlier days. He meets and marries Jean (Sally Hawkins), and adopts her son Michael; they subsequently augment the family with twin sons Gene and James.
Years pass. Michael (Jake Davies) has grown up to become the mature, business-minded “sensible” son — read: buttoned-down twit with a stick up his fundament — while Gene and James (twins Christian and Jonah Lees), clearly more in tune with their father’s Walter Mitty nature, have become limber disco dancers.
Maurice, a crane driver at the Barrow shipyard, is facing a crossroad: He’s about to be made redundant, and therefore staring down the barrel of unemployment, as Britain’s ship-building industry becomes nationalized. With nothing better to do, and inspired by a match he sees on the telly, he impulsively fills out the paperwork required to enter the British Open.
Confronted with the need to include an amateur’s official handicap — a term Maurice doesn’t understand — he instead checks the box for “professional.”
This build-up takes place amid a hilarious blend of determination and mildly flustered bewilderment from Rylance, who by this point has cast Maurice as the ultimate, unwavering underdog. Hawkins, in turn, makes Jean nurturing, encouraging and equally resolute.
The effervescent Gene and James, regarding the affair as a marvelous escapade, couldn’t be more pleased; only the overly starched Michael, apparently incapable of even the faintest smile, thinks his father has gone ’round the bend.
The next days (weeks?) pass rapidly; we then watch, with a mixture of disbelief and mild horror, as Maurice — trailing Spanish pro Seve Ballesteros — strides purposefully onto the first tee, wearing an improbable deerstalker hat. Gene and James trade caddying chores, armed with a dilapidated golf bag containing a random assortment of (likely second-hand) clubs.
Surely, we think, Maurice will get kicked off the course before he even begins.
But no.
Royal and Ancient Secretary Keith Mackenzie (Rhys Ifans, appropriately pompous) quickly realizes that something is amiss, but — much as he’d like to remove Maurice from the tournament — the existing “gentlemen’s rules” never anticipated such a brash maneuver.
And, so, Maurice proceeds from one hole to the next, whiffing shots left and right. Roberts shades this with mounting tension; we viewers soon are shrieking helplessly with nervous laughter. Rarely has failure been so entertaining.
As Rylance portrays him, Maurice isn’t the slightest bit concerned; he simply “tries to do better” on each next hole.
We must remember, looking back, that Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky Balboa merely wanted to “go the distance” in that character’s 1976 debut (and, frankly, that’s where all concerned should have left it). Rylance gives Maurice the same blend of naïveté and humble resolve; he isn’t embarrassed, nor does he think he’s doing anything wrong. He merely wants to participate.
(The actual Flitcroft apparently was more of a deliberate hoaxter and good-natured hustler, but Rylance initially eschews such touches; that makes Maurice more sympathetic.)
The appeal of such a character is easily understood; the likes of me and thee are far more able to relate to humble, lovable losers, than to lofty Olympian gods such as Arnold Palmer or Tiger Woods. They’re unapproachable; the Flitcrofts of this world are much more “one with the people.”
(Maurice became an unlikely sports celeb years before the similarly hapless English ski-jumper Eddie Edwards — whose saga is depicted in 2016’s equally delightful Eddie the Eagle — came along.)
Farnaby also inserts a snarky subtext of “sticking it to the man,” and that’s always satisfying.
All this aside, dreamers invariably crash back to earth; Maurice’s saga is no different. But what happens next is even more hilarious and unbelievable.
And very, very touching.
Production designer Sarah Finlay evokes a strong sense of time and place, particularly with respect to the contents of the Flitcrofts’ working-class flat. Roberts and cinematographer Kit Fraser go overboard with odd dream sequences and cockeyed, herky-jerky camera angles for the initial 15 minutes or so; fortunately, they settle down for the rest of the film.
The sound mix isn’t ideal; it’s occasionally difficult — in part due to the accents sported by Rylance and Hawkins — to understand what Maurice and Jean are saying.
But that’s all small stuff. This is a thoroughly captivating little film, and another fascinating slice of unlikely sports history.
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