As the hundredth anniversary of the Armistice approaches the First World War slips further away. The last veterans are gone. A collective memory of trenches, poppies, lions led by donkeys, and Rupert Brooke giving way to Wilfred Owen remains. Yet the Great War, fought by those who never imagined there would be a greater one, left deep scars. A Month in the Country considers how they began to heal.
In the summer of 1920, a young man travels to a small Yorkshire village to restore a medieval mural in a church. He is Adam Birkin (Colin Firth) and although the war ended two years ago he carries it with him still, in his twitch and stammer and in the nightmares that plague his nights. He speaks little and his eyes are wary. Arriving during a downpour, Birkin declines the station master’s offer of an umbrella and trudges toward the church alone. Better to be soaked through than risk accepting another’s charity. He takes up residence in the church’s belfry—Birkin is destitute and neither the vicar nor his congregation offer him lodgings—and begins work on the mural. Outside James Moon (Kenneth Branagh), an archaeologist, is on a dig in the churchyard. Like Birkin Moon is a veteran traumatised by the war. The two slowly develop a close friendship.
Adapted from J.L. Carr’s novel of the same name, A Month in the Country is a simple story simply told. Director Pat O’Connor introduces the village of Oxgodby and its people, then watches patiently as Birkin embraces them.
Birkin isn’t easy to befriend. O’Connor’s film gave Firth his first leading role and he pours his soul into the part, investing even the briefest glance with meaning. Birkin’s reserve masks a wounded spirit and his stammer makes conversation awkward. When they first meet, Moon’s chatter nonplusses him and he barely looks the archaeologist in the eye, afraid of what he’ll give away. Having survived hell on earth, Birkin doesn’t believe in God, but he does believe in art. As he inspects the mural for the first time, Firth gives a glimpse of the man with his defences down: he lays his hands reverently on the wall, trying to sense the original artwork under layers of white paint.
Moon is the first to slip past Birkin’s guard. Sunny and easygoing, he takes one look at his unsociable new neighbour and invites him over for tea. Yet Moon has demons of his own. He sleeps under his tent in a hole he dug himself. After years in the trenches it’s the only way he feels safe. A Month in the Country was Kenneth Branagh’s first film and his performance is remarkably assured, a warm, slightly melancholy foil to Firth’s prickly reserve. As Moon draws Birkin out of his shell, they bond over history and art and eventually, trust each other with their most painful memories.
Both men are looking for sanctuary and find it in Oxgodby. The village exists in an eternal English summer. Kenneth MacMillan’s camera glides across green, sun-dappled fields and Howard Blake’s score evokes the music of pastoral idylls: Butterworth, Delius and especially Vaughn Williams. Life moves slowly. The Ellerbecks, a family of nonconformists headed by the station master (Jim Carter), invite Birkin to Sunday dinner. After the meal a hush descends on them, Birkin included. The mood is drowsy, peaceful. We sense this is the way the Ellerbecks always spend their Sunday afternoons and always will.
Birkin finds more than peace in Oxgodby—he finds love. Alice Keach (Natasha Richardson, in only her second film) walks into his life in a halo of sunlight. Married to the vicar, Mrs. Keach is as gentle as her husband is cold, a quintessential English rose who tends to her rose garden even though, as she confesses to Birkin, she seldom has anyone to show it to. They walk through the woods together and in a rare display of emotion he bares his soul. The woods are beautiful, he tells her, and so is she. Then a gunshot rings out, triggering a flashback. When he recovers his guard is back up. “That’s what comes of believing in paradise,” he snaps and marches off. Birkin’s love remains unspoken and Richardson shows Mrs. Keach’s growing awareness, and tender acceptance, of it with great delicacy. It’s a tragedy she left us so soon.
A Month in the Country is quietly cathartic. For all man’s capacity for brutality there lives, as Hopkins wrote, “the dearest freshness deep down things”. Like Birkin, we leave Oxgodby with a bittersweet sense of peace.
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