The Great Escaper: beautiful, haunting, one of the films of the year

Beautiful, haunting and so powerfully poignant, The Great Escaper is right up there among the very finest films of the past few years – a genuinely touching tale of the generation that sacrificed so much and how those sacrifices never left them.

When Bernard Jordan walked out of his care home in the summer of 2014 to join his fellow veterans on the beaches of Normandy for the 70th anniversary of the D-Day Landings, he made headlines around the world. Slightly misleadingly dubbed “the great escaper” (there really wasn’t terribly much of an escape about it), he touched a nerve with his mix of humility and indomitable spirit.

Here is the big screen version of what apparently happened, and as with any film based on true events, inevitably you quickly wonder just how accurate director Oliver Parker and the production team have felt themselves obliged to be. But judging alone on what we get, it’s a genuinely moving tale bringing together two of our finest actors, Michael Caine as Bernard and Glenda Jackson as his wife Rene, both absolutely at the top of their game in a film made all the more touching for the fact that it was Jackson’s last film before her death in June this year.

Adding to the interest for those of us in Sussex, the UK side of things was filmed along Hastings and St Leonards seafronts last year.

Bernard and Rene live devoted to each other on the south coast; Bernard’s frustration is that he apparently applied too late to join the official delegation crossing the Channel for the official commemorations. Rene’s response is direct and simple. She tells him simply to go – and this he does, becoming a media sensation in the process. Meanwhile, Rene back in the home covers for him long enough for him to reach his destination.

Along the way he chums up with a fellow vet (superb from John Standing), and the extent of the psychological damage each has suffered soon becomes clear. Each is battling his demons; their trip to France seems a chance to face them. And that’s the power of the film – the thought of the pain that these two deeply honourable men have endured silently for decades. We see the resilience and the courage; we glimpse too the vulnerability. Bernard’s tale is told partially in flashback. Touchingly we get young Bernard and young Rene falling in love, discovering the one thing that will sustain each other for the rest of their lives: each other.

It is beautifully done. You really sense that these are the same people 70 years apart. Jackson’s spiky performance is priceless.

Beautiful too from the Danielle Vitalis as Adele, the care assistant who chances on Bernard’s secret without realising what is happening and who is then drawn into Rene’s world by the strength of her compassion.

This is a wise and measured film which says so much about trauma, how we carry it and what it does to us.

Two of our finest post-war actors do it full justice in a very special film. There is huge presence, huge class, huge subtlety in their performances; and in Jackson’s case, a reminder of just exactly what we lost with her passing.