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Hope and Glory

Hope and Glory

Movie · 1987 · 10 people

John Boorman wrote, directed and produced the 1987 war comedy-drama Hope and Glory from his own wartime childhood. A United Kingdom-Australia co-production by Goldcrest Films and Embassy Pictures, it was distributed by Columbia Pictures and takes its title from the patriotic British song "Land of Hope and Glory". It won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy and earned five Oscar nominations, among them Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.

Set in a London suburb during the Second World War, the story is seen through nine-year-old Bill (Sebastian Rice-Edwards), who turns the chaos of the bombing into an imaginary adventure until Rose Hill shows him the ruins of bombed houses. Confronted with life's darker side, he turns to his family, but each adult is absorbed in their own troubles. Sarah Miles plays his mother, David Hayman his father and Geraldine Muir his sister.

The film premiered in New York on October 16, 1987, and reached British cinemas in February 1988. It collected 13 BAFTA nominations, with Susan Wooldridge winning Best Supporting Actress. Boorman returned to the same childhood world in 2014 with the sequel Queen and Country.

DirectorJohn Boorman
Production companyGoldcrest Films

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Cast

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Jean-Marc Barr Jean-Marc Barr Actor · 66 years old Bruce Sarah Miles David Hayman Sammi Davis Amelda Brown Derrick O'Connor Ian Bannen Katrine Boorman Shelagh Fraser Charley Boorman

Also in the cast: Sebastian Rice-Edwards (Bill), Susan Wooldridge, Geraldine Muir

Through different eyes

AI-assisted editorial takes written from different viewer perspectives. They are not reader reviews; those are below.

Family Viewer Asks whether the whole household can watch it; cares about humor and heart.

Telling the story through a nine-year-old's eyes brings the film closer to family viewing. A child's way of turning the bombing into an adventure makes the war understandable for younger viewers too. But there are also the ruins of bombed houses and adults lost in their own troubles; the war's darker side is not hidden. It works well with children over ten, as long as you talk it over afterwards.

History & Society Lens Asks about the period, the social background and what the work reflects.

The Second World War is usually told from the front line; this film stays inside a house in a London suburb. How daily life carries on under the bombs, and how children are left to fend for themselves while adults wrestle with their own worries, adds up to a valuable picture of the home front. Taking its title from a patriotic British song adds an ironic layer, setting the official rhetoric of 'hope and glory' beside the messy reality a child lives through. Drawing on Boorman's own childhood turns the film into a kind of period testimony, though it is memory filtered through time rather than a document.

Cinephile Looks at script, editing and directing choices; keeps a distance from formula films.

Boorman's autobiographical film carries both the advantage and the risk of framing war through a child's imagination. The shifts in tone between comedy and drama mostly land, and the thin line between catastrophe and play is the film's real strength. The Oscar nomination for original screenplay is no accident: the script stays loyal to a single point of view and shows the adults' dramas only within the limits of what a child can grasp. The weakness is the distance that same choice creates; the grown-ups' troubles often feel left half-told. Whether that counts as a flaw or a deliberate limit will vary from viewer to viewer.

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