Internet, I will tell you what I love. I love stories set in Britain right before, during, between, and right after the World Wars. I LOVE THEM. Cf. The Little Stranger, The Shooting Party, The House at Riverton, Baltimore, Those Who Hunt the Night, Love Lessons, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, The Night Watch, etc. If you say “Britain” and “World War” in your synopsis of a book, I tend to bump it way up on my reading list. If you also say “aristocracy” and “disintegrating way of life”, I tend to put a hold on it at the library right that very second. I just have this addiction.
It translates to film also. My younger sister and I have discovered about ourselves that we have a crush on that haircut that people used to have, back in this day. You know, like James McAvoy has in Atonement. When somebody has a haircut like that, we both get all giggly and crushy, even when the somebody is a jerk like that submarine kid in that episode of Angel where he comes back for revenge and dangles Fred and Wesley and everyone by ropes in the main foyer. And when they make films set in Britain around the Wars, people tend to have this haircut. All slightly wavy and side-parted.
Apparently, Stephen Poliakoff knows this about me, and he cares. Because Stephen Poliakoff is doing a film called 1939, in which, “on the eve of World War II, the formidable Keyes family tries to uphold their traditional way of life”. I didn’t make that up. Now unfortunately it stars Romola “Please forgive me for Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights” Garai – no, honey, I do not forgive you. It contains Christopher Lee and Julie Christie and Jeremy Northam, three Legendary Actors in whom I am not deeply interested.
And then, then, then, Internet, it contains Bill Nighy, whom I absolutely adore, in everything, and it contains Charlie Cox, Tristan from Stardust.
And Internet darling, it contains David Tennant too.
David Tennant. AND Charlie Cox. AND Bill Nighy. AND they are all in a film about an influential family just before World War II. I feel like Stephen Poliakoff needs to come visit me so that I can give him a hug and make him gingerbread.