Last Orders

by Michelle Teo

Based on Graham Swift's Booker Prize-winning novel, Last Orders is a nostalgic tale about life and death, friendship and inevitable disappointments.

This unusual road movie follows the claustrophobic car trip of three 60-ish Cockney mates (David Hemmings, Bob Hoskins and Tom Courtenay) who travel from London to Margate to scatter the ashes of their lifelong friend Jack Dodd (Michael Caine). They are driven by Dodd’s son (Ray Winstone) across a pub-ridden landscape, and this journey opens a floodgate of memories. Meanwhile, Dodd’s wife Amy (Helen Mirren) refuses to make the journey, instead visiting their mentally retarded daughter.

Swift’s novel comprises largely a succession of inner monologues, making it a challenging adaptation for the big screen. However, through an intricate series of flashbacks, director Fred Schepisi has created a lucid narrative. The threads of the various characters have been dynamically weaved together, with the point of view flowing from one character to the next. Schepisi shows great restraint and remarkable pathos as he carefully unravels history and reveals the secrets that both bind them together and come between them. By the end of the film, this builds up an emotional richness where the trajectory of all the characters’ lives and their whirlwind inner journeys have been revealed.

In Last Orders, narrative is secondary to character and atmosphere. The film is a true ensemble piece about a group of people connected in a myriad of ways. These are ordinary people in meagre circumstances, who have managed to transcend their everyday lives through the strength of their bonds and magnitude of their emotions.

The treasure of a cast is a handsomely mounted showcase of British heavyweights, who superbly bring real characters to life and capture the subtleties of layers of everyday emotions that are brewing just below the surface. Equally impressive are the young actors that are charged with the difficult task of portraying these venerable characters in their youth.

Most striking is the beautiful portrayal of the quiet tragedy of Jack’s widow Amy by Helen Mirren in a brave, low-key performance. For the last fifty years, she has been visiting her severely retarded daughter (who remains unacknowledged by Dodd) at the residential care home, without receiving any hint of affection or acknowledgement.

Last Orders is a moving, heartfelt study of the pleasures and obligations of friendship, and of facing up to a death and going on. It is also about the stoic working-class generation who lived quietly and maintained their way of life despite the social transformation of postwar Britain. However, one must have the patience to immerse oneself into the film’s slowly unfolding world, as takes a while for the emotions to kick in. But once beyond the tentative stages, it rewards the patient viewer with a devastating impression.