May 27–June 3, 1999

movie shorts

The Winslow Boy

As David Mamet moves further away from the obscenity-laced tales of backroom bandits and small-time hustlers which made his name, he continues to develop as a filmmaker. The Winslow Boy, which chronicles a family's involvement in a sensational Edwardian trial, is most noteworthy for what it leaves out. Adapted from Terrence Rattigan's play, which is in turn based on a real incident, the film deals with a young boy whose expulsion from boarding school becomes a cause célèbre when his family, convinced of his innocence, take their case for redress all the way to Parliament. Resisting, mainly, the ever-deadly tendency to "open up" the play, Mamet offers no shots of thronging crowds or intrusive reporters, instead marking the case's fame through a series of delicately placed newspaper headlines and editorial cartoons. The focus is instead on the Winslow family, which includes Nigel Hawthorne as the patriarch who sacrifices his health to pursue the case, and Rebecca Pidgeon as his suffragette daughter, whose participation costs her a fiancé. With Jeremy Northam as an opportunistic lawyer swayed by the Winslows' dedication, The Winslow Boy is pure melodrama, but executed with Mametian precision. The film is archetypal but not soppy, the words cutting no less deeply for their G-rated syntax. Although it's surely not intended as such, the film is also a much needed corrective for the short-minded many who think sensational trials began with the invention of cable TV.

—Sam Adams