Dexter Fletcher (2013)
Some people don’t like musicals simply because they can’t deal with characters breaking into song and dance in the middle of a conversation. I’ve never found this a problem but the movie musical’s decline in popularity has turned the experience of seeing a new one into a relative rarity. Sunshine on Leith made me realise that most of the musicals I know are, thanks to their setting in time and place, somewhat divorced from reality even before the conventions of the genre take over. Sunshine on Leith is different. It’s set in the present (or at least it was when first staged in the theatre in 2007) and it’s set in Edinburgh. In the early stages, I felt awkward watching people performing numbers by the Proclaimers in streets that I know well. And because the storyline isn’t intrinsically silly, you can’t ignore it the way you do in, say, Mamma Mia! The prologue to Dexter Fletcher’s film, including the opening song, features British soldiers in Afghanistan, in a truck heading towards a roadside bomb. It takes a little time to adjust to Sunshine on Leith. But the numbers are well sung and performed – and much more skilfully built and choreographed than the repeated chaos of the staging in Mamma Mia! Fletcher is particularly good at giving life and rhythm to routines that involve movement rather than dance, and regardless of the number of people on screen: sequences involving a couple of characters work as well as those that take place in a busy pub or at a big silver wedding party. Once I’d got used to Sunshine on Leith, it was easy to accept outbursts of singing and dancing as an expression of the characters’ heightened feeling.
My lack of familiarity with the Proclaimers – I knew only three of the numbers – cuts both ways. In Mamma Mia! the Abba songs were so familiar and numerous that you could always look forward to the next one – and how the star cast would cope with it – and you never had to wait long. Without that assurance, you expect more of the parts between numbers in Sunshine on Leith but the newness of the songs also makes the experience fresher. In fact, the two songs I knew well – ‘Letter From America’ and ‘500 Miles’ – made for relatively less satisfying sequences. I had tears in my eyes during ‘Letter From America’ but this was less because of what the song meant in the context of the film than because of the associations of the Proclaimers’ original (and because I took in the words more clearly than I had before). The theme of this great song is too big to work, as it has to here, as a description of relationships within a single Scottish family. (Given the strength of their daughter’s wanderlust, Florida seems a disappointingly conventional destination but the lyric requires it of course.) ‘500 Miles’ is the climactic number – a crowd scene staged in the Princes Street Gardens next to the National Galleries. It’s jolly but mechanical, and too focused on only one of the three main couples in the story.
The script by Stephen Greenhorn, who also wrote the stage show, is workaday. The awareness of that is something of a drag on the movie’s effectiveness – you often think the cast are doing well considering. Yet they win you over. The paterfamilias Rab finds out that he’s also the father of an adult daughter (Sara Vickers) he knew nothing about. In spite of the marital crisis this sparks, it’s a relief to see Peter Mullan with fewer demons than usual. Even better, he doesn’t seem to be soft-pedalling: he gives a quietly commanding performance of great warmth and humour. Mullan transcends feebly conceived scenes: Rab goes to a book signing by a Nigella-ish celebrity chef (Daniela Nardini), treating her as an agony aunt who can help him mend the rift in his marriage. The sequence and the one that follows – Rab climbs the stairs with supermarket shopping for the conciliating supper and has a heart attack – are thoroughly unconvincing but Mullan’s intonation of the question ‘Veal?’ redeems them. As Rab’s wife Jean, Jane Horrocks is, compared with Mullan, doing-a-character but her movement and gestures are particularly well absorbed and she has a fretful sweetness of nature that’s touching.
Although Freya Mavor, the Miami-bound nurse Liz, is hemmed in by the obvious plotting, she sings nicely and her divided feelings and allegiances are persuasive. George MacKay (her brother) and Kevin Guthrie (the brother’s best mate and the sister’s boyfriend) are well paired as the physically contrasting ex-soldiers, Davy and Ally. MacKay has a lovely voice and is particularly good at making the transition from speaking to singing – his movement in the numbers is excellent too. Guthrie has a distinctive screen presence and is very likeable. Paul Brannigan from The Angels’ Share appears only briefly (in a non-singing role) as a soldier who got out of Afghanistan with his life but not his legs: he makes a strong impression. Antonia Thomas as an English girl, Yvonne – Liz’s nursing colleague, who becomes Davy’s girlfriend – is OK although not as natural as the other youngsters. I liked Jason Flemyng as Harry, who works with Jean as an attendant in the National Galleries, especially in his coming to emotional life in his one musical number. I gather that the Proclaimers make a cameo appearance but I missed them.
14 October 2013
