The moving Escape to Normandy was released a year after the death of the great leading actress, Glenda Jackson. At his side is Sir Michael Caine, who announced his retirement from the stage. Daniela Catelli’s review.
2014. Bernie Jordan is 89 years old and with his wife of a lifetime, seriously ill, he lives in a beautiful retirement home for wealthy people, with all the care and attention required. He is a veteran of the British Navy and took part in the Normandy landings in 1944: as the date of the celebration approached, he asked to take part in a group excursion. But it’s late and the seats are finished. However, Bernie does not give up and with the complicity of his wife organizes a solo “escape”. He has a mission to accomplish and no one can stop him.
For once, at the cinema, we allow ourselves to be sentimental and moved. Why Escape to Normandy it is not only the filmic narration of an event that really happened 10 years ago, when a war veteran “escaped” from the retirement home to go alone to commemorate D-Day on the landing beaches, but it is also a monumentthe last, to two legends of British and world cinema: Glenda Jacksonwonderful two-time Oscar-winning actress, who passed away in June 2023 at 87 years of age, and sir Michael Caine – 91 years old and fortunately still with us – who after an Oscar, a fantastic career and countless awards, announced his official retirement from the stage after playing a real character who at the time of his undertaking was the same age as him when he turned. On their faces, so expressive, so reconciled with the idea of time passing, of old age, even of death, convinced like their characters of the need to enjoy every single possible moment, even if only by searching for it in the memory of a happy life, passes a good part of the history of the cinema we loved and of one of the highest acting schools the world has ever had.
Let’s put it this way: if you are an adult or perhaps past middle age, you will certainly be able to immerse yourself more easily, by virtue of your experiences or those of your parents, in the history, feelings and adventure experienced by Bernie Jordan and his wife. Escape to Normandy not only does it tell a story that caused a sensation and became very popular in the press and on social media despite its protagonist himself, but it also talks about war and the waste of young lives it entails, about the peace that is so necessary (now more than ever, while the generals they are eager to go back to killing) but so difficult to obtain, of the remorse, of the survivors’ guilt, of the traumas that those who lived through those tragic days often, as we know, do not confide even to the closest people. And it is a film that talks about reconciliation, about a world in which, beyond the differences in language and culture, we are all fragile and subjected to the same pain, therefore brothers. These are not easy things to understand today, but the film does it very well, with small touches that compare the past and the present, youth and old age, the decadence of the body and the strength of the spirit.
Escape to Normandy it is also one of those love stories that are increasingly rare to see in real life, of people who chose each other very young and spent their lives together, leaving their partner free when necessary, as the woman does in the film. Bernie’s wife when she understands that, however risky, it is necessary for him to leave. Of course, in such a complex story it is a little difficult to avoid rhetoric here and there, which we, for example, found in the musical commentary to be a little too present, but these are venial sins because the moments of pathos are well balanced by humor and never exaggerated by a well-written screenplay and a well-shot film that is lucky enough to rest on the shoulders of two giants, to whom we will never stop being grateful for everything they have done for us who have always loved cinema. As for those who fought and died to free us from Nazi-fascism at the age when our children are overprotected and anguished because they cannot find their place in the world, the gratitude is obviously much higher. with the added bitterness and regret of not having done justice to their sacrifice.
