Blackbird

 Blackbird

• Director: Roger Michell
• Seen by this director: Notting Hill, Titanic Town
• Based on the book: No
• Cast: Susan Sarandon, Sam Neill, Anson Boon, Kate Winslet, Rainn Wilson, Lindsay Duncan, Bex Taylor-Klaus, Mia Wasikowska
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Susan Sarandon – Cloud Atlas, Emotional Arithmetic, Romance & Cigarettes, Alfie, Ice Bound, Moonlight Mile, The Banger Sisters, Igby Goes Down, Anywhere but Here, Cradle Will Rock, Dead Man Walking, Little Women, The Client, Lorenzo’s Oil, Thelma and Louise, White Castle, The January Man, Bull Durham, Witches of Eastwick, Atlantic City, The Rocky Horror Picture Show
• Sam Neill – A Long Way Down, Skin, Jurassic Park, Ivanhoe
• Anson Boon - 1917
• Kate Winslet – The Mountain Between Us, Contagion, The Reader, Holiday, Little Children, Romance & Cigarettes, Extras, Finding Neverland, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Hideous Kinky, Titanic, Hamlet, Jude, Sense and Sensibility
• Rainn Wilson – Juno, Six Feet Under, Full Frontal, Almost Famous, Galaxy Quest
• Lindsay Duncan – The Leftovers, Sherlock, About Time, Merlin, The Hollow Crown, Doctor Who, Lost in Austen, Starter for 10, Under the Tuscan Sun, Prick Up Your Ears
• Mia Wasikowska – Only Lovers Left Alive, Tracks, Alice in Wonderland, The Kids Are All Right, Defiance
• Why? The cast
• Seen: 30 April 2022      

       Rich white liberal dysfunctional family gather in a remote architecturally designed house on the shore when the mother Lily (Sarandon) is dying. They are aware that she has chosen to end her life because she can’t bear the indignity of dying of ALS (it’s not named but the symptoms and prognosis fit). The family’s attempts at staying upbeat waver. Lily herself is grimly macabre and unsentimental.

       It’s an American remake of the Danish Stille hjerte. I am not a fan of American remakes of European films and probably the Danish version is better but the cast does what it can with a rather banal script (despite the euthanasia subject).

       It does get quite dramatic, and the acting is very good. Against my better judgement I find myself giving it 

4* of 5.