"Write what you know," as the maxim says, and for what he says will be his final film, John Boorman has adhered to that wisdom. It has served him well. This follow-up to the autobiographical Hope and Glory has been a long, long time coming, but, from performances to the feelings it reawakens within, the wait has been worth it. How this touching film isn't receiving a bigger release in Boorman's adopted country - Pat Shortt and Brían F O'Byrne are in it - is a mystery.
Nine years on from Hope and Glory Boorman's alter-ego Bill Rohan (Turner) is now 18 and trudging through the reality of desk-bound army life for his National Service. Saved from a posting in Korea, Bill is the typing instructor in a camp where he works and lives with Percy Hapgood (Caleb Landry Jones), a trouble magnet determined to push his superiors to the brink. And then some. The duo are fighting wars on a number of fronts: boredom, petty mindedness and, most importantly, matters of the heart. They're kids waiting to be men and the army could be the making of them, although not in the way the top brass would like to think.
Boorman's eye for faces and talent is very much in evidence here, with the chemistry between Tuner and Jones superb and great support from Vanessa Kirby, David Thewlis and the aforementioned Irish duo. There is much humour in the situations on screen, which the director says "occurred much as depicted", but there is also a great poignancy in the innocence of some characters and the experience of others. To borrow a great quote from another director, John Carpenter, Bill and Percy don't know what they don't know, and as the story unfolds you're reminded of another chestnut – the one about experience keeping a dear school.
Other people's lives are just as much a mystery as ours are to them. The message of compassion and understanding here is a special one, which, unlike those watching, never ages.
If this really is goodbye, it's a lovely swansong.
Harry Guerin
Queen & Country is showing exclusively at the Light House Cinema, Dublin from June 12
