John Boorman is a British filmmaker who is primarily remembered for cult films such as “Deliverance” and “Excalibur”, and in this humorous, partly autobiographical drama, he recalled growing up in England during World War II. Although comedy is not exactly the first association with a war film, “Hope and Glory” is an extremely witty and not at all sentimental drama about the war period. Probably all those of my age who in the early nineties were the same age as the main character of this film, ten-year-old Billy Rowan at the start, will know many things from this film. Playing with weapons. shells, gunpowder and ammunition, along with constant air threats and sirens, to which a person somehow gets used to over time.
The first few times when the siren sounds, a person is scared out of their wits, but later it almost becomes normal, no matter how absurd it sounds. The Rowan family will also get used to life in wartime conditions very quickly, and after father Clive (David Hayman), a veteran of the First World War, volunteers again for the British army, his wife Grace (Sarah Miles) will be left alone in the working class. suburban London to care for Billy and his sisters, teenage Dawn (Sammi Davis) and little Sue.
After the German air raids, Billy and his new friends will find a hobby in collecting shrapnel, and his older sister will soon start a relationship with a Canadian soldier. Bombings are a constant and bombs fall practically every night in the neighborhood, offering the kids a new playground the next morning, and although the danger is clear and obvious, the biggest plus of this film is that it managed to see the whole situation from the boy’s perspective. Of course, it is clear to any normal person that every war is a horror, but Billy does not think about this tragic and catastrophic aspect at all.
“Hope and Glory” is great because it wonderfully captures not only the spirit of the time and pretty much shows how life was then with all those restrictions, poverty and hunger, but it also captures the spirit of the people who did not let themselves be broken. The whole story gets even crazier and funnier when Grace decides to move the kids with her parents to the country where Billy’s best friend will become a totally crazy, grumpy, grumpy grandfather. Only then, from Billy’s perspective, life turns into a complete idyll, and until it is time to go back to school, he will forget both the bombings and all the horrors of war.
After “Deliverance”, “Hope and Glory” brought Boorman his second Oscar nomination for directing, and he had a total of three nominations for this film because he was also the screenwriter and producer. The film is full of nostalgia, which is why it is not surprising that it was extremely loved and popular in Great Britain in the mid-eighties, because it was still a time when there were many people alive who remembered the war and what life was like then. However, just as much as “Hope and Glory” is a film about war and growing up during war, it is as much a film about memories, memories that later on in life we like to recall and feel good that we are exactly that or at least something similar to those often embellished really lived through the memories.