Another Country (1984)
Not every schoolboy at Eton becomes a Russian
spy like Guy Burgess. Why, then, did this celebrated defector
turn against his crown and country to seal himself from
everything he knew and live the rest of his life in exile?
Another Country, the probing, disturbing
film by Julian Mitchell adapted for the screen from his
smash-hit London play, attempts to explain. For jaded filmgoers
looking for something different, it's well worth investigating.
No reference is made to Guy Burgess by name, but
the implications are obvious. The film begins in 1983 in Moscow,
where a journalist is interviewing the now elderly, placid man
called Guy Bennett (brilliantly played by the astonishing young
British actor Rupert Everett, who recreates his stage
success).
In the course of the interview, Bennett tells
the story of his 1932 school days, and how a young man of class
and breeding became an outlaw figure in the school
establishment.
These were the days when being
"different," or a nonconformist of any kind-whether
homosexual or political-was to elect derision and social
ostracism over popularity and acceptance.
The film takes a chilling look at the way
England's public schools (what Americans call private or prep
schools) distort and adversely shape the lives of the upper
classes at a very early age.
The hallowed halls where the seeds of treason
are sown are a hellish hotbed of paranoia and fear. We never see
the classrooms or the teachers. Order is imposed on the weaker
boys by the older and most ruthless students. To qualify for
rank and privilege, boys must succumb to bullying, beating, and
the petty tyrannies of an adolescent society in which
homosexuality plays a carefully circumscribed role.
Young Bennett (or Burgess, as the case may be)
is in the catbird seat until his passion for a younger boy
subjects him to so much pain, hypocrisy, and emotional blackmail
that he surrenders to the Marxist philosophy of his only chum
and supporter, a brilliant fellow student convincingly played by
Colin Firth.
The point is that the road to Moscow is already
paved with English hypocrisy and public school vice-a case made
very persuasive by the intelligent script, the stifling
atmosphere, and the excellent ensemble work of a faultless
cast.
Everett is properly arrogant and sardonic
without being fey, Firth is outstanding as the token leftist,
handling a mouthful of Marxist propaganda with vigour and
assurance, and Cary Elwes, as Everett's young lover, makes a
confused adolescent forced into an emotional situation beyond
his years both human and attractive.
There are problems. For a film in which passion
plays such a vital part, there is precious little of it. The
best scene in the film is the one that shows the two boys
getting tenderly drunk together in a posh restaurant off campus
and half confessing their mutual affection.
The rest of the time we must sympathize only
because of what the characters say - We never actually see how
they feel. To make problems worse the boys aren't really very
likable in the first place . They all grasp ruthlessly,
self-servingly for power.
These reservations aside, Another Country
gives an extraordinarily informed view of how "playing the
game" is required of the British upper classes both at
school and in life, and how covering one's true feelings is
really "doing the decent thing."
It has fire and inspiration and it smacks of the
truth
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