It turns out to be from Queenie Hennessy, a former colleague at the brewery he once worked for, letting him know that she is in a hospice up there, dying. The story begins with Harold (Broadbent), who lives in suburban Devon, unexpectedly receiving a letter postmarked Berwick-upon-Tweed. The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry is a calculatedly poignant picture but sweet rather than saccharine, drawing from that same deep well of English spirit and eccentricity that made a TV hit decades ago of The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin and more recently made Captain Tom Moore a household name when, aged 99, he started walking lengths of his garden to raise money for NHS charities.
It’s a very well-crafted adaptation of a story that on the page struck me as mildly mawkish, but on screen is propelled so expertly by Broadbent and the marvellous Penelope Wilton that the mawkishness rarely surfaces and even when it does, hardly matters.ĭirector Hettie Macdonald, whose credits are mostly in TV (Poirot, Doctor Who, Howards End and Normal People), also does a splendid job, keeping the show on the road in more ways than one.Īt the screening I went to, Broadbent popped up beforehand to wish us an enjoyable experience, hoping that we would find it a ‘celebration of humanity’.
She was an actress and writer of radio plays long before she tried her hand at novels, and those sensibilities show. Many of those who loved the book will doubtless disagree but I prefer the film, also written by Joyce.
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