» Blessedly beautiful BBC Movie: Mr Harvey Lights a Candle

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Oct1408

Blessedly beautiful BBC Movie: Mr Harvey Lights a Candle

Jonathon

3 teachers take a grade ~12 class on a school trip to a cathedral.

Only one student honours the cathedral – one of the Muslim students.

In some ways, the film could have been put together by a commission trying to check off multiple points on a curriculum. The teens act out a ?litany? of wanton behaviours, and we know from the start that this bunch of irreverent, shallow and sometimes cruel teens will come back from the cathedral changed. But how? Wow.

This is not formulaic or forced. It does not set up false problems with Christ as the answer. It is open and questioning.

One teacher rips tolerant liberal agnostics in a way I’ve never seen in a movie.

I’m not touching the heart of the movie. The heart was .. smart – beautiful. And brilliantly realized.

I’d call it a religious experience.

It doesn’t have the cinematography or soundscape of In America, but I’d like the world to see it. And I just found that the review displayed on IMDB praises the cinematography and soundscape – I don’t recall them standing out, but I guess they blended in well. very moving, beautifully paced and acted, 19 April 2006

Author: peter-toth-1 from Ostrava, Czech Republic

if you have a chance of seeing this film do see it. it’s quite shocking in parts and really makes you think about so many important issues but it’s not didactic. in my opinion it’s a piece of art… beautifully filmed, fine music of many styles, the typically impressive level of acting that one has come to expect from BBC Drama. Nathalie Press (billed as ‘Natalie’ Press) is convincing in her role as depressed teenager exploited by a male classmate. Celia Imrie has that beautifully reassuring quality that gives the sometimes unnerving action stability and the viewer comfort in the knowledge that someone out there is actually ‘normal’, but the real star as always is Timothy Spall – surely one of the greatest actors of our time! Seen: last night on TVOntario.

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