HOPE AND GLORY REVIEWED
“Hope and Glory” was my first John Boorman movie. Yeah, I was a pretty lackadaisical HBO watcher as a child. To the outside viewer, it’s a just World War II movie about a 10 year old boy dealing with change during the Blitz. The deeper dive reveals that it’s a coming-of-age tale with World War II happening as a backdrop. Teen girls are trying to become women, little boys learn how to swear and mothers just try to keep it all together.
Family movies during wartime get painted with two brushes. A filmmaker tries to show some sort of untold truth about war or the film becomes a memory piece. As the world ages past World War II, the amount of memory pieces are starting to dry up. Still, it’s hard to see this movie being about anything other than Boorman making sense of his youth. When you live through war, it feels pressing to make people understand your past.
It’s just what Boorman chooses to show highlights how he remembers his childhood. Violence happened around him, but he always felt like a spectator. Ian Bannen deserved an Oscar nomination for playing the Grandfather. Great stuff all around.
SPECIAL FEATURES
- Nothing
A/V STATS
- 1.66:1 1080p transfer
- MONO