A Month In The Country 

A month in the country can mean many things to many people depending on time and place. It can be merely a period of rest that enables us to sort things out—or it can be a period of great decision, a fresh view that time and distance from our normal lives suggests. It is a frequently used device in film and literature which doesn’t necessarily tarnish with use—and doesn’t at all in this especially fine British film. 

The time is just after World War One in England. The protagonists are two British soldiers who have recently returned from France in a war in which enormous numbers did not. All of the men have been profoundly affected by their experiences in muddy trenches almost face to face with the enemy. Many of the soldiers, bathed in poison gas and bombarded by exploding shells, have caught the new diseases of the twentieth century—gassing, shell shock and existential malaise. A large number have returned to England almost guilty that they have survived, wondering why they did. 

The two male “heroes” meet in a church in the Yorkshire countryside where they have come to spend a month working. One has been set the task of uncovering and restoring a religious wall painting in the ancient Anglo Saxon church. The other, something of an archeologist, is using the churchyard as his digging site. Each man bears his individual war wounds. The restorer’s is more evident in his stutter and facial tics. Colin Firth is outstanding in the role. 

The restorer’s month is more clearly delineated than the archeologist’s. The simple people of the community make gestures of friendship toward him. Two children, hungry for stimulation in their flat environment, bring a victrola to the church and watch him work on his scaffold. The lovely minister’s wife provides apples and a blanket in the cold church tower which poverty forces him to use as his bedroom. This restrained, childless young woman is magnificently underplayed by Natasha Richardson whose every movement is almost balletic in its suggestion and grace. Her acceptance of frustration is profoundly moving. She is the quintessential heroine of the era. Her reference to her large empty house suggests the loneliness and emptiness of her own life. Her husband, a religious zealot, is equally alone in his frustrated attempt to move his irreligious congregation Patrick Malahide is very well cast in the part. 

This slice of life of Yorkshire, with its limited homey joys and frustrations, works its special influence on the two returned veterans. In addition, during their work, each man appears to arrive at some aspect of individual truth that enables him to return to life in an England that has won the war, but like its soldiers, lost its sense of self. 

By the end of their labors, both men have achieved a level of self acceptance that has calmed their ravaged psyches and enabled them to come to relative terms with themselves. 

The film is beautifully paced and accurate for its time. Director Pat O’Connor captures the attitudes and feelings of the repressive era that D. H. Lawrence and James Joyce were doing their best to discredit. 
A Month In The Country is very British in its poetic restraint and superb acting. It is also particularly thoughtful in its suggestion that it is sometimes necessary to accept the inevitable frustration of living at any time or any place. 
Eva H. Kissin