If ever there was a case of a film being redeemed by its ending, it is Cemetery Junction. It is very rare that I get through 80 minutes of a film thinking a big fat 'MEH' and at the end find myself with a smile on my face and a glint in my eye - but it happened on Wednesday this week, and I'm here to tell you all about it.But I'm getting ahead of myself, 'Cemetery Junction' is a film that purports to be about being young and having to grow up in small-town England in the 1970s. So we get to see lots of stuff about what it was like growing up in the 1970s - if you live inside Ricky Gervais' brain of course. Three youngish lads bum around town with starry eyes having a laugh, fighting with the townies and sometimes doing an honest day's work while winding the coppers up and swearing liberally with their parents - you could have a laugh back then of course, not like today. There's Freddie the earnest leader, Bruce the good-looking fighter and Snork the endearing thickie. They still think and act like they're in school, if only someone could come along and teach them that there's more to life than living in Reading and drawing graffiti on billboards! If only someone could open their eyes to the big wide world and give them a reason to get out and spread their wings! If only!
Thank Christ a pretty girl from Freddie's childhood turns up to tell him all about travelling the world. Praise be that her Dad / Freddie's boss is an insufferable career-minded twat who treats his wife like a waitress and crushes the life out of everyone he meets - thus teaching Freddie the importance of getting out of a rut while you can. Without these people to teach him the wisdom of following your dreams while you're young - who knows what might have happened!
For 80 minutes 'Cemetery Junction' is about as close to a sentimental paint-by-numbers coming of age 'drama' as I'm willing to get without turning the DVD off. In fact it's only the comedy (fart jokes, but funny fart jokes - although there is one great line Freddie says about not knocking his Nan's hair cutting "... it's cheap cos of the Parkinsons") that makes it worthwhile. Everything is predictable and conveniently-plotted, every character fulfils a specific and message-delivering role.
That's what I was going to write in this blog until the very last 7:30 minutes of the film. "7:30 minutes is an odd amount of time" - is something you might say. Well is so happens that it's the length of Led Zeppelin's Rain Song, a song which plays out over the final scenes of the movie. A song to which the events of the final scenes of the movie are edited to perfectly match the movements of. A song that I love. A song that melted my stern heart and made me smile. This is what movie making is all about; anyone who can be bothered to get a Led Zeppelin classic and write a story around it is worthy of praise no matter how saccarine sweet that story might appear to be.
So Ricky Gervais might still be a silly smug tit, but he's our silly smug tit - and so I'm going to stand up for him. Good work mate.
I loved Cemetery Junction But then, I would; as a teenager I worshiped Led Zep and in my opinion, Rain Song is one of their finest compositions.
ReplyDeleteI also must have lived through the seventies as I am now 54. I say 'must have lived' because a lot of it still seems hazy. I certainly didn't grow up in the 70's, I went through that challenge just recently, I think?
But Cemetery Junction tries to present the polarisations affecting young people back then:
If you were working class, there was little prospect of progressing to a real University. It was about careers. It was about buying a house; settling down somewhere nice. Getting a 'good job'. But the whole thing lacked foundation:
So called 'good jobs' were vulnerable to new and emerging technologies. Even more at risk were 'traditional' factory and manual industry occupations ( hence mass unemployment in the 80's). Of course none of this was explained to young people at the time.
So, the three mucateers in Cemetery Junction are certainly not stereotypes from the Gervais bank of such. I feel they fairly represent the; disillusionment and alienation that pervaded that era.
I was close to tears at the end of this film as I knew that my life, like that of the central character could have gone in many directions.
I hope that the young couple do travel further and wider than the grafitti ridden billboards of Reading.
And on their travels keep listening to Rain Song. ' But I know, that I love you so '.