A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY

RUN TIME: 96 MINUTES DVD 92 MINUTES	AKA: Kuukausi maalla - Finland Longe da Guerra - Portugal Miesiac na wsi - Poland Un Mes en el campo - Spain Un Mese in campagna - Italy

FILMING LOCATIONS: Bray Studios, Windsor, Berkshire, England, UK St. Mary's Church, Radnage, Buckinghamshire, England, UK High Wyckombe, Buckinghamshire, England, UK

DIRECTOR: Pat O'Connor	WRITER: Simon Gray
PRODUCER: Dominic Fulford, Johnny Goodman, John Hambly, Kenith Trodd	CINEMATOGRAPHER: Kenneth MacMillan

Cast - in credits order Colin Firth ... Tom Birkin John Atkinsons ... Old Man on Train Jim Carter ... Ellerbeck Patrick Malahide ... Reverend Keach Kenneth Branagh ... James Moon Richard Vernon ... Colonel Hebron Tim Barker ... Mossop Vicki Arundale ... Kathy Ellerbeck Martin O'Neil ... Edgar Ellerbeck Natasha Richardson ... Alice Keach Tony Haygarth ... Douthwaite Eileen O'Brien ... Mrs. Ellerbeck Elizabeth Anson ... Lucy Sykes Barbara Marten ... Mrs. Sykes Kenneth Kitson ... Mr. Sykes Judy Gridley ... Mrs. Clough Lisa Taylor ... Emily Clough Andrew Wilde ... Shop Assistant David Gillies ... Milburn David Garth ... Old Birkin	Production Companies Channel Four Films Euston Films PfH Ltd. Distributors Orion Classics (1988) (USA) Technical Specifications Color info: Color

MUSIC:

SUMMARY: Five centuries ago a mural was created in a country church in the north of England and then hidden under layers of white paint. Looking at it again will be a distraction, the Rev. Mr. Keach (Malahide) tells WWI veteran Tom Birkin (Firth) who will spend a month in the country restoring the mural. Another veteran, James Moon, (Branagh) is looking for the grave of an ancestor of the patroness of the church who fought in the Crusades. The rector's wife, Alice, (Richardson) comes to see the mural and later visits Birkin's bell tower abode, bringing a basket of apples. Will she open the book in which he has pressed the yellow rose she gave him earlier?

MOVIE REVIEW
27 September 1987
New York Times
By JANET MASLIN

PAT O'CONNOR'S direction broadens and illuminates ''A Month in the Country'' even as the writing - a screenplay by Simon Gray, from the novel by J.L. Carr - strives to tie up any loose ends. Indeed, Mr. O'Connor, whose first feature was the haunting ''Cal,'' does a great deal to keep an eloquent but small film from seeming even smaller.

''A Month in the Country'' (which has no connection with the Turgenev work of the same name) is set in a tiny Yorkshire village called Oxgodbody, where a shell-shocked World War I veteran named Birkin (Colin Firth) arrives to work on uncovering a medieval painting on the wall of a local church. When Birkin first appears, it is in the midst of a torrential downpour, and Mr. O'Connor's establishing shots of the village in the rain do a lot to foreshadow the restorative powers of this simple, beautiful setting. Birkin's acute stammer and his nervous tics attest to his need to recuperate from a wartime ordeal, and the film follows his progress.

The screenplay displays competing tendencies toward tidiness and inconclusiveness, as well as an orderly, theatrical manner of bringing supporting characters onto and off the screen. Birkin's mission to restore the painting, set forth in the will of a local benefactress, reveals a mystery that Birkin then proceeds to solve, a mystery having to do with the painter himself. He is helped in this work by Moon, an archeologist who (at the behest of that same benefactress) has pitched a tent nearby and is searching for the remains of one of the benefactress's ancestors. Meanwhile, the church's vicar, Keach (Patrick Malahide), opposes Birkin's efforts on the grounds that a painting in church will distract parishioners, and Keach's lovely wife gravitates toward Birkin. The wife is played by Natasha Richardson, Vanessa Redgrave's daughter, whose presence is mesmermizing and whose mannerisms are uncannily like her mother's. She has that same shyly lopsided grin and that same bold, penetrating gaze.

On its own, this material might seem far more neat and comfortable than it does in Mr. O'Connor's hands. But his direction lends it a strong sense of yearning, as well as a spiritual quality more apparent in the look of the film than in its dialogue. As in ''Cal,'' Mr. O'Connor is especially good at emphasizing the characters' separateness from one another, as well as their unarticulated longing. The sense of unfulfilled desire and incommunicable sorrow give ''A Month in the Country'' great pathos, and the screenplay's trimness does set the stage for a transcendent final scene.

Though Mr. O'Connor seems less in tune with this material than with the Northern Irish tragedy of ''Cal,'' he gives particular power to the story's elements of religion and doubt. He also gives moments that might have seemed precious - like a flirtatious speech by Mrs. Keach about roses -a sweetness that is real. So does the enormously self-possessed Miss Richardson, plucking a white rose and handing it to Birkin with great aplomb. ''They bloom till autumn,'' she says of a favorite rose. ''So you'll know when summer's over, because I usually wear one of the last in my hat.'' Not many actresses could deliver a line like that, as Miss Richardson does, without seeming the least bit coy.

MOVIE REVIEW

RITA KEMPLEY

WASHINGTON POST

18 MARCH 1988

Nothing is so tranquil as "A Month in the Country," in which sorrows are laid to rest like souls in a churchyard. Though it is spiritually uplifting, there's the feel of an elegy to this English soldier's story, a conscientious tone poem set in pastoral Yorkshire after the War to End All Wars.

In the summer of 1919, war-weary veteran Tom Birkin (Colin Firth) comes to the sleepy village of Oxgodby to uncover a medieval church mural that is believed to be hidden under thick coats of plaster. In the process of restoring the painting, "Christ and the Judgment," the shell-shocked Birkin himself is restored. As the painter surely intended, the mural remains miraculous even after a thousand years, its images joining with the narrative to tell Birkin's story.

The search for truth is both high and low; the digging both internal and external; the revelations as plentiful as the enigmas. Birkin becomes intrigued not only with the mural but with the painter, finding clues to his identity in the paint. Coincidentally, another veteran, John Moon (Kenneth Branagh), is digging into the past in a field nearby. Though hired to find the remains of a church forebear, the archeologist is actually engaged in his own pursuits, both metaphoric and personal.

A very British relationship develops between the two, with lots of tea and simile. Theirs is a quiet fellowship of shared smokes and questions never asked in this dense and inconclusive story. Adapted from a novel by J. L. Carr, it includes a host of characters as allusive as the apple the vicar's wife (Natasha Richardson) gives Birkin. The two are obviously attracted, but the relationship remains pure, despite the temptations.

It's all rather Arthurian, with its chivalric hero on his spiritual quest, the atmosphere suffused, seeming to dance with once and future truths.