Saturday.....Valentines Day.....Easy To Do Justice, Very Hard To Do Right

Playwrights have an advantage over novelists. The novelist can write for a thousand pages detailing the scene, the person, even the history of the age, but the playwright spends all of his time on dialogue. I can read and enjoy a Neil Simon play almost anytime. Terence Rattigan wrote The Winslow Boy which has been turned into two films. One in 1948 starring Robert Donat and the more recent film from 1999, directed by David Mamet. The plot is that of a young boy at a prestigious military school in England (circa 1900) who is accused of stealing some money. His father and sister set out on a seemingly impossibly task of forcing the government to withdraw the accusations against him. Enter the most famous jurist of England, Sir Robert Morton, who takes on this case to the surprise of even his loyal friends. The film is a remarkable story of a father's love for his son, a sister's quest for fairness and justice in society, and a barrister's pursuit of right. It is also a love story but if you ask ten people who saw the film they might wonder where the romance was. The boy's sister and the famous barrister are poles apart politically in an age that is seeing women take their place in society. An unlikely couple if their ever would be one. Indeed, there is no romantic dialogue, not even the holding of hands. What there is, is one or two looks given for a second and two comments at the end of the film that says it all. The trial is over and essentially the film. Miss Winslow and the barrister are parting, what would seem to be forever, but she had to make one last comment on the emotion he displayed at the verdict for she doubted any sincerity in this lawyer of lawyers. She elicited from him a parting comment on her continuing feminist activities of which he said Pity, it's a lost cause. Her final words were Oh, do you really think so Sir Robert? How little you know about women. Goodbye, I doubt that we should meet again. She may have been correct about the future of women's suffrage in England but that was not the issue on trial in this dialogue here as he parted with, Oh, do you really think so, Miss Winslow? How little you know about men. I have never been a fan of Valentine's Day for it seems trite. We are submerged in a culture of words and phrases such as Erich Segal's, given to Ryan O'Neill, Love means never having to say your sorry. It's too late to recommend The Winslow Boy for Valentine's Day but then it fell on a Sunday this year and that is another love story altogether and it would probably be better to view it without all the trappings of hearts and candy anyway.