Starring: Mark Rylance, Sally Hawkins, Jake Davies, Christian Lees, Jonah Lees, Mark Lewis Jones, Rhys Ifans
Distributor: Universal Pictures International
Runtime: 106 mins. Reviewed in Jul 2022
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
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Maurice Flitcroft was a shipyard crane operator. Threatened with job loss, he decides that golf is his future, specifically playing in the British Open. In the unbelievable true story, this simple family man becomes a media celebrity, dreams (and delusions) and all.
No, not a misprint! The venue for this film is not a theatre – but there is a theatrical venue, and quite some performances, a golf course.
The screenplay is based on actual characters and events – although they seem to be in the category of ‘Believe it or not!’. However, as with so many contemporary films based on real characters, the final credits have an amount of footage and photos to verify the characters and events as real.
On the whole, this is a light-hearted film. However, audience moods will change throughout the film – happy, hopeful, amazed, regretful, hesitant, happy again, more than happy.
This is the story of a crane operator at a shipyard in the 1970s, Maurice Flitcroft. And he is embodied on screen by one of Britain’s most versatile actors, Mark Rylance (artistic director at London’s Globe Theatre for a decade, television’s Thomas Cromwell, Oscar winner for Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies). Rylance plays Maurice Flitcroft as a complex-simple character. We meet him in middle age, threatened with Thatcher’s nationalisation of the shipyards and loss of job. He is simple and naïve, but also has an innate intelligence, cultured in many ways. He has married the young woman of his dreams, Jean (the always versatile and dependable Hawkins). He has become a father to her son and they have twins together. They happily live a simple life.
Audiences will be wondering how on earth he became what the journalists headlined as “’Phantom of the Open’. Maurice Flitcroft is a lifelong dreamer. Wondering about a new job, he is attracted by a TV program on golf. Why not? But, and here is the stretch, he decides to enter the British Open. Audiences will enjoy the jigs and the reels of the procedures, rejections, aristocratic presumptions, and Maurice’s practice which he says is the road to perfection.
The day at the British Open where he is an official entrant entertains us in our cinema seats. But, it also entertains the crowds. It attracts the attention of the media. How could he be so bad. And, he has his twin sons interchanging as caddies, they themselves with huge ambitions to be disco-dance stars, making the moves, touches of performance on the course. However, it is quite a different matter for his older son, Michael, who works at the shipyard, has moved into management and is placed in embarrassing situations as his bosses watch his father’s performance (or lack of it).
Audiences who don’t know the story may think that this is far-fetched but, it becomes even further-fetched as Maurice does not give up his ambitions for playing in the British Open, despite the hostility and machinations of the boss of the competition, played by Rhys Ifans.
Maurice is a mixture of charm, dreams, deceptions – and loyally supported by his wife Jean.
Actually, Maurice’s rehabilitation in the public eye is also hard to believe – but, the Americans always come up with an unexpected solution and happy ending.
So, wonderful to have dreams, wonderful to have opportunities to live the dream – but, always the question, when does a dream become a delusion and when does delusion have sad consequences?
This film reminds us of similar unbelievable British characters and situations in the recent The Duke, and, unlikely sports competitors such as Eddie the Eagle.
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