RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH

                                                         Part 4

This is the final installment of four columns about the amazing career of Sir Richard Attenborough, who lived to be 90 and worked in seven decades. Today’s deals with his final films as a director.

Though Sir Richard never reached the heights he did with Gandhi (1982), he did direct other very good films. That A Chorus Line (1985) isn’t as good as the stage play is really to be expected. After all, it’s one of the stagiest plays ever. But the film is quite entertaining and an A for effort for a most difficult job of directing. 

Cry Freedom (1987) is a true story about the horrors of apartheid in South Africa. Denzel Washington is excellent as activist Steve Biko. Kevin Cline is quite good as  journalist Donald Woods who gradually buys in to Biko’s struggle for freedom. It is fairly well accepted that Biko was murdered by the enforcement police and that Woods was banished from the country. But the story was soon told to the world when Woods reached the UK. Sir Richard’s direction is restrained but telling. 

Shadowlands (1993) is based on the May-December romance between British author C.S. Lewis and American poet Joy Gresham. He’s about 30 years older, a stuffy English don and she’s a feisty young American. Sir Anthony Hopkins and Deborah Winger are good as the principals. She is diagnosed with terminal cancer and Lewis’ caring for her final days is quite moving. 

Continuing with his penchant for directing films about real people, but straying noticeably from the facts, Richard Attenborough made In Love And War (1996). It is about an early romance of author Ernest Hemingway and a nurse who cared for him after he was injured in World War I. A very young Sandra Bullock plays the nurse and unknown Chris O’Donnell plays Hemingway. The movie makes much more of the affair than what actually happened, which is fine because the true story wasn’t as interesting. 

Here the good stuff ends. Despite a noble effort by Robert Downey, Chaplin (1992) just isn’t very good. And I’m afraid we have to blame the screenwriter and Sir Richards’s direction for focusing too much on Chaplin’s dreary personal life and not enough on his cinematic magic. Grey Owl (1995) features the dreadfully miscast Pierce Brosnan as a legendary Brit who came to America and became a famous trapper and conservationist. Sir Richard’s last film, Closing The Ring (2007) is just an unfortunate mess, with a convoluted and confusing plot about the troubles in Northern Ireland and a plane crash involving three friends from the UK. Miss it if you can.

All of the movies in this column are available on DVD. All are really for grown-ups.

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