Former Bond girl Gemma Arterton stars with Sam Claflin and Bill Nighy in Their Finest – a top notch British drama mixed comedy set during the Battle of Britain and London Blitz which follows a film crew’s endeavours to produce a propaganda film about the Dunkirk evacuation in the hope of boosting morale for the U.K.’s citizens afflicted by war. Director Lone Scherfig, (responsible for 2009’s highly acclaimed An Education) marries wartime drama with light hearted humour, transporting us back to a time where loveable scriptwriters, filmmakers and actors constantly lived in a world of uncertainty as the fear of bombs dropping in the night remained high, as too their human spirit.
London, 1940 – A time where the British ministry have turned to propaganda films as a means to uplift and perhaps distract the public from the horrors of an ongoing war. Realizing ‘a woman’s touch’ is exactly what it is required, former secretary Catrin Cole (Arterton) is hired as a scriptwriter in charge of writing the female dialogue and teamed together with lead scriptwriter Tom Buckley (Claflin). Setting out to make ‘The Nancy Stirling’, an epic feature length film based on the accounts of two twin sisters’ helping hand in the Dunkirk evacuation and starring the over-the-hill yet still incredibly well known Ambrose Hilliard (Nighy) in perhaps the most important role of his career, Catrin and Buckley work tirelessly against the clock and against all odds with a passionate cast and crew by their side to bring about a film which should warm the hearts of the nation.
Featuring a fascinating premise and depicting how propaganda was made during the highest levels of war in the nineteen forties, a certain charm is spread throughout the entire run-time, attracting your utmost interest from it’s very beginning to its final scene. Definitely a slice of British cinema’s best pie in the way it shifts from heartfelt drama to romantic comedy with ease, Gemma Arterton is irrevocably terrific in her role as Catrin, the most pivotal of players in the production of the film she and her team are attempting to make and a credit to this film with exploration of a woman’s role in such efforts serving as a breath of fresh air.
Paired quite well with Sam Claflin as the charming partner turned love interest Buckley and the perpetually hilarious gift to cinema that is Mr. Bill Nighy hamming it up as a Hilliard, a revered iconic actor now perhaps past his used by dateoffering up eighty percent of the film’s best comedic moments, the rest of the supporting cast is fleshed out by familiar British faces Jack Huston, Eddie Marsan, and Helen McCrory all bringing their A-game to match the film’s three leads.
Interesting in its own right to see behind the curtain of how films were made back in the day and the struggles experienced in doing so, Their Finest is a poignant, bittersweet war rom-com gifted with an artistic feminine twist. An endearing tale of getting things done in the name of the people, Scherfig has done well in delivering yet another critically acclaimed film worth the praise, one which could very well be her finest, too.
