England's Worst Kept Secret

Earlier this morning I found myself awake in the wee hours, not sure if it was an attempt at excitement for the coming events, the early night preceding it or the sudden need for my mind to piss off my body and not let me get back to sleep, instead get up and sit through the worst Glee yet (See the TV blog).
But in the dying hours before my planned screening of Gervais and Merchant's film debut together, Cemetery Junction, I indulged in the Chris Martin, Ronnie Corbett Extras episode then realised, I hadn't seen The Office since we got the DVDs in, what, 2004, and before then only when they had first aired. So off I shot to my brother's room, he may have moved out, but his few DVDs retain close at hand, and I threw them in.

Yep, a few years in between and they still make you laugh, but it's the dramatic elements, the narratives cleverly underplayed in order to create real people on screen that Merch-Vais, as no one will ever call them, have done time and time again to such aplomb. Who'd have thought when Extras first aired, out of order, with Gervais' Andy Millman going up to a man who has seen such awful atrocities and trying to convince him to get a speaking role for M&S vouchers, that by the finale we loved this guy, we'd seen his highs and lows, mainly lows, but it wasn't the situations but the character that came out of it that we cared about, the detail in writing and performing is exquisite.

And yet, when it comes to secondary characters, they always have problems, sure they may know all the info on that other rival actor Millman faces, but they don't tell us anything, he's just there to annoy Andy three times a series and the bugger off, and yes, it's not like unnecessary explanations would fit the piece, but the way that it just feels they know the character, but don't care for them, the lack of heart and soul, which is worrying.
Case in point, Ewan MacIntosh's Keith from Accounting, the one who eats Scotch Eggs whilst being so dull in his Peak Practice conversations you want to kill yourself, he's also the DJ, I'm sure there's something there, but in the American Office the same character, now Kevin, is never given much plot lines, barely screen time often, but he's there, he has funny lines, and it feels like he's real enough to care about, and we can connect with him, as opposed to just being there. Sure they've had, what, a further 100 episodes to do this with, but come the second season, when they ditched the UK's plot and went freeform, they knew that these secondary characters needed to come out from hiding and become characters in their own right, not just entities formed to allow interaction to the main characters.

And as we now look to today's feature presentation of Cemetery Junction, I feel this is one of the key issues holding this film back.

A film set in the titular area, a place in Reading that the characters call horrible, slummish, and yet the beautiful cinematography makes it seem so lovely, calm, almost a holiday retreat, just with more factory workers.
The premise is these three young men in the summer of '73 finally coming of age, their lives, their loves, the choices they have to make, where to work, where to go, if they can ever, as is mentioned the whole way through, actually leave the almost prison-like Junction, to them at least, we see it through such a warm summer's glow, I swear I felt warmer in the cinema than when I left, and they had the AC on.
But, I digress, we have our three main characters, Freddie, a young, effortlessly charming man who finds his way into Ralph Fiennes' insurance salesman's office and scores a job, working under Matthew Goode (Who is genuinely good in this), and is embraced for trying to escape the Junction as Fiennes' character did before him, and he has no kind words for the place either.
Freddie's sole reason for the job is to avoid his father's (Gervais) place in the world, bare minimum, resigned to suffering for the family that abuse him anyway, and his only goals are house, marriage, kids, nothing amazing.
Then there's Snork, the chubby funny character, who is unlucky in love, and in anything, telling wonderfully dull anecdotes on bread, and having no idea that a punch-line with the word 'cunt' in it at a professional insurance ball isn't the best idea. Besides being a tad generic, he's sweet enough to get by and rather funny too.
Finally Bruce, angry as all hell, always getting into fights, shouting at his lazy father for never sticking up for his wife when she left him, solely getting out of jail because his father's friend is the chief, he's egotistical, scheming and endearing, presented as the kind of friend who does give a fuck, even if at times he gives too much, and the scenes with him and his father, masterful.

There's also Julie, Fred's old friend, conveniently Fiennes' daughter, fiance to Goode's character, all round off limits in anything but friendship, the kind of free spirited character who convinces him to change, to live life, yadda yadda yadda.
And, perhaps most interesting of all, Emily Watson as Fiennes' put upon wife, a woman who doesn't get noticed by anyone, gets no respect, and just suffers it, of course conveniently for the film she, like everyone else, changes on a dime for plot purposes, but for the most part she wonderfully underplays to perfection what could have been an overly sentimental role.

The film looks amazing, the music is, well, I'm gonna hunt down the score for sure, for it's runtime I was never bored, though a Merchant cameo was rather unnecessary, since it aimed a bit too broad for it's own good, but besides that, Cemetery Junction is a wonderful film, a coming of age in the dead are of England film that shows An Education how you do it without being, well, boring.

I suggest you go and see it, yes the trailer never seems to give much, but it's that which is most inviting, once you get inside the film, by the fifteenth minute, you're in for a magnificent little treat full of great ideas and dialogue, interesting characters, alongside some shoddier ones, some really powerful beats and some hysterically funny moments, it's well worth your time, and I for one will be catching it again happily.
9/10