Cathy has selected 2017 UK film "The Bookshop".
Description:
In 1959 Florence Green, a war widow, opens a lovely bookshop in a quaint English village. She then encounters vicious opposition to the bookstore led by Violet Gamert, an aristocratic lady who is respected in the community.
Where to watch:
Available on Kanopy at: https://www.kanopy.com/en/video/5733076
Where to chat:
Discussion 7:45pm (note new time) on Monday August 28 (2023) at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2272006912 Meeting ID: 227 200 6912
More:
Cathy also liked The Ghost Writer (2010), available on TubiTV and Freevee, as well as Leona (2020) which is available to Prime subscribers.
Notes:
The film is based on the 1978 novel by Penelope Fitzgerald: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bookshop
The film won Best Film, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay at the 32nd Goya Awards.
The poem that Violet's husband Bruno cites at the party, which Florence was unfamiliar with, is Sonnet 34 by Charles Sorley. It was published a year after he was killed in WWI at age 20.
When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go,
Say not soft things as other men have said,
That you’ll remember. For you need not so.
Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know
It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?
Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.
Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.
Say only this, ‘They are dead.’ Then add thereto,
‘Yet many a better one has died before.’
Then, scanning all the o’ercrowded mass, should you
Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,
It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.
Great death has made all his for evermore.
-- Charles Hamilton Sorley. Killed in 1915 at Battle of Loos, age 20
https://interestingliterature.com/2016/02/a-short-analysis-of-charles-sorleys-when-you-see-millions-of-the-mouthless-dead/