We’ve been waiting over a decade for a film adaptation of Rachel Joyce’s beloved 2012 novel, but it’s finally here – The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is now playing in cinemas around the UK.
Jim Broadbent—and who doesn’t love Jim Broadbent, I ask you— stars as the titular retiree, whose life has become an endless procession of grey and miserable days, until, he gets the news that an old colleague, Queenie (Linda Bassett), is eking out her last days in a palliative care hospice in Berwick-upon-Tweed. For reasons that we will discover over the course of the film, Harold resolves to walk all the way from Kingsbridge to Berwick-upon-Tweed to visit his dying friend, leaving his puzzled wife, Maureen (Penelope Wilton) behind to wonder what’s gotten into him.
What unfolds is a modern-day pilgrimage—in the quasi-religious sense—as Harold reflects on his life, the world, and his place in it while making his way across the country, encountering various characters along the way. Hovering the background is some trauma involving his son, David (Earl “son of Nick” Cave), a once-promising scholar fallen to addiction and crime–will that pay off in the third act? Probably.
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is arguably a religious parable, with our hero inadvertently picking up a passel of apostles who begin to follow him, in much the same way Forrest Gump did back in the day. But it’s an emotional resonant, feel-good example of the type, and the popularity of the original novel, along with the rapturous reviews the adaptation has attracted, speak to how welcome that is.
With unobtrusive direction from Hettie Macdonald (Doctor Who, Beautiful Thing) and a nuanced, heartfelt script from Rachel Joyce herself, this strikes us as perfect rainy afternoon matinee fodder. Don’t forget the tissues, though, because Harold’s story will pluck at the heart strings of even the most jaded viewer.
