Bernard Jordan and his wife Irene had been together for many years and hardly ever apart, once when he was part of the D-Day battles during World War II and then again when he decided to head to France along to be part of the 70th anniversary gathering.
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Based on a true story which made national news here in the UK when Bernard Jordan in 2014 decided to leave his care home in Sussex to attend an event in France marking the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings.
From start to finish the film is packed with so much emotion and given the subject at its core it was hardly a surprise. The film deals with the aftermath of being involved in a war, no matter how many years have past, across different generations as well. We follow Bernard who then makes friends with Arthur and the pair will have a rather incredible adventure as they still struggle with the happenings of 70 years earlier.
While Bernard is in France we see Irene back at the care home forming a lovely relationship with Adele one of the young carers and that is heartwarming in a very different way. The relationship between Bernard and Irene is shown in flashback form, before he went to war and highlights how the magic hour of the sunrising is something they have always shared together.
I did find myself rather emotional at different stages during the film and it certainly manages to pack a lot of that into its relatively short running time of 1 hour and 36 minutes. The scene that seemed to get to me to the most was when they were in a bar with Germans, I really didn’t think that would be so emotional.
Glenda Jackson sadly died a week before the first cut of the film was shown to a test audience, this is her final screen role. Michael Caine has also confirmed this is his final film and at the age of 90, he has retired from acting and I must say that it was certainly a rather wonderful way to end his extremely impressive and incredible career.
Caine and Jackson were both outstanding in the film and worked so well on screen together and alone, they put everything into the roles and it really did make it so nice to then watch. It feels rather fitting that it will be the last film that they both appear in, a lovely tale of a true British story.