The Lady in the Van (2015)

The Worst Film Ever

Beautiful, moving film.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

What a beautiful film. I can't understand how some reviewers have given it such low marks. You can almost smell Maggie Smith through the telly and the two Alan's are just perfect. As the story unfolds and more mysteries abound but are not revealed, the intrigue based around these two characters grows. "Hold my Hand... it's clean" sprung tears and made this film simply perfect.

This is a true story that Alan Bennett wrote about a homeless lady Miss Shepherd who stayed in a van on the street near his house in seventies.The character of Alan Bennett is played excellently by Alex Jennings -who is always talking with his alter ego in the house, while he is scribbling his new play and notes in his book. The portrayal of Miss Shepherd is portrayed by Maggie Smith - and she lives the eccentric character - living under the skin. All awards - won or nominated were for Maggie Smith's brilliant performance. The story is about this girl Mary or Margaret (the younger version played by Clare Hammond) who is a gifted pianist, aspires to become a nun, but because of her argumentative nature is thrown away and admitted by her brother to an asylum from where she runs away and at one point in her life - has a car accident in which a young motor- cyclist dies. She does not report the incident and always blames herself - living under the fear that one day she might be arrested for the crime.There are several layers in the character of Miss Mary Shepherd that we come to know with each small episode she has with a big hearted Alan Bennett - who hesitantly gives her a temporary place to part the vehicle in front of his house, then in his empty front park - and that beautiful bond of LOVE relationship continues for 15 years till she dies. The real Miss Shepherd died in 1986, and she was granted a placard on the house of Alan Bennett by the community she lived in - which stands even today. The movie has wonderful chatty conversations and dialogues between Alan and Alan's alter ego interrupting Alan and Mary's conversations - that are sometimes hilarious Very well written and adapted screenplay from the memoir written by Alan Bannett by the same name.Made on a budget of USD 6 million, the movie has raked in more than USD 40 million worldwide. The Director Nicholas Hytner has done a commendable job in sticking to the authenticity of the narrative. What is beautiful about the character of Miss Shepherd is her unwillingness to leave her life on any one else's terms. Her stubbornness and whimsical eccentric nature holds on true to the humor and empathy she evokes.All is done well with the humanity and out-reach of Alan Bennett who though shies to recognize to his credit the give immortality to this affable character of Miss Shepherd by his memoir and later by this movie.The movie makes us sensitive to the way old people are neglected and suffer and how they need some support and LOVE from someone - although strangers.The memoir has also been enacted as a popular play in United Kingdom.I would go with 6.75 out of 10 for this nice to watch movie

I have liked Alan Bennett ever since his TV series and the stage adaption of History Boys years ago. Alex Jennings was really a good pick for him because the real Alan Bennett and himself very much look the same. I was very surprised that the real Alan Bennett appeared in the near end of the film, I thought that was honestly Alex Jennings lol! Its like they are swapping around as twins, you don't realise which one was which!Maggie Smith was good as the old woman, she does know how to play a cranky one too! Although I couldn't understand why her character wasn't seen escaping the nursing home, it was as if she runned and left her wheelchair behind. Yeah the social worker appeared but why didn't we see her running away from the nursing home?! Thats why I had to give this movie a 7/10, even though its alright but, I felt like it was being too rushed yknow!

Almost beyond classification, "The Lady in the Van" seems at times to do almost everything in its power to taunt its viewer into reaching for the "STOP" button. For a start, it features an old and incontinent London-based lady, eccentric to say the least, who has nowhere else to reside but a van surrounded by a fair amount of her own accumulated garbage and other refuse, up to and including even her own faeces. We don't need smellovision to realise that this person must be possessed of a rank odour, and indeed the film's other main protagonist - her closest neighbour - makes that perfectly clear. He is a playwright by profession, portrayed from the outset as split into two separate individuals - artist and man - a presentation technique that many a watcher will find it hard to stay with. The whole thing looks like rather like a play from that playwright, which is in fact the true state of affairs, and the piece occasionally strays yet deeper into fantasy (especially at the end), while also devoting more than the odd minute to the minutiae of that playwright's life - an ostensibly rather dull one, if spiced by occasional crepuscular one-night-stands with younger and mostly rather denim- and leather-clad males.Surely nobody is going to want to give 104 minutes of their life to this? Plus the 15 or so minutes in the "Making of..." extra materials, assuming that person possesses the DVD? But therein lies the clue, as anybody who sticks with this film from Director Nicholas Hytner will CERTAINLY want to go to the Extra Materials. For "The Lady in the Van" is a largely true story about the said old lady, who did indeed reside in a van in a street in Camden Down - the very street, the very house in which the film was made. What is more, that lady had been well-educated, gifted and even internationally famous before circumstances conspired to bring her low - and there in and of itself is a message for all of us of irreducible power. The said van was parked for 15 years (her last 15) in the drive of the house resided in by the said playwright, the latter being the world-famous Alan Bennett - the Yorkshire-accented near-national icon for many Brits, including many (most) who have never actually been to a Bennett play in their lives! While the real-life Bennett appears briefly in the film, the twin versions of him are mostly played here by the same actor as did the job on the London stage, Alex Jennings. Jennings does that job superbly, mesmerisingly well (even if the real Bennett's voice is a tad less effeminate), transforming into the character in a spellbinding manner made all the more impressive when one turns to those Extra Materials and sees the actor in real life. And of course his main interactions throughout are with the titular "Lady in the Van", as played by none other than Dame Maggie Smith (who had again appeared in the stage version, and made that her own).It is these interactions (and above all the pithy, witty, often bitter-sweet lines exchanged) between two thespians largely without compare that make this piece impressive, though a supporting cast that genuinely makes a film out of the play is great in many and varied small roles. At least one of the members (the very well-known and as ever convincing Frances de la Tour) plays a real-life figure in the shape of Ursula Vaughan-Williams (1911-2007), the second wife (for the last 5 years) of what most would deem the UK's greatest and most lyrically British composer. This is not a random fact, given that London and its Gloucester Crescent and the somewhat eccentric (but clearly very tolerant) bunch living there are also stars of this show (again helping the metamorphosis from play to film greatly); and we are told at one point that even the rejected wife of Charles Dickens had also once lived in the same street. You couldn't make it up, could you?It is a background of faded grandeur of this kind - over years, decades and even centuries - that suffuses this somewhat Ealing Comedy-like film, which is nevertheless brutally 2015-realistic in its portrayal of disappointment and self-disgust set against desire to hang on to truth and dignity that are key factors in the lives of both key characters.Perhaps not by chance, the subliminal historical side of the film is further reinforced by the repeat appearance of fragments of Piano Concerto No. 1, which composer Frederic Chopin wrote and performed aged 20 just before leaving Warsaw for an exile from which he never returned to his homeland (given that he died in France of TB aged 39). The piece is dramatic and inspirational, but of course also melancholy, and above all beautiful, and it fits here so very, very well...While it might conceivably be argued that Bennett saw the potential for a play (and profit) in the close proximity of "the Van" and its inhabitant, we are left in little doubt that this is above all a story of exceptional kindness, patience and tolerance. Grudging, eccentric and ad hoc, certainly (and hence so archetypally British), but ultimately selfless, dogged and even in some measure devoted.In summary, there is absolutely nothing spectacular or beautiful in this happily-very-British film except pitiless truth tempered by human decency and kindness, portrayed in the words of a great writer, as delivered by two stratospherically superb actors...Perhaps that's enough?