On June 5th 2014, 89-year-old Bernie Jordan strolled out of the Hove care home he lived in with his wife, Rene, and set off on a 500-mile pilgrimage to France. After being denied a place on the official Royal Legion trip to commemorate the D-Day Landings, Jordan took matters into his own hands – while he let his wife know he wouldn’t be back in time for tea, his disappearance did cause a minor panic with the Suffolk police, until he was accounted for, travelling on a coach with his fellow veterans, having safely made it to Normandy.
It’s a surprise this stranger-than-fiction story took so long to make it to the big screen, given British cinema’s enduring love affair with the Second World War and high tolerance for the cheeky chappie archetype – apparently audiences simply can’t get enough.
Although the real Bernie Jordan passed away in 2015, seven months after his great escape, he’s brought to life here by the legendary charmer Michael Caine, starring opposite the late, great Glenda Jackson as Bernie’s spritely wife Rene. The pair have a delightful, easy chemistry together, and the film’s greatest asset is the scenes they share, which sweetly capture a decades-long devotion.
Less charming is the film’s overreliance on flashbacks, which alternate between twee – moments from young Bernie and Rene’s courtship – and staggeringly loud and jarring – scenes of his terrifying ordeal in the navy. It’s overegging the pudding; when you have an actor like Caine at your command, there’s no need to gussy up his performance by attempting to recreate Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk.
The film is much stronger when it focuses on the connection Bernie makes with another veteran, Arthur (John Standing) who befriends him on the ferry and soon reveals his own heartfelt reason for making the trip, subtly underscoring the different ways in which the trauma of war impacted that generation.
Although director Oliver Parker struggles to resist his more sentimental impulses and makes the occasional odd stylistic choice (including one superfluous war cemetery drone shot) Caine and Jackson carry the film with ease. They sell even the more on-the-nose moments in William Ivory’s script, and add gravitas to what could easily have been a patronising narrative.
Yet one can’t help but ponder the decade that has passed since Bernie’s mischievous adventure; how many elderly people in Britain have been failed by a lack of social and healthcare funding, despite our cosy affection for their stories. Bernie and Rene had each other; so many of their peers don’t have that good fortune. For them, there’s not much in the way of escape.
In cinemas
96 mins, cert 12A
