Love and Death on Long Island (1997)

Now Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find...

“It is difficult to know where to begin since, unlike you, I already know the ending..”

London Cabbie: The sign says "no smoking."

Giles De’ Ath: No, the sign says "thank you for not smoking." As I am smoking, I don't expect to be thanked.

Sometimes, now and again, a terrific film comes along which, for whatever reason, slips the net despite the enthusiasm of the critics. This, alas, might be the case with Love and Death on Long Island (1997), based on Gilbert Adair’s novel of 1990, and starring John Hurt as Giles De’ Ath, a curmudgeonly, academic, oh-so-English man of letters, obsessed with a young American actor, teen heartthrob, twenty-something Ronnie Bostock (Jason Priestley), star of Skid Marks (“you’re nothing but a skidmark on the underpants of life”), Tex Mex and Hotpants College II. 

John Hurt is one of those subtle film actors, like Anthony Hopkins or Ian Holm, who can do no wrong by my book. Somehow, you know their films— however good, bad or indifferent, will always be worth a gander. For their performances. Witness Anthony Hopkins in Bryan Forbes’ International Velvet (1978), all the glamour of the gymkhana, a film for horsy little girls— and a guilty pleasure, or Ian Holm as the appalling Corporal Himmelstoss in the made-for-television remake of All Quiet on the Western Front (1979).

The Death of Chatterton…

And Love and Death on Long Island reminds me, in a way, of Jerry Skolimowski's Moonlighting (1982), a film we covered in an earlier post, with its gentle, wry, self-deprecating humour— although, at the same time, there's a darker side to Love and Death on Long Island, with the disturbing portrayal of a man's irrational obsession. And without giving too much away, the plot goes something like this. Giles De' Ath (lovely name choice, that) is a well-known, sixty-something English writer. Pernickety and pedantic, A seriously stuffed tweed shirt, for whom television and, God forbid! a pizza delivery is the work of Satan. You know the type. Witty columns for The Spectator. Sniffy reviews for The Times Literary Supplement. With an infuriating logic. Lives in a red-brick mansion block in Bloomsbury or thereabouts. Smokes Dunhill but doesn't drive. And he's a widower. A black and white photograph of his late wife on his desk, a scary, terrier-fancying battleaxe.

Henry Wallis (1830-1916): Chatterton, 1856, Tate Britain.