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What We Did On Our HolidayDirected by Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin, 2014.95 mins, UK.

There’s a line in What We Did On Our Holiday when Billy Connolly’s character Gordy McLeod, an old man dying of an un-named cancer, turns to his offi cious young granddaughter and urges her to stop writing in her journal. “Some things don’t look very good written down”, he tells her, in his lusciously Glaswegian accent. Sadly, the opposite was probably true of this fi lm. On paper it must have looked great: made by the people behind BBC’s successful sitcom Outnumbered, it would tell the tale of three precocious, wise-cracking kids and their hapless parents as they travel to Scotland to visit their dying grandfather. En-route, hijinks and capers would oc cur, leaving the audience with an emotional yet uplifting tale of a young family dealing with death.

On screen, though, it fails to deliver. Not because of the content—some of the children’s quips are genuinely funny; the sweeping shots of the Scottish Highlands are stunning—and not because of the cast—along with Connolly, David Tenant (who plays the father) and Celia Imrie (a nosy social service worker) deliver solid performances—but because the writers seemed to shirk the responsibility, and indeed opportunity, to tackle death head-on. Death, along with cancer, was instead

relegated to an incidental subplot as the bickering characters stumbled face fi rst through madcap adventures.

As sad and inevitable as it is, death is a time when the inner workings of human relationships and love are laid bare. Relationships do become fraught, but those tensions usually lie around the welfare of a mutual loved one and having to contemplate life without them. Not so in this fi lm. The continuous sniping, which grew tiresome towards the end, was completely self-serving: from arguments over divorce lawyers to indiscretions aired to millions on YouTube. The characters were hard to connect with, meaning the few

splatters of emotion were out of place and contrived.

That’s not to say there weren’t touching scenes. One was when Connolly’s character dies while playing with his grandchildren on the beach. But this would’ve been a tear-jerker in any context. What We Did On Our Holiday could and should have been a Britflick classic. But it falls, with a whimper, between the stools of a heart-warming tale and slapstick comedy. Some stories are best left untold—what the McLeod clan did on their holiday is probably one of them.

Dara Mohammadi

FilmsWhat We Did On Our Holiday

Life ItselfRoger Ebert straddled an interesting line in American popular culture. He was a fi lm critic, popular television personality, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who wrote the screenplays to one of the crown jewels of 1970s junk culture, Russ Meyer’s Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. An omnivorous consumer of movies, he praised, critiqued and

took seriously everything from the trashiest exploitation fi lms to the highest of highbrow art cinema. He pioneered bringing European and Asian cinemas into the living rooms of average American homes. Despite being respected by fi lmmakers, championing everyone from Martin Scorsese to Werner Herzog, he was also unafraid to lay into them when

he felt their work fell below the mark. In the USA, where some think there is an unfortunate tendency to split culture into high and low—and view the gulf in-between as unbridgeable—Ebert was able to stand astride both. He showed how the two sides could engage.

The fi lm Life Itself, began as an adaptation of Ebert’s 2011 memoir

Life ItselfDirected by Steve James, 2014USA, 120 min

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Cancer and Society

of the same name, with the fi lm showing us the last 5 months of Ebert’s life. Steve James, the director, is best known for his documentary Hoop Dreams—not so incidentally, a fi lm that Ebert championed, and more than anyone, else helped to make an award-winning success. However, 5 months into production of Life Itself, Ebert passed away from a return of the cancer of the thyroid and salivary glands that caused his jaw to be removed in 2006. At this point, the scope of the fi lm expands out into several diff erent narratives that all

centre on Ebert, some more successful than others.

The most successful of these threads is the biographical one, a story that culminates in Roger Ebert’s late-in-life marriage to Chaz Ebert. Despite this happy thread, there is a great deal of adversity and pain that the fi lm does not fl inch from showing: for example, one of the fi rst scenes in the fi lm shows the unpleasant image of an intubated Ebert having his oesophagus suctioned. When Ebert’s jaw was removed (leaving him unable to eat, drink, or speak), they left the fl esh of his cheeks, lips, and jaw, which hang loose, a sight that is at once hard to take and engenders a great deal of sympathy. The fi lm does not shy away from the fact that Ebert had a temper, and we see fl ashes of it in the man largely confi ned to a wheelchair and speaking through a laptop and pad; we see his frustration and how short he gets with those trying to help him. Throughout this, however, there is a palpable bond between Ebert and his wife that fi lls these scenes with a bittersweet sense of passage: they both know what is coming, and they are dancing around diff erent senses of when to hold on and to release.

Less well done is the exploration of Ebert’s career as a critic—we get a

sense that his work was infl uential and important in some respects, but not much explanation as to why, or examples. The fi lm discusses at length Ebert and his television partner, Gene Siskel’s championing of documentarian Errol Morris’ fi rst fi lm, but you could walk away from the movie with very little idea of the kinds of fi lms that Ebert enjoyed, or why.

Like many documentaries, Life Itself began as one thing, only to have circumstances dictate that it become quite another. It is clearly a fi lm made by people with a deep and abiding love for Ebert, both as a man and for his role in culture. But that very thing gives the fi lm too much of a sense of hagiography, and the inclusion of so many threads leaves the fi lm in a bit of a muddle. As a portrait of a rich life reaching its inevitable decline, Life Itself accomplishes what few fi lms set out to do, let alone succeed at. By trying to place Ebert in the pop culture pantheon at the same time, James’ fi lm inevitably manages to do a slight disservice to both—but at its best, it is a tender and loving portrait of an often diffi cult and prickly man who nonetheless managed to touch a lot of people.

Aaron van Dorn

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Roger Ebert at The 25th Annual Independent Spirit Awards Nokia Event Deck, March 5, 2010

Marion Coutts’ memoir chronicles the fi nal 2 years of her husband’s life as he battled with aggressive, terminal brain cancer. Her account is set against the changing dynamics of their family unit. Coutts’ roles as a mother to a young son, as a wife, and as an artist were transformed by her new respon-sibilities as her husband’s main carer. Tom Lubbock’s cancer aff ected areas of his brain responsible for speech and language, which, in combination with her husband’s general physical decline, caused Coutts additional emotional pain.

This book is complex and a beautifully woven piece charting with absolutely clarity the emotional depths of this profoundly distressing phase in her life. Coutts does not present an aspirational or inspirational story for those who might also fi nd themselves having to care for a dying loved one. She both strives and fails—but at times just manages to continue with daily life as normal. Her portrayal of these 2 years is marked by such apparent inconsistencies, but frequent polarised emotional shifts are a true refl ection of how life and relationships are

thrust into a state of fl ux by terminal illness. Throughout this book, Coutts is consistent with her commitment to her husband, her son, and above all her unfaltering recognition of her ever changing feelings.

Coutts’ style and openness does not invite pity. Even in her moments of weakness, she does not shy away from her emotions and their eff ect on family life. To lose the person you love might cause even the most resolute individual to falter. However, Coutts is determined to do the best for both her husband and son, ensuring life

BooksThe Iceberg

The Iceberg: A MemoirMarion Coutts. Atlantic Books,

London, UK. Pp304. £14.99. ISBN 9781782393504