Last Orders

Memories persist with astonishing intensity. Heady, happy memories can instantly transport you to giddier times; painful memories retain their ability to cut you to the quick even decades after the initial injury. A long life will eventually leave you packed full of memories, so much so that sometimes they seem to crowd out both the present and the future. But if you have faced life with everything you could muster, you'll be able to embrace both the good and the bad as part of a life lived as best you could have lived it. And that embrace - that acceptance of everything in your past as both inevitable and beautiful - is the mark of a person who's learned something about how to live life.

I don't know any of that for sure, because I'm 23, but that's what the new British film "Last Orders" says, and it's pretty damn convincing. As adapted by director Fred Schepisi from Graham Swift's novel, which won the Booker Prize in Britain (think of it as the Oscar for Best Novel), the titular last orders are those of Jack Dodds (Michael Caine), a butcher, husband, father and good friend, full of sometimes-misdirected energy and always-fevered passions. His vigor enlivened and complicated the lives of all who knew him; now, however, he is dead, and his dying request is to have his cremated ashes scattered from a pier at Margate, a seaside resort.

His wife Amy (Helen Mirren) declines to undertake the errand, leaving it in the hands of Jack's pals Ray (Bob Hoskins), Lenny (David Hemmings), Vic (Tom Courtenay), and Vic's son Vince (Ray Winstone). It's a day's journey to Margate, leaving time for stops at the pub and occasional expeditions to landmark sites in Jack's life, and giving everyone ample time to reminisce about their lives with Jack, from the undying bonds Ray and Jack forged in battle as young men to the subtle machinations Jack undertook to provide Amy with a good chance in life in the few days before he died. As the friends near Margate, the reminiscences, skipping around in time and tone, prove to be the true story of the film, and their variety and vitality is only matched by their poignance.

It's a tricky thing to build a movie this way. You need actors who can convincingly portray characters who change over time and yet remain recognizable as themselves. The actors also have to invest their characters with a certain dignity; the intertwined lives and memories of average working-class folk such as these could seem petty and tiresome if the actors treated them as epochal events or vehicles for thespianic virtuosity. Fortunately, Schepisi and his casting director assembled what must be one of the all-time dream teams of British actors. To a person, this cast mines the extraordinary from the ordinary with a grace that only comes from complete command of one's craft.

In particular, Mirren smiles with tears welling up in her eyes through much of the movie, capturing the emotional stance of someone determined not to forget the good even as the bad washes over her. Winstone uses economical gestures - eye twitches, small shakes of the head, small disgusted turns of speech - to convey the frustration he expressed outwardly as a lad, but never lets us believe that all he is is a seething ball of resentments. And Hoskins settles amiably into retiring, fortunate Ray, making his own sins and mistakes seem forgivable while never suggesting that he himself has denied responsibility for anything.

These are all marvelously balanced performances, and they happen in a marvelously balanced film, courtesy of Schepisi. His adaptation establishes and maintains a perfect pace, letting us know enough in one reminiscence to make us wish we knew what he lets us know next. While the screenplay moves from high point to high point in these lives, these are selected artfully to suggest the deader spots in between, and with the help of the actors the narrative feels continuous. And Schepisi's actual direction is limited to artfully composing shots (with the help of director of photography Brian Tufaro) and staying out of the way. His calm, well-judged restraint is the crowning touch, the best possible service for a superb cast, a rich story, and a film that knows that "Last Orders" inevitably invoke everything that came before.

When I said "I don't know any of that for sure, because I'm 23," I meant I was 23 when I wrote this review. I managed to turn 24, and I won't be that forever either, I hope.

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