{"id":8886,"date":"2024-11-25T14:56:01","date_gmt":"2024-11-25T19:56:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=8886"},"modified":"2024-11-25T14:56:01","modified_gmt":"2024-11-25T19:56:01","slug":"on-chesil-beach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/11\/25\/on-chesil-beach\/","title":{"rendered":"On Chesil Beach"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"On Chesil Beach<\/strong>\u00a0 (2018)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Bleecker Street\/Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 110 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (sexual content, nudity, language, thematic elements)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Dominic Cooke\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Ian McEwan\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Dan Jones\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Sean Bobbitt\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: June 1, 2018 (Philadelphia, PA)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Billy Howle, Anne-Marie Duff, Adrian Scarborough, Emily Watson, Samuel West, Bebe Cave, Anna Burgess, Mia Burgess, Bronte Carmichael.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $745,971 (US)\/$3.3M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0On Chesil Beach<\/strong> is slow, very slow. In my life, I\u2019ve seen many movies that can be described as slow. The ones that drive me the craziest are the ones that don\u2019t go anywhere. This description does NOT apply to On Chesil Beach<\/strong>. Yes, it moves slowly BUT it moves slowly towards something. When it finally arrives at that moment, the film\u2019s meaning clicks like a light switch turned on. Just like that, you get what\u2019s going on in the minds of the young honeymooning couple at the center of the film.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Based on Ian McEwan\u2019s 2007 novel, On Chesil Beach<\/strong> stars Saoirse Ronan and Billy Howle (currently together in The Seagull) as a young married couple on their wedding night. The year is 1962 and something is definitely amiss. Let me stop for a moment and point out that On Chesil Beach<\/strong> takes place in a time when sex was still a taboo subject. It was never discussed. Schools didn\u2019t teach sex ed. There were books about sex but they tended to explain things in clinical terms. Newly married couples typically climbed into the marital bed with no experience. They had to figure things out as they went.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Anyway, Florence and Edward are clearly anxious about having sex for the first time. They converse awkwardly over dinner in their hotel room. They talk about how much they love each other. The bed looms ominously in the background. Neither one of them knows what they\u2019re doing or what\u2019s expected of them. Florence is especially nervous. The simple act of taking off her shoes in front of her husband is difficult for her. As they proceed (slowly) towards the act of intercourse, it\u2019s clear she\u2019s not all that into it. Edward wants it more than she does; however, he has no idea how to go about making her feel relaxed. Naturally, their first time is a disaster.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The scene alternates back and forth between the wedding night and their history as a couple. We see how they met (at a meeting of nuclear disarmament advocates). We meet their families. Florence comes from a privileged background. Her mother (Watson, Breaking the Waves) is a snob. Her father (West, Iris) isn\u2019t what you call warm or fatherly. Edward\u2019s dad (Scarborough, Gosford Park) is a teacher. His mother (Duff, Suffragette), brain-damaged as a result of an accident, is an artist. Florence is a classical violinist who plays with a quintet. Edward wants to write books about minor historical figures. They talk a lot. There isn\u2019t too much fooling around. Nonetheless, they decide to get married.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I only said that On Chesil Beach<\/strong> is slow. I didn\u2019t say that it\u2019s boring. It\u2019s not. On the contrary, it\u2019s rather interesting. Yes, there is a great deal of talking. But it\u2019s not like the recent French import Let the Sunshine In where all the talking gets on your nerves. Now here\u2019s the rub. It\u2019s not what Florence and Edward say that\u2019s interesting, it\u2019s what they DON\u2019T say. Living in a repressive society, a pre-Sexual Revolution England, they don\u2019t possess the language to say what\u2019s really on their minds. They can\u2019t talk about their sexual problems. There\u2019s a reason she\u2019s not into sex but I won\u2019t reveal it. I\u2019ll only say it\u2019s something that\u2019s all too commonplace today. If Florence can\u2019t verbalize it, Edward can\u2019t understand or sympathize.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Both leads turn in great performances. Ronan is one of the finest young actresses working in film today. She\u2019s so versatile. There are echoes of her performance in 2015\u2019s Brooklyn in that she\u2019s playing a prim and proper young lady in a past era. Ronan has the most beautiful blue eyes since Melissa Sue Anderson in Little House on the Prairie. She is very good in On Chesil Beach<\/strong> as is Howle. His Edward is alternately patient and clueless. In the end, it turns to raw anger. He flies into a rage after she makes a proposal he finds distasteful and disgusting. The chemistry between the two actors is believable.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019ve never read the book but I understand first-time director Dominic Cooke made a few changes to the narrative. Most notably, he tacked on a couple of flash-forward sequences at the end. Some have complained about this. I\u2019m going back and forth about it myself. On the one hand, it\u2019s interesting to see what happens to Florence and Edward in the future. On the other hand, perhaps a note of ambiguity would have made for a more powerful denouement. Either way, On Chesil Beach<\/strong> is a decent film that shows what happens in a sexually repressive atmosphere. It takes patience to watch it, but you\u2019ll be glad you did.\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Chesil Beach\u00a0 (2018)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Bleecker Street\/Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 110 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (sexual content, nudity, language, thematic elements)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Dominic Cooke\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Ian McEwan\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Dan Jones\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Sean Bobbitt\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: June 1, 2018 (Philadelphia, PA)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Billy Howle, Anne-Marie Duff, Adrian Scarborough, Emily Watson, Samuel West, Bebe Cave, Anna Burgess, Mia Burgess, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9104,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dramas"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/On-Chesil-Beach-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8886"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9106,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8886\/revisions\/9106"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}