52 Films by Women Vol 7. 38. THE UNLIKELY PILGRIMAGE OF HAROLD FRY (Director: Hettie Macdonald)
Eccentricity and self-mortification are two elements at play in director Hettie Macdonald’s film adaptation of Rachel Joyce’s very English novel The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry . Jim Broadbent, an actor who has worked with Mike Leigh, Baz Luhrmann and Martin Scorsese, is typically unassuming as the titular Harold, a retired brewery worker living with his wife, Maureen (Penelope Wilton) in South Devon who decides to walk five hundred miles to Berwick-upon-Tweed to be reunited with a former colleague, Queenie Hennessy (Linda Bassett) who is dying from cancer. Unable to find the right words to respond to her letter, written on pink writing paper, he arrives at the conclusion that by walking to see her, he can keep her alive. We don’t know how long it will take Harold to get there, especially in the wrong sort of shoes, and whether Queenie will live to see him, but as with all road movies, it is the journey, not the destination, that is important. Joyce, who also wrote the scre...