The Last September

Plot synopsis:
Preface
Although The Last September was first published in 1929, a preface was written for this text decades later to be included in the second American edition of this novel. Concerned that readers unfamiliar with this particular chapter of Irish history would not fully comprehend the anxieties of these times, Bowen takes great pains to explain the particulars of both her writing process and the political reasons for the unsettled atmosphere felt throughout the text, palpable even in its most seemingly serene moments. Of all her books, Bowen notes, The Last September is "nearest to my heart, [and it] had a deep, unclouded, spontaneous source. Though not poetic, it brims up with what could be the stuff of poetry, the sensations of youth. It is a work of instinct rather than knowledge—to a degree, a ‘recall’ book, but there had been no such recall before.” While Bowen's own beloved family home, Bowen's Court, remained untouched throughout "The Troubled Times" this preface explores the ramifications for witnesses of “Ambushes, arrests, captures and burning, reprisals and counter-reprisals” as "The British patrolled and hunted; the Irish planned, lay in wait, and struck.” "I was the child of the house from which Danielstown derives" Bowen concludes, “nevertheless, so often in my mind's eye did I see it [Bowen’s Court] burning that the terrible last event in The Last September is more real than anything I have lived through.”
Part One
The Arrival of Mr. & Mrs. Montmorency
The Last September opens in “a moment of happiness, of perfection” as Sir Richard and Lady Naylor welcome their long-awaited guests, Hugo and Francie Montmorency, to their country estate, Danielstown, in Cork, Ireland. Despite—or, in some characters’ cases, in spite of—the tensions produced by what Bowen obliquely refers to as “The Troubled Times,” the Montmorencys, the Naylors, as well as the Naylors’ niece, Lois, and nephew, Laurence, attempt to live their lives in the aftermath of The Great War while coping with the occasionally conflicting dictates of their class's expectations and personal desires. Preoccupied with the concerns of social obligations which must be met even as they are enacted against a backdrop of uncertainty and national unrest, the residents of Danielstown occupy themselves with tennis parties, visits, and dances, often including the wives and officers of the British Army who have been assigned to this region. The people of Danielstown all share a particular interest in the shifting relationship between Lois and a young British officer, Gerald Lesworth, as Lois struggles to determine precisely who she is and what it is she wants out of life.
Part Two
The Visit of Miss Norton
Lois’s confusion regarding her future and the state of the bond she shares with Gerald is temporarily sidelined by the arrival of yet another visitor to Danielstown, a Miss Marda Norton whose connection to the Naylor family remains strong even in the face of perpetual inconvenience and Lady Naylor’s long-standing polite aversion to the younger woman. Marda’s presence is, however, as much of a blessing for Lois and Laurence as it is an annoyance for Lady Naylor and Hugo Montmorency—the latter having developed a one-sided fixation on the soon-to-be-married Marda.
While Lois and Marda’s friendship deepens, readers are also made aware of escalating violence as the fragile status quo established between the British Army, the Black and Tans, and local Irish resistance is threatened by Gerald's capture of Peter Connor, the son of an Irish family friendly with the Naylors. Unbeknownst to the residents of Danielstown (with the single exception of Hugo), Lois and Marda's acquaintance with Ireland's national turmoil is expanded firsthand as they are confronted by an unknown individual while on an afternoon stroll through the countryside of County Cork. Although permitted to depart with only a trifling wound to Marda's hand and Lois's promise that they will never speak of this encounter in the ruins of the old mill, this meeting and Marda's subsequent return to England signal a shift as the novel's characters’ attention return to the various topics occupying their thoughts before her arrival.
Part Three
The Departure of Gerald
After Marda Norton’s departure, Lois’s attention is once again firmly fixed upon both Gerald and the activities organised by the British officers’ wives. But despite Lois’s determination to finally come to a firm conclusion regarding her future, her relationship with Gerald is first delayed by Lady Naylor’s machinations and then left forever unresolved by Gerald’s death—which may have been at the hands of Peter Connor’s friends. Not long after Gerald’s death Laurence, Lois, and the Montmorencys leave Sir Richard and Lady Naylor, but the Naylors have little time to enjoy their solitude at Danielstown. The Naylor family estate and the other great houses are put to the torch the following February—likely by the same men who organised the attack on Gerald—their destruction reinforcing the fact the lifestyle once enjoyed by the landed Anglo-Irish gentry has been brought to an end.

Tags: romantic, murder

Review:
"The Last September" tells of the beginning of the end of the Anglo-Irish, circa 1920ish, in Cork, Ireland by examining the clockworks of one family of privilege surrounded by rebellion, on the cusp of degentrification, and trying to keep a stiff upper lip in the face of waning denial.
Beautifully filmed and visually delightful, this film sports a wonderful cast who deliver finely nuanced  performances.
Unfortunately the subject matter is somewhat esoteric, the story meager, and the film burrows into the moment to moment minutia; something which is both it's strength and its weakness.
The narrative is a mess but there are many fine visuals and isolated moments of deep emotional intensity.
Michael Gambon and Maggie Smith were excellent, but Jane Birkin and Fiona Shaw have some of the most powerful scenes, with their relationship problems seeming to amplify the dislocation all the characters are feeling, Irish but not Irish, English but not English.
However, it is Keely Hawes' intense performance as Lois that held the movie together for me, with her coming of age, and the relationship choices she must make, personalizing the larger conflict between English and Irish that the film wants to illuminate.This is director Deborah Warner's first film (she's an experienced stage director) and I feel she relied too much on her cinematographer, Slavomir Idziak.
He did a very fine job with the landscapes and interiors, but there are too many gratuitous camera tricks and heavy-handed visual cues that don't contribute anything to the story or it's impact.
The interviews with Fiona Shaw and Deborah Warner on the DVD are also worth a look..
challenging Anglo-Irish period piece.
A family of British aristocrats living in County Cork finds their comfortable lifestyle threatened by the Irish rebellions of the 1920s, when the headstrong older daughter develops a fatal attraction for a notorious local patriot (i.e. terrorist) with a price on his head.This won't be the last film to dissect the bloodlust lurking just beneath the glacial politeness of upper-crust British manners, but the perceptive screenplay (adapted from a novel by Elizabeth Bowen) shows an unbiased lack of sympathy for either side of the conflict.
Deborah Warner makes an easy transition from a theater background for her feature film debut, directing a first-rate cast (including Michael Gambon, Maggie Smith, and Fiona Shaw) with impressive, understated visual flair and an eye for the telling detail.
The specific Anglo-Irish perspective could make the film a tough sell to American moviegoers unschooled in the social/political snake pit of Emerald Isle antipathy (here placed into an intriguing, almost tribal context), which may explain why the promotional trailers make it look like any other romantic melodrama in funny period dress.
It's a misrepresentation likely to alienate the film's target audience, but discerning viewers should find plenty here to provoke their thoughts..
Not everyone is familiar with the unique place of the Anglo-Irish in Ireland, and some of my companions expressed trouble following who was who, and how were they related.
But the film itself is a compelling story of conflicting loyalties, misunderstood  motives, and troublesome times.
One of the most interesting "period pieces" I've seen, and of course, it's worth the price just to see Maggie Smith again..
Living in a very particular time and place..
"The Last September" is set in County Cork, Ireland in 1920, just prior to the institution of the Irish Free State, the days of Michael Collins.
(Mr. Collins and the other scions of the revolution are notably absent in this film.) The view of the film is narrowed to the trials and tribulations of Anglo-Irish aristocrats, and friends, who inhabit their country manor on their last Summer holiday in colonial Cork.The film's strength is its microscopic cinematic views of the lives of the aristocrats and their guests.
This created a discomfort, an edge, for me.Sometimes Gothic, sometimes just frustratingly slow, the film's moods are overpowering.
I found myself twisting in my seat at these moments.Lois, played marvelously by Keeley Hawes, reminded me of Lucy Harmon in Bertolucci's "Stealing Beauty", as played marvelously by Liv Tyler.
Perhaps this is to be expected, since she represents theelusive True Spirit of the Irish, conflicted about passion and pride, freedom and violence.
Fiona Shaw captures in her character what Lois must become.
The relationship between the two women is a painfully powerful representation of the Death of Self at the hands of conventions, the consequences of classism, sexism and tribalism.The handling of the the other characters seemed cursory and prone to stereotyping.
Michael Gambon and Maggie Smith did the work and turned the coal of potentially predictable rich 'county' types to diamonds of lovably faceted eccentrics.The film is not easy.
I guess it was like life itself, in a particular place and time..
John Banville's Delightful adaptation of Elizabeth Bowen's Novel.
Having tried to read the novel on which this movie was based and not enjoyed doing so all that much, this film was an unexpected delight.
Like BBC's Persuasion and Vanity Fair, this film tries to rescue the period adaptation from the asphixiating clutches of Merchant-Ivory while retaing a large degree of textual integrity.
Banvill, who brought the Irish "Big House" novel into the postmodern era with _Birchwood_ brings a contemporary eye to this tale of Anglo-Irish Aristocrats in the Last Days of their tenure.
It's wonderfully acted, with Jane Birkin giving the sort of display of gap-toothed Anglo-Saxon diffidence that made _La Belle Noisuise_ tolerable; Maggie Smith doing her usual indignant aristocrat, Fiona Shaw playing Fiona Shaw, and Micheal Gambon thankfully playing an Anglo-Irish rather than Irish character.
It's a film that anyone with a casual interest in Irish history will be enlightened by and one that anyone with an eye for beauty will be delighted by..
But the strength (and the JOY) of this film is the manner in which it has so genuinely captured an era and a place, the Ireland of 1920.
Maggie Smith never has been better.
This is a fine and memorable film in which the story is really less important than the dream like images that support it.
Not easy, not especially familiar to many of us but extremely thought-provoking, given the Anglo-Irish theme and the time in which the film is set.
An excellent cast led by the magnificent Maggie Smith who simply oozes condescension, snobbery, class-ism and caste-ism, while displaying genuine affection for 'her own kind of people'.
Keely Hawes creates the right air of fragility, self-absorption and feyness.
Her scenes with the admirable Fiona Shaw are powerful and reflect her dawning sense of self and of a desperation to escape, as the story unfolds.
So good too to see the excellent Richard Roxburgh, playing Tennant's best pal in the army.
In summary, a film that is worth making the effort to see and to mull over.
Superbly atmospheric tale of the end of an era in 1920s Ireland.
This is the only feature film directed by the well-known London theatre director, Deborah Warner.
She has a wonderful feeling for mood and atmosphere, and this film is soaked in it.
The story is from a novel by Elizabeth Bowen and concerns the landed gentry known as Anglo-Irish who once inhabited grand mansions in southern Ireland (Eire) until the Troubles, when most of the mansions were burnt down (a great loss to architecture) by the 'republicans'.
The film centres upon the great house and grounds of the Naylor family, and does not deal with the larger picture in Ireland.
The remarkable Keeley Hawes starred in this film just before appearing in WIVES AND DAUGHTERS (1999, see my review), and as she began acting on television at the age of 13, she was already a trooper by this time, aged 23.
In the story, the beautiful and skittish young Hawes has known since childhood a sinister young man who has now become an IRA killer, and she helps to conceal him in a local ruin, bringing him food and comfort.
She does this despite knowing that he has just killed someone, fascinated by the evil of him and feeling no compunction because she likes the thrill and finds him sensually exciting.
The uncle is played with his usual expansive flair and mellifluous voice by Michael Gambon, while the aunt is played by Maggie Smith, who adds her lustre as always.
An unexpected intrusion into the story is a visiting woman played by Jane Birkin, who adds a mysterious presence.
An especially fine performance is given by Fiona Shaw, who effortlessly dominates scenes when she is in them.
As Ireland and the characters of the story hurtle towards tragedy, we see a true 'end of an era', filmed on location in one beautiful rambling old house which seems to have avoided destruction.
As visions of lost worlds go, this is a fine one, and the story is absorbing and beautifully filmed.
The film had no less than eleven producers, so many that they outnumber the main players in the cast.
One is reminded of the 'Irish joke' which asks how many Irishmen it takes to change a light bulb.
This film deserves much more attention than it has had, and is a truly wonderful evocation of a time and place now lost in history..
WONDERFUL FILM.
I just saw THE LAST SEPTEMBER at the Montreal International Film Fest.
An incredible cast in an incredible film - what else can I say?
MAGGIE SMITH is amazing (is she ever not?
I DON'T THINK SO!) and the rest of the cast, Michael Gambon, Fiona Shaw and a whole bunch of other people are simply wonderful as well.
Beautifully filmed, music was GREAT.
If you're fond of British costume dramas like "Wives and Daughters" or "Downton Abbey," then this won't be the first time you've seen Michael Gambon as the dithery country squire or, God knows, Maggie Smith as the sharp-tongued lady of the manor or even Keeley Hawes as the out-of-control ingenue that's got everyone so worried about her.
This time the setting's a little different—a rural estate in County Cork in 1920, about halfway through the Irish struggle for independence.
Other big names in Anglo-Irish drama and letters are involved (novelist Elizabeth Bowen, director Deborah Warner, actress Fiona Shaw, who plays a witchy houseguest), plus 80s fashion icon Jane Birkin in a minor role and a couple of artful Kieslowski cronies as cinematographer and composer.
The plot's a bit creaky—KH's character is being courted by an eager British officer, but soon discovers that a childhood friend, now a fugitive IRA gunman, is lurking on the grounds—and the pacing in the opening scenes is suitably Chekhovian, but the resolution is fast and furious, even a bit confusing at one point (how does Peter get away?).
Though I'm not sure this prestige project quite adds up to the sum of its parts, we still found it fascinating, and we've watched it on streaming Netflix a couple of times.
Great film with Maggie Smith turning in an amazing performance as always.
A great great film on many levels.
As always, Maggie Smith turns in an amazing performance, as she has consistently done so throughout her career.
Jane Birkin, Fiona Shaw and Michael Gambon also are wonderful to watch.
Beautifully filmed and scored..
Lots of "fine acting" and an Antiques Roadshow design aesthetic is supposed to compensate for its total lack of emotional or intellectual content and its narrative illiteracy.
I should have guessed what this film would be like from a couple of hecklers at the cinema I saw it."I've seen milk turn quicker than this".
I should have too.All I can say about this film is a perfect cure for insomnia...show this to a chronic insomniac and they will be out like a light in a couple of minutes.An A-list cast should have turned out something much more interesting than this bore-fest.
This movie reminded me of Howard's End.
Though Howard's End was much easier to follow, and there were beautiful scenes, it was very boring.
In Late September, it was very hard to tell who was related to who and the plot was unrecognizable through the first half of the movie where we suffer through the prattle of supposed problems of the rich.
The last half of the movie was more interesting but the ending just trailed off.
Beautifully filmed but lacking any center.
It does have two great actors of the UK screen: Maggie Smith (being serious, for a change), and the always fascinating Michael Gambon.
They get to recite some lines that allow them to sparkle, but are really secondary characters to Keely Hawes and David Tennant, two star crossed would be lovers, who talk past each other.Set In Ireland just post the first World War, and with local sentiments rising to rid themselves of the Brits, the movie tries to show metaphorically the divide within Irish breasts.
What we get instead are boorish Black and Tans, a sociopathic "freedom fighter" on the run, and a vapid young woman who wants to say yes to romance, but ends up being manhandled instead by a man who, fresh from the kill, wants to shag!
Once bitten, she comes back for more and ends up bemoaning the death of the British soldier she spurned for the Irish killer.Keely Hawes is fine to look at, but I have yet to see her really grip a role.
Here she manages quite well to show us a self centered young woman looking for something other than a fine upstanding young man before she has to marry one.
She finds a dangerous killer hiding out in the abandoned mill, and knowing full well that he has brutally tortured and killed a bullying British soldier, she decides to tarry and stand mesmerized as he proceeds to get half way through artlessly depriving her of her maidenhood.
Slow-moving and extremely melodramatic film, but still interesting.
Rare in that it compares a girl's (as opposed to the more common male narratives) coming-of-age to a nation's coming-of-age.There is a certain amount of James Joyce-ian cruelty and mocking towards the Irish, Anglo-Irish, and British identities depicted in this film.
The British soldiers are portrayed as silly, superficial, self-absorbed characters.
Yet they are also powerful in that they have shaped the identities of both the Anglo-Irish (or pseudo-British) family, and the lower-class Irish "freedom-fighters." Once the soldiers leave to return to the front-lines, both Irish "halves" lose their purposes and identities.
The director asks harshly, "Who are you and what is left of yourselves once your audience and oppressor have left?"Likewise, the coming-of-age experiences of Lois, and "the woman passing out of her prime" story of Marda (played really well by Fiona Shaw) are also critically assessed.
Lois is just beginning to discover the power (sometimes dangerously misdirected) that comes with female sexuality, while Marda is experiencing the powerlessness of female aging.
Again, the director makes the point that identity cannot sustain on the outside; it must come from within.*******Spoilers*******Unlike the Irish and the Anglo-Irish family, however, Lois does possess a very strong inner core of identity that remains untouched, and it is not because she is oblivious to or uninvolved with the complicated social, political, religious, and economic situations that she encounters.
Therefore, the fact that she leaves Ireland at the end of the film can be seen as tragic.
The U.S. during the 1920s was generally regarded as place where you forgot where you came from so that you could become an "American." But had Ireland - as a country, as a nation, as a homeland - become a place where someone with so strong an identity would be left unsatisfied?.
A film that deserves a wide audience.
This is a great piece of work by first time film-maker, Deborah Warner.
A stellar cast of film and theatre heavy weights (Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon and Fiona Shaw) star in a Chekhovian "comedy" of changing times and politics.
Set among the Anglo Irish, the film is a coming of age story for its young heroine (a great performance from Keeley Hawes) who lives with her aunt and uncle (Smith and Gambon) in aristocratic insulation and isolation from the increasingly violent struggles that edge ever closer.
Apart from the performances (Gambon and Shaw being particularly fine), what impresses is Deborah Warner's complete grasp of her material.
The evidence here is that she has a career every bit as impressive ahead of her in film: The Last September is fluent, assured and extremely watchable, with every last detail (music, design and lighting)beautifully and sympathetically realised.
So I watched this a couple days ago and I'm not really sure what the point of making this movie was.
As far as acting goes, it was good.
A girl plays with an officer, then goes for a bad boy rebel dude, and she ends up being the cause of one of their deaths.
Bland political era piece.
An end of a privileged era...Irish that served the British are about to lose it all.
There is violence and guerrilla warfare.Set amongst this Lois (the lead heroine) of this novel film flirts with a British Captain and falls in love with an Irish nationalist.
In the end during their second meeting (Lois and nationalist) the British Captain is killed and Lois goes off to greener pastures.The setting is beautiful but there is a gloom of impending defeat.The best part of the movie is the beautifully recreated scenery of 1920.The story sort of limps along in a vapid way with no tension or excitement.
The 3 way love triangle just isn't defined well enough to carry the entire thing--at least not the way it was done.Most cinema goers would have no clue about the political importance of the piece...the word BLAND comes to mind as an over all description of the movie.About the only people this film might appeal to are those interested in Irish politics however not the N.
Irish that is for sure it is much too sympathetic to the rebels.