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LAST ORDERS
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"Because I could not stop for death/ He kindly stopped for me." -- Emily Dickinson
English pubs open at eleven; two minutes later, at The Coach and Horses in Bermondsey Square in South London, in comes Ray (Bob Hoskins), who settles himself on his stool and orders his usual. Moments later he greets Lenny (David Hemmings), then Vic (Tom Courtenay). Under Vic's arm, in a modest plastic urn in a modest box, are the cremated remains of their friend Jack Dodds (Michael Caine), whose Last Orders they will today fulfill. Rendezvousing with Jack's son Vince (Ray Winstone), they embark on an afternoon's drive across the Kentish coast to the pier at Margate, where they will scatter Jack's ashes into the sea. Meanwhile Amy (Helen Mirren), Jack's widow, is on an errand of her own that takes her away from them.
They do drive to Margate, they do walk the pier, they do scatter the ashes. Along the way, through a series of flashbacks, they remember individually and in scraps of flashback scenes what they knew of Jack. Outwardly, the storytelling is so linear as to be trivial. Inwardly it is much more complex, and intriguingly so, for it is not the characters who are making the inward journey. They know one another. They have forty-plus years of shared experience. They knew Jack. They already know everything - - or as much as they will tell. (Some secrets are laid gently in the grave. Some friendships are glued by what is mutually known but left unsaid.) As the past is revealed like the petals of an artichoke being eaten, we come to understand that what may surprise us has long since been known and become part of their selves. We change, not they -- the emotional journey is taken by us … and perhaps, just a little, by them.
The most interesting movie story staging since MEMENTO and its precursor BETRAYAL, LAST ORDERS's dramatic structure is all in its sequencing of revelation. As in THE BRIDGE OVER SAN LUIS REY, its tension is in the coincidences of life that brought these characters together at this time and place. Unlike SAN LUIS REY, though, it was not a random chance that brought them to a windswept granite pier, but their lives and living with Jack and each other. When this beautifully acted small movie ends -- it is a stellar ensemble effort -- they have come to acceptance, and we to understanding.
"The carriage held but just ourselves/ And immortality."