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General Major 
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TITLE |
Cloud Cuckoo Land (2004) |
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DISABILITY |
General
Cerebral Palsy |
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NOTES |
A small
plane is flying with the pilot slumped over the controls. A hang
glider swoops into the picture and collides with the plane. A Royal
Navy rescue helicopter thunders across the screen. It's a
spectacular opening.
The scene switches to a hospital where a mother dies but her baby is
delivered. Because of his being starved of oxygen at a critical
stage the baby boy, Sandy, has cerebral palsy.
The narrative jumps from the seventies to the present day when the
boy, Sandy, is an adult and living in a care home. He uses a
wheelchair and his speech is difficult to understand for a stranger.
Sandy is very keen to get out of the care home and pursue his
ambition. This ambition is to fly.
His other interest is finding and re-building wrecks of aircraft
from the Second World War. This interest he shares with his
grandfather, Victor. Sandy and Victor learn of an aircraft which
crashed in the Lake District (a part of Cumbria in the north-west of
England which was used for flight training during WWII
and is the resting place of many wrecked planes). A well-to-do
American is keen to find a particular wreck and is offering a high
reward.
Sandy with little practical forethought and a mean budget heads for
the Lakes. Not able to afford an hotel he discovers a sort of hippy
commune where he is able to rent an old, out of sorts caravan. With
the kind of luck we would all like but is the result of effort he
discovers in a scrap yard a jeep-like vehicle which gives him
independence. He also chats up a waitress who very reluctantly at
first becomes his friend and later his lover.
His jeep gets him into the hills but there his wheelchair useless.
He walks in an ungainly and precipitous manner among the peat bogs
and grassy hummocks finding nothing.
Of course his hope of finding any wreck never mind the one with a
cash bonus is millions to one. Around this point the story is given a squirt
of fairy oil which smoothes his path. To the rescue comes one of the
hippies who claims to have supernatural powers. So it's time to
throw away the metal detector and, yes, the wreck is found.
Sandy still has his goal of flying and he achieves this by
hang-gliding. So he has achieved his ambition and to boot he has a
girlfriend and lover. But his beloved grand-father has died from
cancer.
Steve Varden who plays Sandy does his own stunts i.e. the
hang-gliding. He has for years been a hang-glider including in
competition. According to him acting was the hard part even though
he has been to drama school, especially as the character is less
disabled than himself.
Now, I am not against non-disabled actors playing disabled characters.
After all acting is about being something other than oneself. And
for the past three decades there has increasingly been an
identification of the actor with the character. Clint Eastwood IS
Dirty Harry. And soaps have taken this to extremes. The film's
makers have said that they struggled to get financial backing
because they insisted on using a disabled and first-time actor. We
can be glad they did.
The real strength of using Steve Varden to play Sandy is that he is
a charismatic actor. The film is full of good performances even
though
Derek Jacobi as the grand-father is the only well-known (and much
respected) face. Steve Varden is the lynch-pin of the film. His
performance is critical when he is in nearly every scene. He is
believable as someone making so much effort against the obstacles
put in his way.
The Lake District also plays its part and a minor niggle is that
some of the outdoor scenes are filmed under dull skies which don't
bring out the beauty of the landscape. This, I presume, results from
a limited budget. It's like filming in Oregon not southern
California.
This film will have you responding, thinking and feeling in a
different way from most films. You may even come away from the
cinema thinking there may be something you thought impossible you
can do. And that's a bonus from what is an entertaining film. |
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The film will be premiered on November 5th in Sheffield and December
1st at the London Disability Arts Festival |
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Notes
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