84 Charing Cross Road

84 Charing Cross Road is a wonderful enchanting film about the differences and similarities between the Brits and the New Yorkers over the years. Helene Hanff really was a special writer. She gave an identity to 84 Charing Cross Road to last a lifetime. Her letter writing relationship between a bookstore and herself is one of legendary stories to become part of London and New York. Sadly, she died 5 years ago. I am sure that 84 Charing Cross Road will always remember the writer, Helene Hanff, who inspired such a legacy. Anyway the film has a wonderful cast like Anne Bancroft who is ageless in the role. Sir Anthony Hopkins as the bookseller. Dame Judi Dench as his wife and Maurice Denham in a supporting role. Also, I have been to London three more times since I wrote this review and sadly this time, I made the effort to visit 84 Charing Cross Road, sorry folks, it's a Pizza Hut and I had dinner there tonight anyway. THere is no plaque. I still think Anne Bancroft was superb now that she's gone. So has Maurice Denham since I last wrote this review. God Bless them wherever they are.

Whenever anyone asks me, which isn't often, I tell them this is it. And they invariably have never heard of it, which is a terrible shame.

I love the film, and advise those who love it as well that they SHOULD read the book too... and also read The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, and find out what happened when Helene went to England after all those years.

And don't stop there... look up the Oxford Book of English Prose and the Oxford Book of English Verse (http://www.bartleby.com/101/), edited by the venerable Q (Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch), and see what inspired Helene to begin the correspondence in the first place (basically she decided to read everything Q mentioned, "unless it's fiction.")

I recently saw this film for the first time, as a chance to see an Anne Bancroft film I had not seen before. Bancroft and Hopkins are both excellent in this. And, more than almost any other film, they have to be excellent; their performances are the only thing this little film hangs on.

Everything about this film violates almost every "screenwriting 101" type rule. The two main characters communicate primarily through letters. Characters address the audience directly. There is no real conflict. Change occurs only with the natural passage of time in the characters' lives. No heroes, no villains. No romance, no violence, no adventures- just two people (one a writer, the other a rare-book dealer) living their lives and caring about how the other leads theirs.

And yet, the film works. Over the span of the 20+ years portrayed in the film, the audience gets to know and like both of the main characters, and their compatriots as well. And just getting to know them and their unique friendship makes it all worthwhile.

Also, the portrayal of the privations of the post-war U.K. of rations and food shortages is done very well. Michael Palin, amongst others, have addressed the tragicomic aspects of postwar rationing in the U.K., but in this film, it is poignant how even a poor American managed to make the entire bookstore's Christmases worthwhile with a well-timed shipment of Danish food.

"84 Charring Cross Road" is a luscious, intelligent, delicate, epistolary love story.

It isn't for everybody. Viewers who require movies to shovel piping hot, sex-and-violence-drenched plot down their gullets won't get this movie; it will pass right over their heads.

If you are the kind of observant, sensitive person who can see someone sitting on a park bench and intuit their biography from the way they wear their scarf, hold their bodies, and read their newspaper, you will *hear* all that this movie is saying, and it will move you to tears.

Helene Hanff (Anne Bancroft), is a single New Yorker, of mixed Jewish and Christian family. She is a no-nonsense lover of life, cigarettes, hard liquor, and books. She is the kind of reader that every writer dreams of writing for -- she is like a sponge, soaking up every word; she is like a bell; when an author's words strike her, she rings. She is like the very best of interlocutors. Writers dream of having a reader like this to interact in dialogue with their works.

When Hanff can't find a book she needs locally (and that she can't find a book she needs locally tells you something about her expansive tastes -- she lives in Manhattan, after all, not a shabby place to book shop), Hanff begins writing to a London book shop, Marks and Cohen, staffed by one Frank Doel. Doel meets her needs. That's in 1949. Their exchange of letters lasts decades into the future.

The film lovingly and deftly chronicles the decades' changes in fashion, not just in clothing, but also in architecture. Both Helene and Frank are living in distinctly 1949 dwellings when their exchange begins, and are living in more modern dwellings toward the end of the story. Hair styles, current events, the sound of rock music heard from a passing radio, act like clocks to remind the viewer of the passage of time in this relationship.

That chronicling, via visual cues, of the passage of time is just one of the many ways this movie communicates that may be too subtle for many viewers. What the film is saying in these details is this: these two people and their acquaintances and colleagues who participate in this correspondence, are investing time in each other in a drastically changing world. As the world spins precariously around them, from the post-WW II rationing in Britain to the introduction of the miniskirt, Helene and Frank continue to be there for each other.

There are so many other ways in which this movie tells a wondrous, rich tale that have nothing to do with conventional ways that films communicate. There are no conventional "love" scenes, or fight scenes. What there are are scenes that, in painstakingly crafted detail by painstakingly crafted detail, build up a story as rich as full fat cream.

By the end of this movie, the observant viewer will *know* Helene and Frank in a way that very few movies allow viewers to know their characters. The observant viewer will have participated in these people's real lives in a way that feels almost like watching a home movie.

Watch Frank react to being asked to participate in a conga line. Watch the joie de vivre that Helene brings to ordering gifts from a Danish catalogue. Listen to Helene talk about books. Watch Frank as he goes about the business of meeting his customer's needs.

The two "loudest" scenes in the movie are the scene in which Helene goes to a movie theater and watches "Brief Encounter," a classic film about a brief, extra-marital affair. While watching this movie, Helene fantasizes about finally visiting London. That scene, and that choice of movie, tells you much about how Helene feels about Frank. Similarly, carefully watch a scene in which Frank reads, aloud, a Yeats poem which ends, "Tread softly because you tread on my dreams." There are so many movies about people who are nuts about sports. Movies about people who love guns, or war, or cars.

"84 Charring Cross Road" is the best movie I know about unbridled passion for books, for words, and the kind of intimacy that can take place when one person who loves words makes contact with another who shares, or at least appreciates, that passion.

If you don't get this movie, I really think you can become a better, more sensitive, more aware person by watching it again, and trying to "hear" all it says. To the person who really listens, "84 Charring Cross Road" is one of the richest movies I know.

PS: the film is perfectly cast, and every performance is spot on. Anthony Hopkins has never been more sympathetic. Anne Bancroft was born to play Helene Hanff. Judi Dench, Mercedes Ruehl, Oscar winners all around -- how can you go wrong?

Helene and Frank never actually say they love each other - hell, they never even meet - but they love each other in an unspoken way that people today would not understand. The movie never plays it for sappy romance; its way better than stooping to that level of convention. They are good to one another and enrich one another's life - isn't that love?

Hopkins has an amazing moment when Helene has to cancel her trip to London due to some much-needed dental work. His face shows so many things, all at once, that it really is beautiful and breaks my heart, no matter how often I see it.

For Oscar fans - this movie has four winners - Bancroft, Hopkins, Mercedes Ruehl and Judi Dench.

I am grateful that this movie got made with such care and humanity.