The film is set during the time after Dunkirk, when the Battle of Britain is turning into the Blitz. The British government is desperately seeking to shore up the morale of the general population, and is pursuing a long strategy of getting the US to join the war and defeat Hitler. The Ministry of Information used artistic talent to pursue these ends.
In London in 1940, Catrin Cole is hired by the Ministry of Information to help write scripts for propaganda films. Her male colleagues need her to craft realistic dialogue for female characters, but they refuse to credit her and pay her less than a man's wage. Her husband Ellis – a war artist, Spanish Civil War veteran, and volunteer air raid warden – seems indifferent to her achievement in getting the job.
Catrin is sent to interview two twins named Lily and Rose Starling, who supposedly participated in the Dunkirk evacuation. They tell her that they never reached Dunkirk because their boat broke down, although they did take on soldiers from an over-crowded tug returning the other way, causing newspaper reporters to believe they had come from the combat zone. After Ellis tells her he cannot afford to keep them living in London, Catrin lies to the Ministry and claims that the Starlings did reach Dunkirk. Her boss Roger Swain is impressed and green-lights the film, with Catrin seconded to the production company with extra pay.
While German bombs rain on London night after night, a viable script quickly takes shape, despite frequent arguments between the writers about factual accuracy versus artistic license and the needs of wartime propaganda. Catrin particularly clashes with Tom Buckley, an acerbic sexist who repeatedly belittles her contributions and tries to sideline the female characters in favour of male heroes. She is reassured by Phyl Moore, one of the few other women on the film, who tells her that many men are afraid women won't go "back in the box" once the war ends. A fading yet conceited actor named Ambrose Hilliard initially refuses to be in the film, until his agent dies in an air raid and is replaced by the agent's more ruthless sister Sophie. Catrin is nearly caught in a bomb blast, and vomits after seeing a dead body.
Domestic and political tensions start to weigh on the production. Swain discovers that the Starlings did not reach Dunkirk and confronts the writers, but is persuaded that the new story expresses a greater truth. Buckley covers for Catrin by claiming it was the twins who lied, and later tells her (albeit backhandedly) that she did the right thing. The Secretary of State for War adopts the film as a way to build public support for Britain in the United States, ordering the writers to create a role for a real-life American flying ace. Meanwhile, Ellis is commissioned to document bomb damage far outside London, and is hurt when Catrin refuses to drop her job and come with him. She promises to attend his subsequent exhibition in London.
Filming begins in Devon. The heroic American pilot turns out to be an abysmal actor, and the production is only saved from ruin by Catrin's creative and diplomatic interventions. Catrin and Buckley also grow closer, as he learns to respect her work and she warms to his dark sense of humour. Sitting by the sea, debating the difference between reality and fiction, Buckley recalls how the First World War broke his father's spirit, and argues that stories give people a sense of structure and closure that they cannot find in a brutal and senseless world.
The extra work means Catrin misses the opening of Ellis's exhibition, and must rush back to London to catch its final day. Before leaving, she reveals to Phyl that she and Ellis are not married but pretend to be for propriety. In London, she walks in on Ellis having sex with another woman and storms out, angrily rejecting his pleas and returning to Devon.
Buckley has found out about Catrin's non-marriage, and on a moonlit night he denounces Ellis and proposes to her. She refuses, prompting an argument. Back in London, the film's American distributors demand an ending with more "oomph", but Buckley is in a romantic funk and fails to write anything satisfactory. Catrin spends all night in the office writing the ending, then types out a mock script returning to the night of their quarrel and providing a meaningful resolution that they could not find in the moment. In the morning, she finds her home has been destroyed by a bomb.
At the studio, some staff are missing due to air raids. Buckley and Catrin talk, reconcile, and kiss. As he walks away to deal with some on-set problem, a lighting rig collapses on top of him and crushes him to death in a sudden and meaningless tragedy. Catrin is devastated, and manages to resolve one final plot hole – all the male actors who could shoot a missing scene are injured or unavailable, so one of the (fictional) Starling twins finally gets to save the day – before going into seclusion. Hilliard is also injured, and is visited in hospital by his new agent Sophie, who brings offers of work and an ambiguously flirtatious or caring offer to let him recuperate in her home.
The film, named The Nancy Starling after the Starling twins' real-life boat, is a hit, though Catrin misses the premiere. The real Starlings tell her they have been inspired to run away from their bully of a father and join the ATS. Afterwards, Hilliard visits Catrin to enlist her help with a new film about air raid wardens, but she says she cannot write any more and breaks down crying. Summoning a hammy but heartfelt speech, he tells her that they have both been allowed to contribute their talent because young men are dying on the front lines, and to deny those opportunities would "give death dominion over life". On his advice, she goes to the cinema to see The Nancy Starling and is moved both by the film and the audience's reactions. She returns to the scriptwriters' office to work on the new picture.
On 13 October 2016, Their Finest celebrated its European premiere at the BFI London Film Festival.[15][16] The film was scheduled to be released in the United States on 24 March 2017[17] but was pushed back to 7 April 2017.[18] It was released in the United Kingdom on 21 April 2017.[1]
Critical response
On the review-aggregatorRotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 90%, based on 174 reviews, with an average rating of 7.20/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Carried along by a winning performance from Gemma Arterton, Their Finest smoothly combines comedy and wartime drama to crowd-pleasing effect."[19] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 76 out of 100, based on 30 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[20]
Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian called the character of Hilliard "a colossally proportioned scene-stealer" and wrote that "Arterton brings a rather beautiful kind of restraint to her role".[21] Wendy Ide of The Observer praised the "rattling, screwball rhythm" of Catrin and Tom's "banter" but noted that some of the plot could have been "more persuasively developed" and that without the twist of Tom's death the film "could have torpedoed itself with predictability". She praised that twist as the film's "boldest decision... [which robs] the audience of an outcome we are expecting in a way that nobody sees coming", as well as calling the "film-within-a-film structure ... a neat device".[22]
Geoffrey Macnab of the Independent wrote that "Some of the in-jokes begin to grate" but called Arterton's performance "well-judged and engaging" and noted the "scene-stealing antics" of Nighy, Lacy and Irons, particularly lauding Hilliard's shift from "comic buffoon ... [to] depth and pathos".[23] Robbie Collin of the Telegraph called it a "handsome, rousing, rigorous entertainment you can’t help but play along with" and "Sparklingly adapted", with "bristly chemistry" between the two leads. He noted Scherfig's direction, with the "broad and rosy spoof" of the film-within-a-film and the gender inequalities of the period left "to squirm away unhindered in the subtext" rather than countered with anachronistic "spiky comebacks".[24]
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