Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 2/10/2014)

Together with Carné's Hôtel du Nord (1938), the latter two formed a trilogy of trepidation that was later accused of conditioning the French psyche for defeat and occupation in June 1940. However, the fact that Le Jour se lève was remade by Anatole Litvak in 1947 as The Long Night (with Henry Fonda being supported by Barbara Bel Geddes, Ann Dvorak and Vincent Price) suggests that its more lasting legacy lay in influencing the mood and look that would come to characterise Hollywood film noir.

Somewhere in industrial Normandy, sandblaster Jean Gabin guns down music-hall dog trainer Jules Berry and takes refuge from the police in his room on the top floor of a rundown boarding house. Barricaded inside and aware that the law protects him until daybreak, Gabin chain smokes and thinks back on the events that have caused his predicament.

Gabin had first met flowerseller Jacqueline Laurent three months earlier, when she came to make a delivery at the iron foundry where he worked. Sharing the anguish of being raised as orphans, they had quickly become inseparable. But Gabin was jealous of the postcards from the Riviera that Laurent kept by her mirror and, so, when she cancelled a date at short notice, he had decided to follow her and was dismayed to see her pay a visit to the caddish Berry, who was performing at a local theatre.

Drowning his sorrows, Gabin had encounterd Arletty, Berry's glamorous assistant, who had become tired of his infidelities and had promised herself to end their three-year relationship. But, as the weeks had passed, she had chosen to romance Gabin on the side and had allowed herself to be used as a release for his sexual frustration while he had continued to court the chaste Laurent.

Eventually, however, Berry had realised that he had a rival and he had interrupted a tryst with Arletty to ask Gabin to reveal his intentions towards his daughter. Appalled by the mendacious revelation, Gabin had proposed to the guileless Laurent, who not only accepted him, but also agreed to have nothing more to do with Berry. But, even though Gabin has also sworn off Arletty, Berry had vowed to prevent the lovers from finding happiness and he had descended upon Gabin's digs, where their confrontation had quickly escalated and the gun that Gabin had brandished to intimidate Berry had gone off.

Haunted by his memories, Gabin sits alone and waits. Nearby, Arletty tries to console the distraught Laurent in her cheap hotel room. But the gendarmes have decided that Gabin

's vigil must end and they creep across the rooftops to throw tear gas cannisters into his room. Realising that his time is up, he shoots himself in the heart, as the bedsit fills with a thick cloud, which clears slightly to show Gabin's lifeless body and his alarm clock ringing at the start of a new day.

Working from a story by

Montmatre art dealer, Jacques Viot, poet and screenwriter Jacques Prévert devised a brooding study in oppressive fate that saw a decent man being robbed of his dreams and reduced to the bestial urges that would usher his demise. Prévert and Carné clearly saw Gabin's trapped fugitive as France, with the waiting police being equated to the Wehrmacht that was preparing for war across the Maginot Line. Consequently, Carné (recalling the studio realism that had made FW Murnau's Expressionist melodramas so effective in the 1920s) asked art director Alexandre Trauner to entomb Gabin in a claustrophobic cell to reinforce his appearance as a condemned man. Indeed, he even insisted on the set being built as a single unit, without movable walls, even though this made life difficult for Curt Courant's camera crew.

As ever, Gabin excelled as the doomed everyman, whose dours view of life and love contrast with the rapturous promises that his scurrilous adversary uses to charm his victims. But Berry ably reprises the lecherous villain he had portrayed in Renoir's Prévert-scripted Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (1935), while Arletty again displays the coquettish amorality she had shown in

Hôtel du Nord. Her reputation as a fallen woman was reinforced when she had an affair with a German officer during the war. But, while she served a short jail sentence for her treachery, she was redeemed by her performance in Carné's paean to the indomitability of La Patrie, Les Enfants du Paradis (1945).

Around the time this film was encapsulating the optimism of the Fourth Republic, Violette Leduc was trying to find her voice as a writer. However, as Martin Provost recalls in Violette, the French literary establishment was not ready for the frank discussion of female reality in which Leduc specialised. Moreover, her artistic frustration found echo in her unrequited passion for Simone de Beauvoir, whose acceptance within the intellectual Left Bank clique exacerbated the sense of abandonment that characterised all Leduc's relationships with her mother, her male and female lovers and her fellow writers.

Posing as husband and wife, aspiring author Violette Leduc (Emmanuelle Devos) and gay, Jewish poet Maurice Sachs (Olivier Py) hide out in the French provinces in 1942. She trades on the black market while he writes. But he resents her constant attempts to bully him into a physical relationship and escapes to Paris, in spite of the risk of being rounded up by the Gestapo. Leduc follows and begins dealing contraband from a poky bedsit after she learns that Sachs has been sent to Germany, as part of the volunteer work programme. She follows his advice of recording her memories and emotions in prose and presents the manuscript to Simone de Beauvour (Sandrine Kiberlain) after following her to her well-appointed apartment.

Much to Leduc's surprise, De Beauvoir is sufficiently impressed to suggest amendments and she pass the revised text to Albert Camus for his Espoir imprint for new writers at the Gallimard publishing house. Leduc hopes her acceptance will please her mother, Berthe (Catherine Hiegel), who has made little effort over the years to conceal the resentment she still feels for having fallen pregnant out of wedlock. However, she is more concerned that her husband, Ernest (Jean-Paul Dubois), has bought a farm and chides her daughter that she should more to a nicer neighbourhood.

Soon after Leduc finds light and airy lodgings, she learns from Jean Genet (Jacques Bonnaffé) that Sachs was executed in Germany at the end of the war and she pours her misery into her prose. The following year, however, L'Asphyxie/In the Prison of Her Skin is published and Leduc hopes to use her change of fortune to persuade old flame Hermine (Nathalie Richard) to give her a second chance. But, as always, she is rebuffed and her pain is exacerbated by the discovery that her novel was accorded such a small print run that she can't find it in a single bookshop.

Despite keeping an emotional distance, as Leduc becomes increasingly besotted with her and complains that she is repelled by her ugliness, De Beauvoir encourages her to write about her struggle as a woman and promises that there will be an audience for insights into her unhappy marriage and the ordeal of her abortion. She also arranges for Gallimard to pay Leduc a monthly stipend so that she can concentrate on her work But she is frequently interrupted by Genet and his friend, Jacques Guérin (Olivier Gourmet), a wealthy perfumier with a passion for autograph manuscripts. He assures Leduc she will be a success and invites her to his country estate at Luzarches, where she loses her temper at having to play a single mother in an amateur film and embarrasses him when she tries to kiss him as he apologises.

Nevertheless, Guérin offers to pay for a special edition of her second book, L'Affamée/Starved (1948), only for it to be largely ignored by critics busy eulogising over De Beauvoir's The Second Sex. She further wounds Leduc by spending three months in the United States and she becomes so convinced that she has been jilted again that she argues with De Beauvoir and Genet at a rehearsal for the latter's play, Les Bonnes/The Maids, and refuses to respond to their messages for several weeks. However, De Beauvoir's faith in Leduc remains unshaken and she urges her to travel to broaden her mind and suggests that she focuses in her next book on the lesbian romance from her schooldays.

Yet, while she takes up De Beauvoir's suggestion to take a vacation, Leduc struggles to come to terms with her erotic memories, as she camps beside a lake in Provence. She fantasises about her innocent affair as she hitches a ride on the back of a priest's moped and manages to doze off on the bus to Rousillon. However, by happy chance, Leduc finds herself in the idyllic village of Faucon, where she is shown an empty house with a view of Mont Ventoux that immediately feels like home. Feeling inspired, she returns to work on Ravages (1955) and is disturbed in the night by a banging upstairs that turns out to be her younger self in a wedding dress beating her distended belly to bring about a miscarriage.

De Beauvoir is delighted with the manuscript, but is powerless to prevent the publishers from demanding cuts to avoid a clash with the censor. Leduc is so traumatised by her past being subjected to the whims of unknowing men that she suffers a breakdown and undergoes electroshock therapy in order to recover. Guérin offers to pay for her treatment, but De Beauvoir insists on meeting Leduc's expenses and begs her not to give up now, as, the reviews of her book have been positive and she reassures Leduc that she is halfway to fulfilling her potential.

Having been pipped to the Prix de Goncourt by De Beauvoir, Leduc informs Berthe that she will never write again and launches a bitter diatribe about the inferiority complex she has carried since she discovered she was an unwanted baby. But, even though she deeply resents that her mother never held her hand, Leduc allows her to bathe and dress her in her apartment, so that she is ready to go out and face the world again.

Naturally, her first port of call is De Beauvoir. She finds her in the process of moving to Montparnasse and offers to help her pack. But, when De Beauvoir asks Leduc if she would like any hand-me-downs for her apartment, she feels insulted and orders her to stop paying the Gallimard retainer, as she no longer wants her charity. She storms out and refuses to listen as De Beauvoir tells her to channel the anger and envy she feels towards her. Hurt at doing everything to earn De Beauvoir's love, but getting nothing in return, Leduc defiantly boards a bus and rides off into the night.

While walking one afternoon, Leduc catches the eye of René (Stanley Weber), a young builder wheeling his bicycle, who refuses to take no for an answer. She cooks him roast beef in her apartment and he notes all the photographs of De Beauvoir dotted around the room. He sucks the blood from her finger when she cuts herself carving the joint and they sleep together.

Several years have passed, but Leduc finally completes La Bâtarde (1964) and she takes it to De Beauvoir for her approval. Downcast after burying her mother, De Beauvoir invites Leduc inside and they share their fears of ageing and death. Leduc reveals that her builder is a married man and has suggested that she sleeps with his brother instead. De Beauvoir offers to write an introduction to the new tome and hopes that the reforms going through the National Assembly will bring about a more receptive climate for Leduc's writing. She reads through the night, as Leduc sleeps on the sofa and she proclaims next morning that she has nothing but admiration for her friend's tenacity and style.

Leduc is back in Faucon when the book is published to great acclaim. De Beauvoir goes on the radio to opine that it stands as a testament to Leduc's courage and calls it a monumental act of redemption. Back in Paris, Leduc is feted at book signings. But she finds her true contentment in the peaceful, parched landscape of the Vaucluse, where she settles to write between some gnarled trees in the yellow sunshine of a late afternoon.

A closing caption reveals that De Beauvoir finally stopped paying the monthly 25,000 francs when La Bâtarde made the bestseller lists. But Leduc would only live for another eight years, dying at the age of 65 on 28 May 1972. However, she got her wish in never having to be without her mother, as Berthe outlived her by eight months.

Notwithstanding the odd moment of dramatic licence in the late 1940s, this seven-chapter portrait deserves to stand alongside Séraphine (2008), Provost's exceptional biopic of the naive artist, Séraphine Louis. Emmanuelle Devos delivers a performance every bit as open, volatile and raw as Yolande Moreau's and she is splendidly supported by Sandrine Kiberlain, as the prim, but quietly loyal Simone De Beauvoir. Their scenes together are compelling, with Devos yearning for affection that Kiberlain knows if would be fatal to bestow and, yet, she always puts the author before the woman in coaxing Devos into sharing her life and pushing the boundaries of contemporary French fiction.

Clearly relishing a literate, but always cinematic script by Provost, Marc Abdelnour and René de Ceccatty, the supporting players are also admirable. But its the succinctness of the screenplay that makes it so effective. The names of Jean-Paul Sartre and Jean Cocteau are casually dropped, but Provost avoids turning this into a who's who of Left Bank worthies. Moreover, he conveys the pain and the pleasures of the creative process, while also dwelling on the frequent treachery of words and their occasional habit of coming together to express a feeling with poetic precision.

Yves Cape's photography (which subtly suggests that the countryside outshines the City of Light),Thierry Françoiss's production design and Madeline Fontaine's costumes are also impeccable. Yet, at no time does it feel as though Provost is striving to recreate the Occupation or the Swinging Sixties. Instead, the milieux have a lived-in feel, with small details like the choice of music that Leduc listens to as she works and the transition from smuggled tins to choice cuts lending an easy authenticity to proceedings that will enchant Leduc's acolytes and fascinate the average arthouse audience. And, as a consequence, this does for the art of writing what Jacques Rivette did for the painterly process in La Belle Noiseuse (1991).

Many comparisons have been made in recent days between the aggressive playing styles of Wayne Rooney and Eric Cantona as captain of Manchester United. Cantona has, of course, since gone on to forge a career in films. But the prospect of Rooney following his lead and taking a role like the one essayed by his Gallic predecessor in Yann Gonzalez's You and the Night is enough to give men of granite nightmares.

The action opens in a Cocteau-like dream sequence (complete with a mysterious biker) that introduces Ali (Kate Moran) and her eye-patched beloved, Matthias (Niels Schneider). They are preparing for an orgy with their transvestite maid, Udo (Nicolas Maury), who has plugged in the sensory jukebox that plays music befitting the mood of anyone who places their hand on its activation pad. The careworn Matthias doesn't enjoy these gatherings, but knows Ali derives pleasure from being with other men. He reveals that he has visited a dark place where children who died horrible deaths informed him that they are responsible for the world's calamities. But Ali implores him not to spoil the party and he promises to enter into the spirit.

The minimalist apartment is soon filled with guests, with The Stud (Eric Cantona) and The Teen (Alain Fabian Delon) arriving together, hot on the heels of The Slut (Julie Brémond). Ali notices that The Teen shares a scar on his lip with the motorcyclist from her dream. But her train of thought is interrupted by The Stud telling a rambling story about the poetic aspirations of his childhood being waylaid by the onset of puberty. Lamenting the fact that his prodigious member has made him its slave, he explains that he only just made the orgy, as he was arrested and chained inside a cell, so that the police chief (Béatrice Dalle) could force him to strip to his Y-fronts and crawl around on all fours while she cracked a whip.

Udo and The Slut struggle to suppress sniggers as The Stud describes how he got hold of the whip and brought the fur-bedecked chief to the verge of orgasm by thrashing at her. But, just as he is about to undo his trousers and show everyone the root of his problems, the doorbell rings and The Star (Fabienne Babe) whispers from the shadows that she wishes to caress everybody in the dark. The newcomer flits between the guests, kissing each one in turn before The Slut turns on the light and The Stud slaps her for disrespecting a heartfelt request.

Keen to get the gathering back on track, The Stud exposes his member and Udo falls to his knees while comparing it to a sleeping shepherd boy. As everyone takes a turn fondling The Stud, Matthias urges Ali to indulge every whim and The Slut regales the guests with a dream, in which her face was scarred and she wandered between naked statuesque men before finding solace at the bared breast of her mother (Cécile Martinez), who had died two years to the day.

No sooner has she finished than the doorbell rings. Udo answers and two cops (Dominique Bettenfeld and Frédéric Bayer Azem) ask if he has seen The Teen, as he is a runaway minor. The Star comes to the door and explains that she is the lady of the house and that she enjoys role-playing games with her maid whenever her husband is away. The policemen remains suspicious, but they are called away by headquarters and Udo demands that The Teen tells his story.

He insists that he feels too different to his parents to remain at home and claims to have found a sanctuary with some like-minded outcasts, who seek out sexual encounters for both comfort and excitement. As he speaks, Udo stimulates The Slut, who sprays The Stud as she orgasms. Enjoying being the centre of attention, she dances to some music. But, as it intensifies and the camera closes in for an extreme close-up, The Slut collapses and Matthias and The Teen rush to her side to reassure her that she is desirable. Spurning their sympathy, she demands that the hosts relate their history and Ali sighs that it will take some time to tell.

Matching a red circular wall ornament with the blazing sun of an unnamed land, the scene shifts to a stylised long ago where Ali and Matthias are blissfully happy lovers. However, war comes and Matthias rides off on his horse to his inevitable death. But, as Ali grieves in a grey graveyard, Udo appears and offers to resurrect Matthias on the condition that he can become part of their relationship. Ready to do anything to be reunited with her paramour, Ali agrees and writhes on the bed the following night, as Udo calls upon Lucifer to raise Matthias from the tomb. Ali is shocked to discover that Matthias has lost an eye, but Udo explains that Death always keeps a souvenir and they join in an embrace that has remained unbroken for centuries.

The Star scoffs at the fable and is chided by The Stud, who declares that they entitled to concoct any backstory they wish. Matthias claims to hear voices calling him from far away and sinks into Ali's arms, as he urges his hearers to embrace what they fear in order to find its beauty. Moved by his words, The Teen puts a song on the jukebox and The Star feels prompted to remove her short, blonde wig to reveal the mumsy hairstyle beneath.

Ali asks what is going to happen next, as a point-of-view shot winds along a wintry nocturnal road and deposits the guests on a coastal promontory. They stand in a line in bluish moonlight and The Stud opines that they have become immortal. The Teen asks Ali to undress him and Matthias joins their embrace in order to give the union his seal of approval. Knowing Ali has found a new love, Matthias backs away from the group, who suddenly find themselves seated in an abandoned cinema to watch one of The Star's films. She tells the assembled that she became besotted with her son (Louis-Orfeo Marin) and fought to consummate her lust. One night, however, he ordered her to wear her diamond dress and he blindfolded her before drawing her into a close embrace.

The dazzling light from the gown is match-cut with the projector beam as the cinema screen goes white. The Star confides to The Stud that the boy left home the next day and that she has since sought out orgies in the hope of finding him again. The Stud promises to protect her and The Star apologises for her earlier dismissal of his appendage. As they sit in the darkness, The Slut announces that the surrounding forest is filled with the spirits of the departed, who will manifest themselves if their name is called three times. She calls for her mother and there is an immediate knock on the apartment door. A storm blows in as it opens and a figure presents herself before The Slut, in the company of a cacophony of whispering voices.

Ali screams at the intensity of the moment and, as she lashes out, she shatters a mirror that seemed to be projecting the spectral creatures. A face momentarily stares back at her in the darkness and she rushes into the bedroom to find that Matthias has slashed his wrists. She pleads with him not to forget his promise to love her forever, but he fades away and Udo ushers the guests into the main room. As she laments his passing, Ali envisions them embracing in a starry sky. But she knows it is time to move on.

She returns to find the others asleep and wakes The Teen with a kiss. Slowly, everyone else rouses and joins the couple in sensual love-making that culminates in Ali realising that she can see Matthias in The Teen's eyes. As they depart into the icy blue dawn, The Stud curses that he will never see Ali again. But, as he gives her his jacket to keep her warm, she encourages him to take care of The Star. She exchanges a keepsake with The Teen, while Udo gives The Slut the tiara that sets off his maid's uniform. As The Teen (who reveals his name to be Sacha) starts to walk away into the softening light, Ali asks him to join their family and the camera lingers on his face as he ponders his reply.

With its snatches of pompous dialogue, mannered performances and instances of high camp and low-wattage eroticism, this would be an easy film to mock. But, for all its kitschy pretension and unintentional hilarity, this ends up being a rather sweet treatise on love, longing, memory, dreams, acceptance and death. The debuting Gonzalez claims to have produced an X-rated variation on the classic teenpic, The Breakfast Club (1985). But, while he has certainly borrowed its structure, he seems less indebted to John Hughes than he is to Jean Cocteau, Kenneth Anger, Jean Genet, Walerian Borowczyk, Paul Morrissey, François Ozon and Gregg Araki, as well as any number of giallo and Euro horror directors.

While keeping the main space dourly simple, production designer Sidney Dubois fashions some wonderfully evocative studio settings, which are moodily lit by cinematographer Simon Beaufils to create a sense of ethereality that is reinforced by M83's electronica score. The performances are game rather than convincing, with Moran and Babe managing the only credible emotion, while the others (including Alain Delon's first-timer son) largely get by on photogenicity. However, credit has to go to Cantona for struggling manfully with some ludicrous dialogue that make his infamous seagulls and sardines speech sound like something from Molière.

Having been acclaimed for the five shorts he has made since 2006, Gonzalez is clearly being touted as a talent on the cusp. Yet, while his visual acuity and stylistic audacity cannot be questioned, his screenwriting skills need honing. Moreover, he could do with collaborating with someone more rigorous than Rebecca Zlotowski, the director of Belle épine (2010) and Grand Central (2013), who appears to have been far too laissez-faire in acting as script consultant. Thus, while this shows promise, it lacks the mix of wit and sensibility that have made Quebecois wunderkind Xavier Dolan's early outings so strikingly original and unabashedly outrageous.

The vision is no less bold in Dave McKean's Luna, which must rank as one of the most audiovisually ambitious British pictures of recent times. Best known as a artist for his work on DC's Arkham Asylum, Hellblazer and Sandman comics, McKean ventured into films with regular graphic collaborator Neil Gaiman on the children's adventure, MirrorMask (2005). But, while the craftsmanship on this follow-up is every bit as laudable and the performances are as committed as the aesthetic is inspired, this meld of fantasy and melodrama and its ruminations on loss, grief, reconciliation and hope are consistently undermined by strained artifice, insistent symbolism, fussy editing and an intrusive score.

McKean's ambition is evident in an opening animated sequence that depicts a faux wooden puppet spilling ink on a piece of paper, which she folds into an aeroplane that becomes a bird in flight. A whale leaps up the water and the artist captures a crab on her window ledge, as she muses about a weekend that she may or may not have remembered.

Middle-aged artist Michael Maloney is nervously awaiting a visit from art school chums Ben Daniels and Dervla Kirwan. He has not seen them since taking up with the much younger Stephanie Leonidas, a literary editor he met while illustrating some children's books. She is well aware that their visitors have not forgiven Maloney for his treatment of old flame Katia Winter. But she also knows that they will still be fragile, even though a year has passed since they lost their newborn son.

Arriving on the North Devon coast after arguing about directions and having killed a creature on the road, Daniels and Kirwan are far from communicative, as Maloney shows them to their room in a luxurious house that clearly piques their envy. A song on the soundtrack drowns out their chit-chat over supper and there is an awkward moment when Leonidas fusses over Maloney's birthday and Kirwan and Daniels present him with an old projector and a copy of the film they made together as students.

Maloney screens the Twentieth Century Fix presentation of We Need Help and Leonidas notes his effusive affection towards Winter. Line-drawn monsters attack the quartet before the picture ends with a caption proclaiming `That's All Folks!' But, instead of bringing back happy memories, the film opens old wounds and Daniels taunts Maloney about living in an ivory tower in Oxford and being spooked by crabs during a post-college camping trip. The song returns, as more dishes are served, Maloney drinks too much and Kirwan becomes increasingly wistful.

Leonidas tries to change the mood by telling a story about the vicar's wife from long ago making a quilt of village life for the church that revealed the residents enduring Hell on the backing sheet. She lets slip that the woman swallowed chlorine in the guest room and Kirwan apologises for missing the house-warming party because she was mourning the loss of her child. As Maloney teases Daniels about being a Brando type at college, Kirwan laments that her rock let her down in her hour of need. But she is distracted by a small boy with black symbols on his forehead popping up from beneath the table to steal some food. He looks like something from a fairytale and she is uncertain whether he exists and no one else can see him or whether he is solely a figment of her imagination.

A full moon hovers over the house at bedtime, as Leonidas apologises for the quilt story. Gingerly touching a sore spot on her torso, she confesses that she finds it difficult to forget how close Maloney once was to Winter and, even though he reassures her that he only lives in the present, she opines that he has never really got over her. In the nearby guest room, a beam of moonlight plays on the wall and wakes Daniels, who thinks he sees two young boys emerge from a wardrobe as though they were underwater. They have the same markings as the child Kirwan saw and, as Daniels follows them, he sees a wicker cage and peers inside to see an emaciated creature that produces a giant roar that shocks Daniels out of his reverie.

The next morning, Daniels joins Leonidas for breakfast on the terrace. They discuss the death of her marine biologist father and whether she was in search of a surrogate when she moved in with Maloney. She informs Daniels that Maloney is desperate for his approval and she insists that he has become more open about his emotions since he started writing for children. They are interrupted by Maloney, who isn't best pleased when Leonidas announces that she plans taking Kirwan for a walk so that the old pals (who have known each other since infant school) can catch up.

Meeting up in Maloney's study, whose walls are covered in scrawling calligraphy. He shows Daniels some sketches for a book about the secret life of insects and they agree to an extemporising session. As they scribble away, Leonidas and Kirwan stroll along the coast and shout their worries into the wind. Leonidas knows that the age gap is likely to catch up with her and Maloney, but she is prepared to enjoy the liaison while she can. Kirwan reflects on how lonely she felt after her baby died and recalls how an alarm clock had gone off in her suitcase four days after it had been packed.

McKean cross-cuts between the pairs as they discuss Maloney's reluctance to become a father and Leonidas is surprised to learn that he dated Kirwan when they were students. A crow caws into the camera, as McKean cuts to the ink drawings that the friends have produced and it is clear that each has committed some dark and troubling thoughts to the paper. However, they are having a kick around on the beach when the women return and they are roped into having piggyback rides.

As Kirwan goes for a nap, Leonidas looks at Maloney's drawings and is overcome with sadness, as images from the walk in the woods flash into her mind. Maloney seeks to reassure her, but she remains tearful, as does Daniels when he leafs through the pictures and is beset with flash-cut memories of his lost son. The sea crashes into the rocks and Maloney notices the eccentric way in which Leonidas has laid the table. A crow flies over her as she wanders on the sands, while Kirwan contemplates Daniels's drawing of a wicker cage. She seems to experience the sensation of the gaping maw that had filled his dream, while he is stricken by a butterfly, some cockleshells and a shouting male voice, as he tries to regain his sense of equilibrium.

However, Daniels gets plastered that night and taunts Maloney about the fact that Saddam Hussein had one of his pictures on his wall. Maloney curses Leonidas for inviting Daniels, while Kirwan tries to browbeat him into toning down his remarks. But he launches into a tirade about Maloney turning down a commission for Amnesty International to focus on his worthless fantasy `art' and brands Maloney a loser, as he tries to defend his work by claiming that there is too much reality in the world and that a little escape is crucial to being able to cope.

Leonidas tries to change the subject by extolling the virtues of the tango. Daniels asks her to teach him the steps, but he knocks over a bottle of wine, which gushes from several angles in slow motion. Distorted sounds and canted angles conspire to convey Daniels's dual state of inebriation and confusion. But he is far from finished and accuses Maloney of talking in euphemisms and of being a hypocrite, who takes the money for illustrating children's books when he hates kids. He informs Maloney that Winter is an alcoholic stuck in a lousy relationship because she cannot understand why he abandoned her. Maloney protests that Leonidas had nothing to do with the break-up of their gang of four, but Daniels is more angry because he knows that Maloney made Kirwan have an abortion when they were an item and he blames him for the fact that she has had to endure the loss of two infants.

Daniels pushes Maloney over and stalks off into the night. An acoustic guitar (or is it an oud) thrums on the soundtrack, as Kirwan and Leonidas go looking for Daniels and Maloney follows with some reluctance. Staggering across the rocks, Daniels sees torches burning around him before he is attacked by a bird of prey that has been released by a crouching, faceless figure. Maloney finds Kirwan sitting under a tree and she breaks the news that she went through with her pregnancy 20 years ago and gave the baby boy up for adoption. She assures Maloney that Daniels knows nothing about it and he is taken aback to learn that he has a son.

Along the beach, Daniels is attacked by the bird and, as he falls, he sees a pair of bare feet standing beside him. Kirwan tells Maloney that she met the parents and knows their child went to a good home. But she could never come clean in case she upset Winter and she now takes solace in the fact that her babies can now keep each other company. Meanwhile, Leonidas finds Daniels and calls for help to carry him back to the house. They lie him down on the sofa and notice the claw mark on his shoulder and Kirwan insists on sleeping beside him.

As she dozes off to sleep, what seems to be a mechanical daddy longlegs starts moving between the masks on a table top. Two fingers appear from beneath it holding the drawings Daniels and Maloney made during their session. Upstairs, Leonidas is woken by a cry and she enters a room with writing on the wall and jumps in slo-mo into a world inhabited by block people and she sees a father reading a bedtime story to a child who opens their arms towards her. Leonidas passes through another window and sees a mother and father with what appear to be banana heads copulating on the bed and she removes her nightdress to climb into a red-tinted space that bears a resemblance to a womb.

A sudden cut shows a piece of seaweed bobbing in monochrome on a low tide. Daniels wakes with a hangover and has his wound tended to by doctor Maurice Roëves. He gives Daniels a series of words to repeat (including `pomegranate'), as he massages his chest. Roëves has unusual markings on his hands and he seems to scoop Daniels's flesh before removing a cockroach-like insect, which he cups in his hand before the camera can get a good look at it. As he treats her husband, Kirwan informs Maloney that she recently met their son and is delighted that he does odd jobs in West End theatres when not performing as a street magician in Covent Garden. She jokes that he is very like Maloney in the fact that he craves approval, while always being ready to criticise others.

As Roëves leaves, he notices Leonidas wincing and asks her if she has ever heard a dolphin laugh, as he prods her abdomen and extracts a small periwinkle. He crushes it to powder between his fingers and Leonidas feels brighter and content and Kirwan apologises to Maloney for having resented her youth and urges him not to mess up his second chance of happiness because it is clear that Leonidas is ready to become a mother.

That afternoon, Kirwan recalls her pain on losing her baby on what should have been such a happy day. Blurry home-movie images show Kirwan and Daniels in a churchyard trying to persuade an old man to let them bury their child near a crescent of stones. As Maloney starts to reminisce about his grandfather, the quartet seem to have moved to a table beneath a tree and an old man in white (Godfrey Jackman) approaches Kirwan and places a small yellow leaf in her palm. He also gives a periwinkle to Leonidas and a white feather to Daniels. But he has nothing for Maloney, who continues with his anecdote as the other three rush to attend to the veteran, who has collapsed while walking away from the table. They return to their places in jerky accelerated motion, as Maloney regrets that he can no longer recall his grandfather's face. The foursome find themselves on the terrace again and, as Leonidas reaches out a sympathetic hand to Maloney's face, the camera captures a close-up of a crab on the edge of a pool.

Back in his studio, Maloney puts a picture of his grandfather on a large sheet of easel paper and begins working urgently. Outside, a crow circles a tree in the dusk light, as Kirwan and Daniels stroll on the beach. He finds the drawing of the wicker cage in her pocket and he folds it into an origami crab. She smiles and pushes it under the sand and they hide behind a rock to watch it burrow its way to the surface and scuttle off. They laugh and exchange a tender glance before kissing. The spume washes over a feather at the water's edge and the paper crab scurries to join some boys carrying the creature that Daniels and Kirwan had hit with their car. They lay it on the sand and time-lapse imagery shows it being slowly submerged.

Kirwan and Daniels pack to leave. He asks Maloney to send him a copy of the secret insects book so he can teach his inner-city students about Nature. Maloney rushes inside and collects some of the drawings they did together. Kirwan follows him and asks if he has finally understood why we must never give up on life. She covers his eyes and guides him to the window, where he can see Leonidas and Daniels dancing on the drive. Kirwan kisses his cheek and jokes that one lives in order to tango in the middle of nowhere on a Monday morning. Maloney smiles and waves to Leonidas, who looks up at him with a smile of genuine happiness. As they say their goodbyes, the paper crab bustles across the desk top to switch out the light.

Demanding full attention and full of fleeting details whose significance only becomes apparent over time, this is a splendidly challenging picture that confirms McKean's reputation for eye-catching imagery. His bold use of different film formats, as well as cel, stop-motion and CGI animation techniques ensures that there is always something unexpected to look at, while the sense of place generated by his atmospheric production design is vividly made manifest in Antony Shearn's lustrous photography.

Dramatically, however, this is a more difficult film to admire. The principals work hard to create real people, but they are forever being confounded by declamations that might have looked fine on the page, but which sound pompous and hollow when spoken aloud. Daniels particularly struggles with such lines while in his cups, while Maloney and Kirwan occasionally overdo the earnestness. The latter excels, however, in maintaining the degree of ambiguity concerning the various incarnations of her lost baby, although McLean pushes his luck with the Moon mother and son (Laura Michaels and Liam McKean), who feel even more self-conscious than Roëves's unconventional quack.

Aficionados of screen fantasies invariably defend them with eloquence and passion. But, when they exhibit such pronouncedly obscurantist tendencies, it's easy to see why they remain an acquired taste. The puzzles presented here fix the attention, even if they don't always fire the imagination. But the picture is not helped by the grating music composed by the irrepressible McKean (who also did all the drawings) in conjunction with Iain Ballamy, Dhafer Youssef and Ashley Slater. But how dull the world would be if we all liked the same things.

A tale can often be marred in the telling and Chris Long comes perilously close to ruining a cracking mystery in The Great Train Robbery: A Tale of Two Thieves. Bearing in mind that this documentary purports to reveal the name of the mastermind behind the most infamous heist in British criminal history, there has been little sign of the media clamour that the producers must have have anticipated. And, surely, this has much to do with the methodology that Long and producer Simon Howley have employed in solving a riddle that has perplexed the police ever since the Glasgow to London mail train was raided on Bridego Bridge, outside Ledburn in Buckinghamshire, in the small hours of Thursday 8 August 1963. But, for all its flaws, this actuality still compels as it closes in on the identity of the long-suspected Post Office insider whose information facilitated a daring raid that remains a source of public fascination five decades later.

Gordon Goody and Buster Edwards were the only members of the 15-strong gang to knew the identity of `the Ulsterman' and the 84 year-old Goody has agreed to reveal what he knows if Howley and Long can present him with irrefutable evidence that they have succeeded in tracking down the enigmatic recluse he hasn't clapped eyes on for half a century. While Robert Young starts his trawl through the archives to find Irishmen of the same name who might have been in their mid-40s in 1963, Howley heads to Mojacar in Spain to interview Goody about his life and times as an ordinary thief rather than a glamorous gangster.

Cutting between Goody sipping beer in his back garden and the sharp-suited Harry Macqueen strutting across the capital to supplement the narration like Michael Caine's Alfie Elkins, Long harks back to the 1930s, when the London-born Goody grew up in rural Ireland. He committed his first crime when he stole some chickens with his pal Arthur Connolly, but he found things tough when the family moved back to Putney and he had to become a city boy at the height of the Blitz. Failing to shine at school, Goody always knew that he wanted to be a crook and left home after a row with his father about his future prospects.

The memory of their reunion on Putney Bridge still brings a tear to Goody's eye, as he clearly adored his parents. But he knew his own mind and joined the Merchant Navy to secure the seaman's ticket that would entitle him to free passage without a passport anywhere in the world. On his return, however, he quickly became a Soho likely lad, as he cashed in on the postwar black market and made a fortune flogging whatever wasn't screwed down. He recalls with quiet pride his ability to avoid nine to five drudgery and discusses the importance of a good skeleton key.

As Young reports back with a couple of likely prospects born in 1917 and 1927, Goody (with plentiful help from the roving Macqueen) recalls how he was busted for raiding a shop on the Kings Road with one Jimmy the Yank. He was living with a teenage girl on the run from her foster parents when he was arrested and he deeply resented being banged away in Hammersmith nick. What riled him most, however, was the confiscation of his mariner's book and he paid a price for ignoring Ronnie Kray's warning against trying to buy it back from a bent copper for £800, as he was lifted after a protracted chase for attempting to corrupt an officer of the law.

In addition to his 21-month sentence in Wormwood Scrubs, Goody also received 12 strokes of the birch and a photograph shows how this sadistic corporal punishment was administered. But, while it was painful and humiliating, Goody claims it was no deterrent and he was soon learning the tricks of the trade from old lags willing to pass on their wisdom. Thus, he was able to blow a safe when he returned to his patch, although he was lucky on one occasion when some faulty wiring caused the gelignite to go off while he was still rigging up.

Goody also began associating with a better class of criminal and he remembers how Buster Edwards turned up late for a ahow at the Palladium and was heckled from the stage by Sammy Davis, Jr. Among his other new buddies was jewel thief Bruce Reynolds, who is seen boasting on camera about his ambition to be the best cracksman in the world. Goody recalls using his leather stinger to help Reynolds rob a bookmaker, but (over a montage of luxury items that includes the Mona Lisa) he soon realised that big jobs were worth the risk, as the proceeds were so lucrative that they could guarantee lengthy periods of leisure between blags.

Goody reminisces about an armored car raid in Chelsea that landed him £70,000 and, as a result, when he was offered a tricky bank job a short while later, he was able to turn it down and go fishing. But Young has not been able to land his catch and he admits defeat after a promising paper trail leads to nothing. Howley turns, therefore, to private investigator Ariel Bruce, who agrees to take on the case and widen the net, in case Goody's memory has been playing tricks on him.

Judging by the relish with which he looks back on an audacious raid on Heathrow Airport, it would seem safe to assume that Goody's faculties are all in full working order. The job was conceived by Goody, Edwards and Charlie Wilson and involved snatching £400,000 in wage packets as they were delivered from the bank across the road. Every aspect of the operation was planned to the last detail, including the insertion of a dummy link in the chain locking the gate across the service road that they afford their getaway.

However, Goody (who was sporting dyed black hair and a false moustache) lost his Donegal hat as he fled. Consequently, when he was rounded up as one of the usual suspects, it became a key piece of evidence against him. But the gang had a copper on the payroll and he exchanged the hat for one three sizes larger. Thus, when prosecuting counsel Michael Corkery asked Goody to try it on in court, it didn't fit and he was acquitted. However, as he walked free, Goody couldn't resist gloating to Corkery that he had failed to find the breakaway link in the gate chain and, by snapping it open in front of his face, Goody had foolishly raised his head above the parapet.

At this juncture, Long and Howley check in with Bruce, who claims to be making steady progress. She has been searching the records of the interviews that the police conducted after the Great Train Robbery to see if her quarry had been hiding in plain sight. While she resumes her labours, Goody turns to the crime for which he will forever be remembered. He insists that there were no leaders among the principal plotters once `the Irishman' had alerted them to the possibility of halting the overnight express at Sears Crossing and stealing from its mobile Post Office. But he takes credit for finding Leathersdale Farm at Brill, some 27 miles from the ambush spot, where the robbers could lay low before and after the job.

However, Goody and Edwards quickly realised that they needed extra hands and recruited the South London Gang. They also discovered they they would require someone to drive the locomotive if the British Railways employee refused to co-operate. Ronnie Biggs, who was doing some painting and decorating at the time, suggested Stan Agate for the role and he became part of the crew. However, Goody makes it clear that he disliked Biggs and dismisses Agate as a waste of space, as he was only used to steam engines and the thieves had been forced to threaten coshed driver Jack Mills with further violence unless he shunted down the line to the loading point.

The initial plan had been to hit the train on 6 August. But `the Ulsterman' had recommended that they wait two days to ensure a bigger haul after a Wakes weekend in Scotland. Goody insists that the gang were little more than modern Dick Turpins. But he also admits that there were some roughnecks on the strength and that tensions ran high as they awaited the signal to go. Indeed, it came a something of a relief when they were ordered into position along the embankment in readiness to board the train between Leighton Buzzard and Cheddington.

According to Goody, Jack Hussy struck Mills when he put up a fight on the footplate. But, as they were all wearing balaclavas, it was difficult to tell who was who. He is pretty certain, however, that Edwards cut the lock to the cage containing the mail bags full of £5 and £1 notes and he recalls that the robbers formed a chain from the train in order to transfer 120 bags to the waiting transport. The reconstruction of the raid emphasises its precision and Goody recalls how he remained on watch for the rest of the night once the gang had returned to the farm. He also volunteered to go with Edwards to give `the Irishman' his £150,000 share (which would be worth around £2.5 million in today's money).

Goody and Edwards were determined that their confederate would remain anonymous. However, during a pre-raid meeting at Kensington Park, Goody had noticed his name inside his glasses case when he went to buy ice-cream. At this point in the film, the identity of the postal worker is unveiled (although the version shown to the press had all overt references bleeped or pixillated to ensure that no one could break the embargo imposed by the film-makers before their grand reveal on 28 September). However, while this column usually has no truck with `spoilers', it will not unmask the suspect, even though his name is now in the public domain.

While Bruce contacts Howley and Long to say the task of ploughing through the documentation is proving more onerous than she had anticipated, Goody curses the fact that they had left Leathersdale Farm intact, as, if they had torched it, nobody would have found the mail bags and incriminating fingerprints on a sauce bottle and a Monopoly set. But journalists on the Daily Mail had already made a connection between the train robbery and the Heathrow job and, so, Goody decided to visit an old girlfriend in Leicester until the fuss died down. As ill luck would have it, however, the local paper carried front-page photographs of Reynolds, Wilson and Jimmy White and an employee at his hotel contacted the police in the mistaken belief that he was Reynolds (because they wore similar spectacles).

Goody was arrested by Tommy Butler and Peter Vibart, whom he dubs `the Terrible Twins', and protests that the dabs were planted at the farm by the police. But, when he appeared at Aylesbury Crown Court, Goody was in a bind, as if he complained that the cops had no evidence on him, the prosecution would be entitled to reveal his previous convictions, which would almost certainly have swayed the jury's verdict. He scoffs at the fact that he was placed at the scene of the crime because a pair of cheap suede shoes bore traces of the same yellow paint that was found on the pedals of the Jeep he was alleged to have driven. But, once again, if Goody had pointed out the absence of paint narks on the floor mat under the pedals, he would have left himself open to exposure.

Thus, Goody and his confrères were found guilty and sentenced to 30 years each (when they had been expecting 20). One year into his stretch, Biggs had escaped. But, while Goody admires his bravado (and his intelligence in having experts plan his flight), he bitterly resents Biggs for writing a book and accusing him of wielding the cosh that injured Jack Mills. As he points out, this calumny could easily have counted against him in a parole hearing and he has never forgiven Biggs for endangering others by milking his celebrity.

Meanwhile, Bruce has made a breakthrough and is now confident that she can confirm that the Belfast native Goody claims to have been `the Ulsterman' was employed by the Post Office in Manchester at the time of the robbery. However, instead of springing these findings, Long decides to spin things out and cross-cuts interminably between Bruce revealing a little bit more about the fellow's life after the crime and Howley showing Goody photographs and trying to coax him into breaking his 50-year vow by making a positive identification.

Bruce has clearly been working diligently and has whittled down the list of eight possibles to a man who married in Islington in 1949 and lived at a Finsbury Park address that was a 12-minute walk from the place whete `the Irishman' had first met with Goody to outline his plan. However, he had spent the majority of his life in the north, where he had been known as a doting father and grandfather, as well as a regular churchgoer. He became a Post Office inspector before ill-health prompted him to retire in the mid-1970s, although he lived until 1995, without anybody knowing that he had supplied the information about the Glasgow mail train and its contents.

As he didn't leave a will and appeared to have no conspicuous wealth, Bruce concludes that `the Ulsterman' gave his money to a Catholic charity. She also speculates that he may well have arranged the robbery to highlight the lack of security on mail trains and notes that precautions were stepped up after the heist. Howley conveys this information to Goody, who looks at the photographs with a growing sense of conflicted loyalty. He clearly recognises the face and prevaricates for some minutes before finally declaring that he is 100% certain that this was his co-conspirator. Goody chuckles as he reveals that he has lived with this secret for 50 years and regrets that his decision to come clean will ruin a man's reputation and distress his family. But, he realises that his own shop will soon close down and he wants the truth known.

In conclusion, Goody avers that he is a decent man who will treat you right, but steal your money. But there is no sense here that he has conned Howley and Long into giving him a last moment in the spotlight with a specious claim. Such is the transience of rolling news in the age of minor celebrity and Internet ephemera that the name Goody provides will be forgotten as quickly as that of Aaron Kosminski, who recently became the prime suspect in the Jack the Ripper mystery because of a DNA connection. Yet, even though it has been mythologised and romanticised, the Great Train Robbery remains a landmark in British socio-criminal history and the disclosure made in this film elevates its status (however undeservedly), as this is one of those occasions when the value of the content compensates for the copious, but never quite ruinous formal shortcomings.

Another intimate portrait, and an altogether more edifying one, is presided over by Skip Kite in Tony Benn: Will and Testament. This has a good deal in common with Errol Morris's The Unknown Known (2013), as each film is structured around a series of interviews designed to allow the subject to his present own version of a lifetime's events. But, whereas Morris strove to lure former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumseld out of his comfort zone in a bid to make him account for the decisions that had shaped both his own career and recent American history, Kite serves simply as an enabler who raises topics and sets up anecdotes that have been meticulously rehearsed to ensure that their highly selective content shows Benn in the best possible light.

No one should be surprised that this is such a sanitised enterprise, as Benn was the master of self-promotion and seems to have had right of approval over the final cut. What is most disappointing about this documentary, however, is the way it perpetuates the myth that Benn in his autumn years managed to combine the roles of die-hard subversive and national treasure without compromising his reputation as `the most dangerous man in Britain'. He may well have continued to receive death threats right up to his passing in March of this year, but Benn had long been marginalised by his ungrateful party and pigeonholed by a media that regarded him as a pipe-puffing sage who could be relied upon to produce the odd sound bite before being popped back into his cosy world of fringe meetings, workers' galas and peace rallies. There is no doubting the affection that informs every frame of this picture, but a radical of Benn's courage and commitment deserves a more truculent tribute.

The son of a politician who had served in the cabinets of HH Asquith and Clement Attlee before taking the hereditary title of Viscount Stansgate, Anthony Wedgewood Benn was educated at Westminster School and New College, Oxford. He lost his brother, Michael, during the Second World War and followed his own service in the RAF by becoming a radio producer for the BBC. In 1949, he married wealthy American socialist Caroline Middleton DeCamp and they raised a family of three sons and one daughter while Benn embarked upon a political career, after winning the by-election at Bristol South East in November 1950.

He soon proved to be a shrewd operator, as he backed Attlee against Aneurin Bevan and shifted his allegiance away from Hugh Gaitskell when it became clear that Harold Wilson was the coming man. However, he never entirely forgave the Labour leadership for failing to back the bill he had proposed that would have enabled him to renounce the title he had inherited in 1960. But Benn's knack of noticing which way the wind was blowing was always allied to firm principle and he followed public displays of support for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and a bill of human rights by becoming the first MP to table a motion against apartheid in South Africa.

Throughout his life, Benn viewed war as a failure of diplomacy and he was quick to condemn those who sought to gain power by demonising minorities. The diaries he started keeping nightly from 1964 are full of similarly terse insights and firmly held axioms. But he also used their pages to justify his actions during what can only be described as a chequered ministerial career. Initially, he served as Postmaster General in Wilson's 1964 government and famously tried to remove the monarch's head from all stamps. However, as Minister of Technology, he backed the Concorde project and earned the respect of colleagues, opponents and civil servants alike for his industry and integrity.

But Benn was becoming increasingly disillusioned by Labour's drift away from grassroots socialism and his new militancy was fuelled by a conviction that the country could never progress without wholesale constitutional and economic reform. When Wilson returned to power in 1974, Benn accepted the Department of Industry. But defeats in the Common Market referendum and the debate on wage restraint led to him being demoted to the Energy brief, where he would handle the North Sea oil boom and make a decision he would regret for the rest of his life, to back nuclear power.

Popular in the press as a rabble-rouser, Tony Benn (as he insisted on being known from 1972) opted to take a tilt at the Labour leadership in 1976. He backed Michael Foot after his own candidacy failed to survive the first round of voting and fared little better when he sought election as deputy leader against Denis Healey in 1981 and leader against Neil Kinnock in 1988. But Benn largely skirts such failures in the film and avoids going into worthwhile detail about his often divisive role in the struggle within the party for the greater representation of what opponents scathingly called `the loony Left'. Instead, he prefers to renew battle with Margaret Thatcher and stress his parts in the 1982 Falklands War and the 1984 Miners' Strike, during which he had a front-row view after he was parachuted into the safe Derbyshire seat of Chesterfield after his Bristol constituency fell victim to boundary changes.

Crushed by Kinnock, Benn retreated to the back benches, where he remained a thorn in the side of all-comers for the next three decades. He scarcely concealed his contempt for New Labour and retired from the House of Commons in 2001 `to devote more time to politics'. In many ways, Benn was more effective on the sidelines than he had ever been at the sharp end and it's a shame that Kite chooses to dwell on his status as an elder statesman rather than analyse in any depth the tenets of Bennism and how they might have impacted upon domestic and international affairs. Kite also fails to examine how little Benn's views evolved over time and lets him off the hook over his detestation of spin doctoring when Benn had used his BBC experience to become one of the first Labour ministers to stress the importance of presentation to a policy's successful reception.

Tony Benn enjoyed being a grand old man and, when it suits him, he exploits his avuncular, tea-swilling image throughout this portrait with a wiliness that is also reflected in the selections from the family albums that complement the wealth of archive footage and the clips from such fictional features as Sidney Lumet's Network (1976) and James Foley's Glengarry Glen Ross (1992). But the fact that the 88 year-old allowed the interviews to take place on a facsimile of his study in Holland Park says much about the film's over-readiness to idealise and tidy loose ends. Benn also shrewdly recognised that Kite is not a practised political inquisitor, but a film-maker whose only previous outing was Peter: A Portrait of a Serial Killer, a 2011 piece on the Yorkshire Ripper. The absence of dissenting or assessing voices is also a canny calculation, as it affords Benn complete control. The sequence in which he mourns the loss of his wife is easily the most poignant and most human in the entire picture. But it is also the only time in this will and testament that the man gets the better of the consummate professional, who understood his role in the Westminster soap opera and played it to perfection for 60 years.

It can't be a coincidence that the week of the Conservative Party conference also sees the release of Owen Gower's Still the Enemy Within, an inside account of the 1984-85 Miners's Strike that marks with more trenchancy and less sentiment than Matthew Warchus's Pride the 30th anniversary of what many consider to be the last civil war fought on British soil. More cinematic and less emotive than Ken Loach's The Spirit of `45, this documentary proves that few of those who took on the Thatcher government have forgiven or forgotten the process of industrial rationalisation that cost them their jobs and undermined the stability of their communities. But the fact that Gower and his fellow film-makers were all toddlers or unborn at the time of the strike demonstrates what an indelible impression its defeat has left on this country's social, economic and political landscapes.

Although the primary focus falls on the contributions to camera of those who stood shoulder to shoulder on the picket lines, Gower also makes intelligent use of archive material, such as the promotional film made for the National Coal Board in the early 1970s showing miners skiing, surfing and enjoying exotic holidays with dolly birds in bikinis. He also shows pages from the Ridley Plan, which was drawn up while the Tories were in opposition and detailed the strategies required to provoke a dispute by the National Union of Mineworkers and utilise it to crush the union power that had brought down Edward Heath's administration in 1974. Yet, in castigating the Machiavellian duplicity of Margaret Thatcher and her free market advisers, the talking heads say little about the extent to which the hubris caused by bringing about a three-day week led NUM leader Arthur Scargill and his executive to walk blithely into the trap.

All the speakers agree that the opening skirmishes of the strike were the most satisfying. In addition to uniting mining communities nationwide, the stand-off also drew in the support of other unions, as well as students, gay rights activists, anti-racism campaigners and foreign workers prepared to show their solidarity with brethren in Yorkshire, Lancashire, Durham, Scotland, Kent and South Wales. But it soon became apparent that Thatcher also had her adherents, who were prepared to dig in to loosen the union stranglehold and restore prosperity through privatisation. Moreover, the strikers discovered that Thatcher had planned for the long haul and had stockpiled coal supplies to prevent the NUM from holding the nation to ransom.

She also had the support of the media, with newspapers and broadcast stations alike being reluctant to reflect the frontline experience in case they were accused of spreading Scargillian propaganda. The most infamous case involved the coverage of the showdown in June 1984 between some 6000 flying pickets outside a British Steel coking plant in South Yorkshire and police reinforcements numbering between four and eight thousand. The BBC changed the order of events in its nightly bulletin to suggest that violence had broken out because miners had bombarded the police with missiles. But there is as much pride as anger in the voices of those recalling this savage outbreak of class war and few have any doubt that many of the officers on duty that day (who were drawn from forces across the UK) took sadistic pleasure in wielding batons and conducting mounted charges.

The Battle of Orgreave proved crucial, as the tide of public opinion slowly started to turn. The manslaughter in November of cabby David Wilkie (when two Welsh miners dropped a concrete block on his cab as he drove a blackleg to work) shocked many, as did the deaths of three children scavenging for coal on spoil pits. But the Nottinghamshire membership had refused to sanction a strike without a national ballot and other unions had also opted not to support the campaign. As the Labour Party leadership dithered, it became increasingly clear that `King Arthur' was no longer ruling supreme. The bitterness felt by many at what they consider to be the treachery of their fellow workers has not abated, especially among those who struggled to provide for their children and saw their marriages collapse, as their homes and livelihoods were taken away from them. .

Paul Symonds, Norman Strike, Steve Hammill, Mike Jackson, Joe Henry, Jim Tierney and Joyce Sheppard are among the most eloquent and thoughtful in their reflections on what they experienced. The aptly named Strike recalls how he became a minor celebrity after a mishap on television, while Sheppard describes how ordinary housewives became innovative activists who were prepared to endure police brutality in order to stand by their menfolk. But the shot of Symonds standing in a `country park' that has been planted over the remnants of his old colliery speaks volumes for what was lost when the strike officially ended on 3 March 1985.

Settlements long associated with coal lost their raison d'être overnight and it is all too easy to trace a line from the subsequent auction of nationalised assets to the onset of the credit crunch and its ongoing recession. Few will be able, therefore, to watch unmoved, as ordinary men and women ponder how events that took place on their own streets led to the humbling of the trade union movement and the triumph of the corporatocracy

Although Gower's sympathies quite clearly lie with his interviewees, he strives to remain as editorially neutral as possible. But the selection of certain expressions, gestures and postures from the news footage proves every bit as combustible as direct quotations like Thatcher calling the strikers and their supporters `the enemy within'. Moreover, the words of the contributors are as often loaded with lingering venom as calm reason. This in no way devalues the film, either as a social document or a lesson from history. But a little more contemplation on the conduct of the campaign by Scargill and his acolytes might have proved even more instructive.