Swallows and Amazons (2016)

Directed by Philippa Lowthorpe; produced by Nicholas Barton, Nick O’Hagan, Joe Oppenheimer

The summer holidays of 1929 are special for the Walker children (Dane Hughes, Orla Hill, Teddie-Rose Malleson-Allen, Bobby McCulloch). They are off to the Lake District for months of sailing and camping, and, though they don’t know it yet, a feud and a new friendship with a pair of piratical sisters (Seren Hawkes, Hannah-Jayne Thorp).

The book upon which this movie is based, indeed the series of books that followed, written by Arthur Ransome, were tremendously influential and greatly loved by generations of children. They extolled the virtues of outdoor fun, self-reliance, loyalty and nature, and narrated adventures that were small-scale but nonetheless thrilling and realistic. Ransome had an ear for children’s speech and an eye for their behaviour that were as typical of the inter-war years as Lewis Carroll’s similar knowledge was for the mid-Victorian era.

So much for the successful and superb books. What of the movie? Well, it’s…adequate.

There are, unfortunately, a number of problems with the 2016 film adadptation of Swallows and Amazons (there was a 1974 cinematic version, a 1963 television adaptation, and several radio versions). The book was originally reviewed with terms such as “entirely charming” and “magical”. These terms cannot be used for the movie.

Such qualities are difficult to create or capture; one of the elements required, I think, being a means of involving the viewer in the story, and that doesn’t really happen. A reason for this may be the changes wrought in the tale. The books never have the children mixed up with anything outlandish. There is rivalry between two groups, a misanthropic uncle, a theft (of nothing more valuable than a trunk containing the uncle’s memoirs), a shipwreck (of a sailing dinghy), a storm, and the like.

Here, the misanthropic uncle is an intelligence operator for the Secret Service, being pursued by Russian assassins. Strangely, this is a reflection of author Ransome’s own background. After his death, it was learned that he had been, in fact, a spy, of sorts. While working as a journalist in newly Bolshevik Russia, he provided information to the Secret Service, as did his girlfriend (later wife), who was a secretary of the Communist Party’s Politburo. Ransome even had a code-name (used in the movie as the uncle’s code-name), and British politicians and bureaucrats claimed that Ransome, who was a socialist but a democrat, was a detriment to British interests, and wanted him banned from travelling to Russia; he was protected by his controllers in the Secret Service.

This is an interesting side-light to the movie, but not an interesting part of the movie. Seeing children handle a revolver and threaten to shoot someone is not charming.

Other difficulties include the usual one of twenty-first century writers unable to create convincing characters from another time. At one point, the children’s mother (Kelly Macdonald) states that she is allowing her brood to sail a boat (without life-jackets) and camp (without adult supervision) on a strange island because she didn’t want them “growing up afraid”. This is admirable, but is justification aimed at a modern, adult audience. It is hardly what a 1920s parent would have said. A 1920s parent would have seen no reason for her children to grow up afraid, and needed no justification to let them sail a boat by themselves, or camp in the English countryside; it’s what children then did.

Also, the two sisters the Walker kids meet have working class accents, which the characters in the books would not have. This was no doubt seen as egalitarian by the screenwriters, but is not genuine. It would be like making Alice Liddell a child of the Whitechapel slums, rather than of an Oxford don. The adults in the movie are mostly impolite and unpleasant, which, unless portrayed in a non-threatening or humorous manner, also detracts from a movie’s charm.

The acting is good, especially by the children (Britain produces excellent young actors as often as Hawaii produces pineapples), but all performances are hampered by the spy sub-plot. The uncle (Rafe Spall) is just plain mean much of the time, and his conversion to a fun fellow at the end is unconvincing. (In the book, the uncle is surly because he is obsessed with finishing his autobiography, and children wanting him to play pirate are a bit of a distraction.)

I am coming to believe that of all book adaptations, some of the most difficult must be children’s books. Remaining true to the content and spirit of the work, while simultaneously putting a successful movie together may actually be mutually exclusive activities. In any case, it does not work for Swallows and Amazons. I will re-read the original book instead.