Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		4.0

Their Finest Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 12, 2017

We like to think of people like Joseph Goebbels as being the chief propagandists of the Second World War, churning out material to brainwash his nation’s people (and the people they had conquered). There’s no denying that other countries also had their own propaganda units, including of course in the film industry. There are actually two kinds of movies that sprang from the United States that could be classified as propaganda, the fictional films that sought to either shock (Hitler's Children, Confessions of a Nazi Spy) or inspire (Mrs. Miniver, The Best Years of Our Lives, the second of which proves that efforts to “persuade” folks continued after the war had ended), and the documentary efforts like Why We Fight and Let There Be Light: John Huston's Wartime Documentaries. Britain had its own “forces” in this wartime cinematic fray, and those are the center of the charming and sometimes slyly humorous Their Finest. While the film might be faulted for combining comedy and tragedy in too sanguine a manner, it ably shows the pluck that got the Brits through the Blitz, all within the context of a ragtag troupe of movie makers who were seeking to buck up the spirits of the English in order to help them all “keep calm and carry on”.

Without much ado, the film simply plops down Catrin Colt (Gemma Arterton) in the Ministry of Information, an organization which sounds suspiciously like something out of 1984, but which, unlike Orwell’s formulation, is not positing that “war is peace” but instead “war is something to tolerate until peace comes along”. Catrin thinks she’s actually applying for a secretarial job, but Tom Buckley (Sam Claflin) has read some of Catrin’s newspaper work and thinks she would be a good addition to the team to help with short PSA like “infomercials” stuck between double features as interstitials (“when no one can escape”, as another coworker offers). Later, Tom also suggests that Catrin might be an apt candidate to come up with more realistic dialogue for female characters, in just one of passing but probably unfortunately accurate allusions to the sexism of the day. (Another snippet addressing this same issue is evident when Catrin is informed in a matter of fact way that the Ministry "simply can't" pay her the same wages as the men, despite the fact that she's doing exactly the same work as the males are.)

Catrin starts writing pieces, where she comes into contact with hoity toity (and also hilariously insecure) actor Ambrose Hilliard (Bill Nighy), initially drawing the umbrage of Hilliard and the rest of the film’s production crew when she (accurately) tells Hilliard he’s missing the entire point of the film (after he asks to change some of his dialogue, which in turn would in fact ruin the intent of the film). In the meantime, though, the studio heads are insistent on some kind of major product which will raise people’s spirits and make a buck. The perfect property seems to come down the line when an account is found of two sisters who supposedly helped with the Dunkirk evacuation. Catrin is sent to interview them, discovering two disheveled and perhaps mentally unstable sisters (twins, who seem surprised to alert Catrin to the fact they share the same birthday) who in fact had not helped with the Dunkirk evacuation but who were too afraid to correct the record, both out of embarrassment and due to the insistence of their alcoholic and abusive father.

Because the London film industry evidently works more or less exactly the way the Hollywood film industry does, the fact that there’s no truth to the story of the girls helping with the Dunkirk evacuation means exactly zilch in terms of the film getting quickly greenlighted, with some expected casting of Hilliard bringing the fussy actor back into Catrin’s arena. All of this plays out against a fractious relationship between Catrin and her husband Ellis (Jack Huston), an Air Raid Warden who can’t join the “real” fight due to a lingering leg injury suffered in the Spanish Civil War. Ellis’ real passion is mural painting, though his Thomas Hart Benton-ish pieces have been deemed too “depressing” and provocative to be plastered up on the sides of British buildings or on interior walls. When romantic sparks between Catrin and Tom seem to be nascent, the issues with making a film on a totally (or at least mostly) made up event seem to fade into the background.

Their Finest struggles a bit with focus, tending to lapse into vignette driven scenes rather than weaving everything together in a satisfactorily organic manner, but it’s almost always charming and even fascinating at times. The large cast has a number of standouts, including Richard E. Grant and Henry Goodman as bigwigs at the studio, and a more or less cameo by Jeremy Irons as an official from the War Department. The film’s production design rather winningly recreates both the horrors of the Blitz in London (one especially visceral scene finds Catrin herself caught in the maelstrom, with several victims strewn about around her) as well as some of the more beautiful natural environments away from the battle. The film probably tips over into tear jerker territory too much in its end game, but it also provides a nice depiction of that iconic British stiff upper lip that can seemingly weather any storm.

Their Finest Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Their Finest is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. Online data suggests the Arri Alexa was used, though Panavision lists a PF model that I'm not that familiar with. One way or the other, this is a typically glossy and well detailed looking presentation, though one that suffers from occasional "digital murk" in darker environments. A lot of the film has been beautifully lit or graded toward honey yellow, amber and slight sepia tones, all of which tend to evoke the film's historical epoch rather well. Some location photography offers absolutely ravishing views of the British countryside (see screenshot 3). While intentionally tamped down quite a bit of the time, the palette resonates well and is well saturated if not especially vivid. Several "films with a film" intrude at various moments, all in black and white (though in completely inappropriate wide aspect ratios), and those elements look decently sharp if not especially traditionally "filmic".

Their Finest Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Their Finest sports an occasionally bombastic DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track that provides considerable low end and excellent immersion in admittedly brief sequences like the one where Catrin gets caught outside in a bombing raid. While less showy than that moment, the rest of the track provides continual surround activity, ably documenting the cramped tube quarters Londoners huddled in during air raids, or, in some later sequences, the gorgeous windswept dunes of the English seaside. Dialogue, effects and score are all rendered cleanly and clearly with no problems whatsoever.

Their Finest Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Director Lone Scherfig


• Flickers of Hope: The Making of Their Finest (1080p; 8:18) is an okay EPK with expected interviews, behind the scenes footage and snippets from the completed film.

Their Finest Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Their Finest encounters occasional stumbles in focus and tone, wobbling a bit uneasily between winking comedy meant to skewer pretentious show business types and more melodramatic, ostensibly tragic, data involving various characters, but it's such an interesting premise and the cast is so winning that the film's inherent ebullience tends to win out in the long run. The film's kind of prescient if tangential connection to this summer's expected blockbuster from Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk, may also add some extra interest for some film aficionados. Technical merits are strong, and Their Finest comes Recommended.