44/15

She died during post-production

Narrative

A lonely boy living in his parents’ retirement home explores his obsession with the afterlife through his friendship with an elderly wizard. Elizabeth Spriggs’s (Prudence) final film. Some think the father’s mustache at the party is a continuity error, as he had shaved it off that morning. However, it’s a costume party and the father is clearly wearing a fake mustache to match his costume.

Just asleep” Clarence: Huh

Edward: [Reads a gravestone] “Samuel Peet. Not dead. He’ll be pissed when he wakes up. Appeared in Siskel & Ebert & the Movies: 17 Again/State of Play/Grey Gardens/Is Anybody There?/Earth (2009).

Arthur C Clarke’s Strange WorldWritten by Alan HawkshawPublished by ITV Productions / EMI Music Publishing LtdCourtesy of ITV Productions Ltd

The wizard is a curious fellow; spends days and nights endlessly rehearsing his tricks and illusions, making sure all the creases and seams are hidden from view so that he can dispel reality, if only for a few moments. To those on the other side of the fence, the magician can be seen both as a craftsman dedicated to his art and as a kind of ray of light that hints at something else; something more than the dirt in the ground and the worms at our feet. Yet for all the glimmers of hope and magic the illusionist creates in the wake of his show, there is that ever-looming cloud of certainty that plagues his very reality: standing behind the curtain, the magician is aware of the strings and trapdoors and contraptions rigged to make the mundane a little more fantastic; To the man with the rabbit in the hat, the world is a playground where he can briefly create an imaginary world where magic lives, but unlike those it deceives, magic never truly lives once the curtain falls. Somewhere in the audience is a bright-eyed young boy named Edward (Bill Milner), who lives in a nursing home with his mother (Anne-Marie Duff) and father (David Morrissey) where death is as common as a hot meal.

Rather than believe in the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus, Edward has a full-blown infatuation with the afterlife, making sure he never misses an episode of Arthur C

Clarke’s ghost-hunting show on terrestrial TV rather than playing with LEGOs; that is, until one day a new resident takes a seat next to him and changes the channel. The new boy is a man full of regrets and a short-tempered resentment, his name is Clarence (Michael Caine), his previous occupation was, you guessed it, a magician. What inevitably begins as a hate-hate relationship between young paranormal enthusiast Edward and older, embittered and ghost-forsaken Clarence, however, soon blossoms into something a little more thoughtful and interwoven than any of them would have imagined. The resulting story is something we’ve all seen or heard before, but perhaps with enough dark undertones to make it a little more insightful and uplifting than most of these stories.

There’s certainly no denying that Is Anybody There doesn’t do anything new on a purely superficial front, story-wise, but through the development of these two characters (and others) who are brought to life wonderfully by the cast involved, the film overcomes its rather tepid and pedestrian plot in favor of offering some subtle but enjoyable character drama

Of course, there are problems throughout the film that undermine all the good that has been done throughout the film (this is most evident in the final act, which resolves one of the plot threads through a trite and contrived resolution that directly clashes with the central story which ends on a much more refined note), but many of these remain in the background, easy to overlook in favor of the film’s much more engaging and fascinating elements.