That Good Night

It isn’t always super­fi­cial fan talk to say that a sin­gle per­for­mance can ele­vate a bad film. John Hurt’s turn as a famed screen­writer, hap­pi­ly retired in a Por­tuguese vil­la and deal­ing with his immi­nent death, in That Good Night tru­ly lifts up the film. This is down to the leg­endary actor’s tal­ent, and, unfor­tu­nate­ly, due to the bit­ter­sweet par­al­lels between fic­tion and real­i­ty. Diag­nosed with can­cer at the time of shoot­ing, Hurt has since passed away. While not sat­is­fy­ing in itself, Eric Styles’ film offers one last chance to see the actor shine in a lead role that could be seen as him send­ing his admir­ers a con­sol­ing mes­sage from beyond the grave.

Based on an NJ Crisp play, That Good Night is a wordy affair, cen­tred on a man’s dif­fi­cul­ties dis­cussing what real­ly mat­ters with his fam­i­ly as he nears the end. Ralph Mait­land (Hurt) loves to talk, and Hurt’s raspy voice and ele­gant deliv­ery makes us love to lis­ten, even if the con­ver­sa­tions he has with his rel­a­tives are full of plat­i­tudes. With his young wife, Anna (Sofia Helin), he most­ly jokes around and she answers back with vari­a­tions of, ​“you’re so stub­born, but I love you!”

Ralph’s son, Michael, resents his absent and judge­men­tal father, but actor Max Brown deliv­ers such an apa­thet­ic per­for­mance that you could very well end up blam­ing his char­ac­ter for being unwor­thy of his father’s mal­ice. Brown doesn’t seem to have any con­cept of bit­ter­ness, love or human con­tact, his face con­stant­ly gri­mac­ing rather than react­ing nat­u­ral­ly. As Michael’s smart girl­friend Cassie, Erin Richards also strug­gles, despite her tal­ent to evoke inti­ma­cy while act­ing oppo­site her soul­less charge. Their sac­cha­rine beach­side escapade caus­es you to root for Ralph to pass away ear­ly before hav­ing to wit­ness such inhu­man behav­iour from his progeny.

The Dylan Thomas poem ref­er­enced in the title traces the entire film’s arc. Ralph semi-cow­ard­ly wish­es to dis­ap­pear fast, but his con­science wants him to rage, rage against the dying of the light. That con­science mate­ri­alis­es in the wise ​“vis­i­tor” (Charles Dance), a white-suit­ed man mag­i­cal­ly arriv­ing to help Ralph with his exit, but not in the way he expect­ed. Although pre­dictable, The visitor’s scenes with Ralph are the most reward­ing, as Hurt is final­ly matched with an actor of his sub­lime cal­i­bre. Both leg­endary per­form­ers show how it’s done, and give more weight to the text than it deserves.

Ralph gets to have a brush with both death and life (Cassie is preg­nant) before his depar­ture, which of course pro­vokes a 180-degree turn on his deci­sion to leave with­out say­ing good­bye. As mov­ing as his even­tu­al peace­ful pass­ing may be, it is Hurt’s unbri­dled hilar­i­ty when the Beyond sur­pris­es him that is tru­ly mov­ing. The actor may have had pain as his sur­name, it was in laugh­ter that he was most touch­ing. That Good Night is far from a per­fect swan song, but it con­firms Hurt as tal­ent­ed, vibrant and lov­able in his last moments as he ever was.