Review of A Month in the Country

I admit the main reason I wanted to see this film was for the great Colin Firth, but I didn't realise it had the also great Kenneth Branagh as well, bonus! Anyway, basically, World War I, shell shocked and (for a while) stammering veteran Tom Birkin (Firth) arrives in a small village originally looking for shelter. Then he gets a job from Reverend Keach (Patrick Malahide), in the church he found, to restore mural underneath the layers of white paint. While working there, he meets fellow war veteran Charles Moon (Branagh) who shares his interest in finding ancient things, and is himself keen to find the grave of an ancestor. I think what runs this story, based on the novel J.L. Carr, is the friendship between Firth and Branagh, and a crush on the Reverand's wife, apple giving Alice Keach (Natasha Richardson, Joely Richardson's sister). Also starring Shakespeare in Love's Jim Carter Ellerbeck, Richard Vernon as Colonel Hebron and Tim Barker as Mossop. Very good!