Films to Watch: DEAN SPANLEY
September 16, 2014
Dean Spanley is a 2008 New Zealand and British film, based on an Alan Sharp adaptation of Irish author Lord Dunsany’s short novel “My Talks with Dean Spanley”. The film stars Sam Neill as the Dean, Jeremy Northam and Peter O’Toole as Fisk Jr. and Sr, respectively, and Bryan Brown as Wrather.
This for me, was an unexpected delight, a slight piece of whimsy, perhaps, but a captivating charmer.
It is the story of a middle-aged man, Henslowe Fisk (Jeremy Northam), who in 1904 pays dutiful Thursday evening visits to his cantankerous septuagenarian father (Peter O”Toole). Mr. Fisk Senior is a very difficult curmudgeon, he obstinately refuses to mourn the death of his older son, Harrington, who died in the Boer War.
Father and son attend a lecture given by an Indian, on the transmigration of souls (reincarnation). and are not very impressed, but Henslowe becomes interested in a man they meet at the lecture, a clergyman named Dean Stanley (Sam Neill).
Stanley, it turns out, (when under the influence of a glass or two of his favorite aromatic Hungarian liqueur Tokay), believes that in a previous incarnation, he was a dog, and talks about his life as that dog.
It is rather hilarious and moving, and I loved every moment. What started out as a film that I thought, where is this going?…..becomes this highly original story, because the dog that Dean Spanley believes he was, is not just any dog, but quite possibly, Wag, the faithful spaniel that used to belong to Fisk Sr. (Peter O’Toole). Wag, we learn, disappeared mysteriously many years before, when Mr. Fisk Sr. was a young boy about to go to boarding school, refusing to go, because he wanted to wait until Wag returned home.
The elaboration by Dean Stanley about the untrustworthiness of the moon (which he explains why dogs bark at it), the delights of chasing and romping with horses, and the utter joy in chasing sheep, with a like-minded canine friend, is all a part of why this film is an extraordinary charmer.
If you see no other film in the next few weeks, this is the one you should watch , this is the one that inspires insight into the relationship between dog and man, father and son. I rarely find a film that will stay with me as long as this one will.
The film can be purchased or rented on amazon.com.
All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt. (Charles M. Schulz)
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