Mark Reviews Movies: SOMETIMES ALWAYS NEVER

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | June 11, 2020

There's an undeniable quirkiness to Sometimes Always Never, and it continually threatens to undermine the real pain of grief, uncertainty, and disconnection that defines this story. Somehow, though, screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce and director Carl Hunter find just the right balances between sincerity and eccentricity, pathos and humor, and grounded emotions and ironic detachment.

The film, then, is an impressive act of tonal juggling. The key to it is the way Hunter instinctually knows to retain at least some kind of consistency within the film as it moves from drama to comedy. After all, even jugglers usually stand in place, so that we can see and admire the motions. If the jugglers were running around the stage along with all of the items being tossed to and fro in the air, we might be impressed, but we'd also just be distracted by how busy the act is.

Boyce's story, which is pretty busy in terms of characters and relationships, concerns a missing teenager, who disappeared, we learn, after a rather ordinary session of a crossword board game (The name, which you probably know, doesn't matter, since it was an off-brand version, anyway). The story, although rarely spoken of by family in any direct way, has become a thing of inexact legend. One variation goes that someone played the word "jazz," which should be impossible, given that there's only supposed to be one Z in the game. Another goes that someone insisted on checking the dictionary for one word, despite the protests of the future runaway.

There are other versions of the tale, and the uncertainty of why the son and brother ran away from home, never to be seen again, only adds to the uncertainty of what happened to him. There's also the matter of who among the remaining family is to blame for the disappearance.

This should be tragic, but using the rule that comedy is only tragedy with the addition of time, Boyce finds these characters decades after the teen's disappearance. These characters are now stuck in their ways of denial and resentment and hope that still lingers, while also feeling like a lost cause.

The father Alan (Bill Nighy), who runs a tailor shop (The film's title comes from the standard of which buttons on a suit jacket, from top to bottom, should be fastened), lives alone. In his boldly painted home, Alan is surrounded by photos and labels of household rules that he, a single father, used to keep order when his two sons were younger.

Peter (Sam Riley), the remaining son, has a family of his own now—wife Sue (Alice Lowe) and son Jack (Louis Healy). He's a taxidermist by trade and has a habit of mumbling his more honest thoughts. One gets the impression that the custom arose because at least the minor rebelling of speaking under one's breath was more likely to get his father's attention than saying what the son really thought to a disinterested father. Boyce gets a lot of mileage out of such little character details.

Father and son come together when word reaches them that a body, about the age of the missing son/brother, has been found near a small village. The two stay at a local hotel, where Alan hustles Arthur (Tim McInnerny) in a session of the crossword game. There's a seemingly tender moment when Arthur's wife Margaret (Jenny Agutter), unaware of the bet, tells Alan that the couple is in town because of the body. Their son disappeared, too.

One might think Alan would call off the wager, finding some sympathy for Arthur in the same way he instantly sympathizes with the local mortician, who's also a single father. The bet, though, remains, and after an incredibly awkward scene of Peter trying to make amends for his father's insensitivity, Alan explains his superstitious logic: He thought, if he won, the body wouldn't be his own son but theirs.

The rest of the story, which sees Alan making himself an indefinite guest at his son's home (a welcome one for Sue and Jack, who gains a new wardrobe and the confidence to talk to a girl he likes, but a most unwelcome one for Peter), maintains the foundations of these characters' personalities. It also, though, expands upon the reasons why they're as off-kilter as they are, examines the history of the father and his sons, and gradually picks apart the wall they've put up against each other and the rest of the world.

That's the necessary consistency that makes the film's juggling of tones work. As odd as some of these characters may speak and behave (and as quirky as the film's own look—with its distinctively decorated locales, its distanced and patient shots, and cinematographer Richard Stoddard's regular use a fisheye lens to distort characters on the side of the frame, as they're presence is often out of the focus of the characters in the scene—may be), they are in pain. They are grieving. They are out of touch with the world and each other.

Much of this material may be awkwardly and even darkly funny. With Boyce's attention to the details of these characters and Hunter's ability to communicate the underlying reality of this often eccentric tale, though, that tone comes across as a reflection of how uncomfortable these relationships are and how trying the scenario is. Sometimes Always Never may look quirky and play even quirkier still, but beneath that surface, there's an admirable sense of emotional honesty, too.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products

Buy the Soundtrack (Digital Download)