The movie concerns a World War I aristocrat/soldier, Alan Bates (An Unmarried Woman, The Shout), who returns from the trenches physically intact, but with twenty years missing from his memory. He does not remember his wife, Julie Christie (Demon Seed), and retains only dim, childhood impressions of his cousin, Ann-Margaret (Magic, The Cheap Detective), who has been living in their house for several years. The soldier does, however, remember an old flame, Glenda Jackson (Hopscotch, Stevie), and tries to rekindle their summer romance of twenty years before.
Given this premise, the story proceeds much as one might expect. The wife is upset that her husband has lost interest in her for a lower-class gold digger. The cousin is upset that her childhood soul-mate is off his rocker. The old flame is upset because she is torn between her dull but loving working-class husband and the dashing Bates. Bates himself is mostly having a grand time being a kid again, but he too manages to be upset that everybody else is upset.
Ultimately, though, it is hard to take all of this knashing of teeth and wringing of hands very seriously. These people live in an incredibly sumptuous environment, and really have very little to complain about. They have more money than they know how to spend, more rooms in their mansions than they can possibly live in, chefs to fix their gourmet meals, maids to clean up after them, chauffers to drive them, gardners to keep their Rhode-Island-sized lawns neatly manicured. And they don’t have to do one whit of work to enjoy this kind of luxury.
What's worse, the movie goes right along with this kind of life, condoning it at every turn. The producers seem to deliberately bypass every opportunity to point out that the soft, easy life is a profound flaw in the British system, a flaw that has caused them to suffer through two devastating world wars and their current economic crisis.
The makers of Return of the Soldier would have done much better to have made a movie about decent, ordinary people that put in an honest day's work. For example, a British version of Blue Collar, The Deer Hunter, or even last fall's Farm-Woman trilogy would have better suited the tastes of ordinary viewers, viewers who prefer movies about contributing members of society and their real hardships.
Copyright © 1985,1995 by Kelvin Thompson
All Rights Reserved
(Updated December 8, 1995.)