[DINARD] WHISKY GALORE !

On the scottish island of Todday, the whisky comes out. Until the day where a ship from the british government comes to fail. Its holds are full to the brim of the precious alcohol. True story previously adapted in 1949 in Whisky galore, the film Gillies MacKinnon takes up this story of the second world war. If the premises lend themselves of course to smile, the voice-over, photography, disembodied, and the game outrageous comedians put us quickly on the way adaptation is sloppy. The director of WHISKY GALORE ! never comes out of the stereotypes of the comedy, and the story it tells does not exceed the framework trivial of its premises. No real issue, the characters are after in a succession of adventures based on the game of cops and robbers. Here and there, we find the smile in front of a few situations a bit more original. Unfortunately, these two or three sketches, do not save the whole.

With a staging of telefilm and dialogues lazy, we are still looking for where the authors were able to infuse their creativity. For example, the characters exchange information that they already know, only to tell the viewer what he needs. It gives the impression of looking at a piece of boulevard with a scottish island for theater sets.

Despite the epoch of the reported events, the base material was rich enough to create links with our daily life, therefore make us laugh. Thus, the figure of the officer is never used as a mirror of our own authority figures. They want us to believe that the island of Todday is stopped in time, but the whole scenario is driven by the need to finish the story soon. And in this wild race of a cause to an effect, we will have missed the opportunity to live alongside these people.

The only string on which Gillies MacKinnon plays his partition is that of nostalgia. The sepia color of the interior and vignetting of the image reinforce the idea that the past was ideal. Except that, other than to see them drinking and declaiming their love for whisky, we do not seem authorized to learn more about their daily lives. The Scottish WHISKY GALORE ! are inseparable from imagery, folkloric and caricatural. And it’s not the “r” rolled with insistence by actors in flagrante delicto of histrionics that will help us to identify, beyond the cliché.

“The director of WHISKY GALORE ! never comes out of the stereotypes of the comedy, and the story it tells does not exceed the framework trivial of its premises.”

Unlike The Angels ‘ share by Ken Loach, in which the theft of a barrel of whisky gave to do with empathy with a disadvantaged social class, WHISKY GALORE ! there is a postcard sent from a past that never existed. It has not that “little more” that turns a pile of images, voice and text incarnation film. The comedy should not be an excuse : this is not because we want to laugh when entering the room, that it does not also meet the people with whom we have fun. The islanders in WHISKY GALORE ! remained of the aliens then we would have liked to make friends.

Thomas Coispel

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