The big news items of the past week, to judge from the comments of my Facebook friends, was the choice of actor Peter Capaldi as the new Doctor Who. I’m fairly unmoved myself, as I stopped watching that series around the time of the Great Hiatus (though I’ve seen most of older episodes). I don’t trust the new production team; the people who produce it are prominent promoters of the Gay Movement, as Torchwood demonstrates.
But the name Peter Capaldi rang a bell. Couldn’t place it at first. Then I remembered. He played Johnny Oldsen, the geeky young Scots linguist, in one of my very favorite movies, Local Hero. It was, I am informed, his first major movie role.
Capaldi (right) with fisherman Alan Mowat in “Local Hero.”
Local Hero is a Bill Forsyth movie. Forsyth was a rising star back in the early ‘80s. He made several well-received comedies about the lives of urban young people in Scotland. His success got him the opportunity to work with Warner Brothers, and so he wrote and directed what I consider his best film (though Anthony Sacramone prefers Gregory’s Girl. What does he know?)
The main character in Local Hero is “Mac” MacIntyre (Peter Riegert), who works for Knox Oil, a major corporation in Houston. His life is all about communications at a distance (“I’m really a telex man”) and shallow or broken relationships close at hand. He gets chosen to go to Scotland and negotiate the purchase of an entire fishing village, along with its bay and adjacent acreage, for a refinery and storage facility, because he has a Scottish name – even though he’s actually of Hungarian descent. Admitted to the other-worldly Presence of his boss, Mr. Happer (Burt Lancaster) he finds that the old man doesn’t actually care much about the acquisition at all, but is insistent that he keep his eyes on the sky – his real dream is to discover a comet he can name after himself.
Arriving in Scotland, Mac is greeted by Johnny Oldsen (Capaldi), an uncoordinated young man with “a facility for languages” (though his English is nearly incomprehensible). At a stop at a petroleum laboratory they’re introduced to a researcher named Marina (the lovely Jenny Seagrove) for whom Johnny immediately falls – but who has a secret, later to be revealed.
When they reach their goal, the town of Ferness, they contact the local lawyer, who’s also the innkeeper, and who promises to begin preparing for the acquisition, vowing secrecy. This is actually a technicality, because the whole town has long known they’re coming, and what they’re coming for.
Without giving too much detail, suffice it to say that the humor of the story rises from the contrasting ways in which the oil men and the villagers view the world. Mac and Johnny are drawn ever deeper into the old-fashioned community life of the place, and the natural beauty they know they’re helping to destroy. Meanwhile the villagers are solely interested in the very large sums of money they’ll be getting. At one point a fisherman in a worn-out sweater, who’s planning to buy a Rolls Royce, lectures an equally impoverished friend not to buy a Maserati, because “It’s a false economy to invest in cheap goods!”
The story just skirts the edges of seriousness all the way through, and for me it works in a way few movies ever have, before or since. I particularly love the scene at the Ceilidh – the community potluck and dance – which combines surreal comedy with ethereal beauty, both natural and musical. I could watch that segment over and over. And have.
Cautions for language, and for adult themes. It’s not for everyone – some people whom I expected to like it didn’t care for it at all. But it got four stars from me. One of them’s named after Mr. Happer.