Mrs Lowry & Son Review

Film fans i've reviewed alot of American films and well every once in a while I like to review a British film and well here we are with a British drama to review. Unlike every film i've ever reviewed I actually do have some sort of personal history with this film and that is something that i'll get into later in the review and so then film fans and British film fans here is my review of Mrs Lowry & Son enjoy.

The plot of the film is artist L. S. Lowry lived with his mother until her death in 1939 all the while trying to get a struggling art career of the ground and pay of his late fathers debts. If i'm being honest the the film has more of a premise then an actual story and i'm honestly ok with that since this is a biography and those don't really need stories and the premise is interesting enough that you don't really notice that there's no story being told.

Starring in the film is Vanessa Redgrave as Elizabeth Lowry , Rose Noble as Young Elizabeth , Timothy Spall as L. S. Lowry , Laurence Mills as Young Lowry , Stephen Lord as Mr. Stanhope , Wendy Morgan as Mrs. Stanhope , Michael Keogh as Mr. Lowry and John Alan Roberts as an Art critic. I was honestly shocked to see that the cast list was so small and even more shocked to see that alot of the film is just scenes between Timothy and Vanessa but that in my opinion helps with the performances.

I say that it helps with the performance because in many films if one of the actors isn't delivering a good performance then they can always relay on several of the other cast members to pick up the slack. here tho that cannot be the case as really there are only these two actors in the film so they both have to deliver a great performance and I honestly feel that they do do that and given who's in the film a great performance is honestly something to be expected.

Now like I said at the start of the review I actually have some sort of personal history with the film because I actually visited The Lowry Centre while they were filming granted I didn't know they were filming but it was still cool to see one of the scenes being filmed. Unfortunately the scene I saw getting filmed wasn't included in the final cut but it involved a bunch of school children running past Lowry and as a side note I also got my picture with Timothy Spall which was cool and yes he's a nice guy.

Before you all ask to see the picture I would like to point out that it would take me a while to find it as the this was filmed well over a year ago and well alot of pictures have been taken since then and I can't be bothered to find it. I will say that I had no idea how the scenes set at The Lowry would appear in the film since the film takes place in the early thirties and well how they did it honestly really worked for me.

For those of you that don't know Lowry was born and raised in Lancashire near Salford which is also not far from where I live. So you'd have thought that the film would have gone to great measure to film fully in Lancashire , Salford and Manchester and well while they did film some of the film in Manchester they didn't film all of it here which is a real shame because he was a northern artist and is a northern icon and so it makes no sense to me that a large portion of the film was filmed in London I know it's tiny nitpick but for someone who visits The Lowry all the time and has since the man's works I feel it was an important thing to get right.

One of the other things that I didn't like about the film is that it comes across as that there was no script. Since alot of what happens in the film doesn't effect anything at all there are alot of things that happen in this movie that bare no effect on the overall film and that is not a good thing because so much happens and any of it could very easily have made some sort of effect on the film and I feel that is due to the fact that it feels like there was no script and the actors were told to make things up.

The film does a good job of showing us the relationship between Lowry and his mother mother how much of their relationship is made up for the film is something only a few die hard Lowry fans will know. Here tho she's presented as someone who's willing to tell him her version of the truth no matter how much it hurts him and he's willing to love her and take care of her despite that fact and that was something that I found to be very charming in it's own unique way.

Another of the things that i really didn't like about this film is the fact that it just ends without resolving anything set up in the film. An example of this is they build up this big museum owner who is interested in Lowry's work and you think that there's going to be some sort of pay off but nope there's nothing I get that there's most likely books telling us the full story between these two but in a film storylines need to have some sort of resolution and that's something that this film doesn't do at all.

Since this film is a drama that sadly means that we have to talk about the drama that's contained in the film. I say sadly because in this case the more dramatic elements didn't really work for me and again that comes from the feeling of their being no script and it's a shame because on paper these moments should have been really effective but because there have no impact on the film and no script they just didn't work for me and I like my dramas.

Overall this was a film that I personally did enjoy but it's also one that I can see only fans Lowry's work enjoying. I feel that if you aren't familiar with him then this film isn't for you since they don't give you any details about him as a person but at the same time that's to be expected since the film was about the relationship between the artist and his mother and so this film gets 5 out of 10 from this Lowry fan.