The Last Days of Edgar Harding is the kind of movie you will never hear about, unless you’re told where to look. One of the few independent British movies I’ve seen, it manages to actually captivate the audience from the very beginning. While the title gives away the most important event that takes places in the film -Edgar Harding’s death- the road to the event is winding and convoluted enough to leave you wondering where things are going. I did my best to guess what happens by looking at the trailer and the pictures that have peppered the internet for a while now, but the pieces of the puzzle have never quite come together the right way, not until I watched the whole thing.
I have to give credit to the writer (and director) Stephen Fox for that. He managed to make a script that actually grips the audience and keeps it glued to their seats, while at the same time making us, the viewers, want to avert our eyes from certain events- at least that was my personal experience with the movie. There was a point at which I had to pause it, take a breather and then start again.
The themes of the movie aren’t easy to digest; it delves into the darker nature of humanity, the extremes to which each one of us might be willing to go to, in order to keep what we consider our given right. There are no heroes in The Last Days of Edgar Harding, no villains either. It could be the story of every single one of us, if pushed into the turmoil of the right (or better said wrong) circumstances. It actually got me thinking about the many events we see in the news, events we are quick to judge, in a very subjective manner, even
though we’ve never lived through a similar situation.
For the directorial debut of Stephen Fox it was done just right, especially considering the lack of a proper budget. The same monetary constraints have made the movie, which came out in 2011, wait for two years to get a DVD release. Due to some well deserved rise to fame of one of the actors, Daniel Sharman, it finally came out and it’s well worth the buy. However, if you want to buy it solely to see him, you might end up a little disappointed, given that his part, while important doesn’t give him as much screen time as other characters get, despite what some of the promotional materials might lead you to believe.
It’s hard to say things about the movie without giving too much away, so I’ll keep it short and sweet. The four main characters reach the peaks of success in their most dire hour of need, but just how far are they willing to go when they might lose that? Will they still be the same by the end of it all? Richard Massara, Micahel Gamarano, Daniel Sharman and Carolynne Poole(Good) all give stunning performances, their reaction to the situations they’re thrown into making it seem all the more real, a nice balance between too much and not enough in terms of emotional displays. Wayne Russell also deserves a thumbs up, because his character’s shifts in between being affable and sweet and being next to evil are so sudden and shocking, despite there being little seeds planted since the very start that speak of the man hiding behind the mask. The rest you’ll have to discover yourself when you get the chance to see the movie.
Check out the trailer for the it below and if you’ve seen it, let us know what you thought about it.
http://youtu.be/Z7x77iY9UP4
