Rent The Laureate (2021)

Overlong, wordy, very female film - far better Shellshock WWI films out there - The Laureate review by PV

First off shall say I have never liked Robert Graves much - very pretentious, arty, cliquey set,, upper class, monied, swanning off worshipping the muse in the Med in arty communities, Yawn. I have read of some of GOODBYE TO ALL THAT too and many war poets.

This film is very slow, overlong too, very wordy and a very female film - the writer/director has written/directed nothing else, so must have great contacts.

I just did not care about the characters and some were beyond annoying I wish they'd go back to the front (the women esp, the American one). Watch to the end to see what they did after WWI. Not a lot really, as they were upper class rich so just played.

Watch 1917 instead or ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (1930 version is the best of 3), or The Burying Party (2018) on Wilfred Owen, or the great Benediction (2021) all about Shellshock (or watch Ian McKellen and Brendan Fraser in the class Gods and Monsters.

This? 2 stars max.

Engaging story; frustrating script editing! - The Laureate review by DB

I well understand why the story of Robert Graves and his household after the war caught the imagination of the film makers - and the result is watchable and engaging. Moments in the dialogue, though, stand out as inauthentic, mostly because British characters are made to use Americanisms it's hard to imagine they would have adopted - even with an American in the family! Would Robert Graves really have said that he had "fixed lunch"? Would Nancy Nicholson really have instructed Laura Riding to "lose the curtain" so that she could draw her nude? Would a contemporary consultant physician have said, "that is all I can tell you at this time" rather than "that is all I can tell you at the moment"? The film also omits the household's time in Cairo - perhaps that's for the sequel!