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Rating: "I really like used books that open to the page the unknown previous owner opened most often"
One of the magic elements of cinema, but especially of literature, is its ability to tell the lives of men and women, whether they really lived or are entirely fictional, so long as they are described in a few lines or sequences, and we immediately dive into their stories. It's this that leaves us with that sense of emptiness, just like the feeling you get right after leaving a dear friend with whom you spent a pleasant day.
It is not very frequent that epistolary novels are adapted into films, but fortunately, exceptions are sometimes made—pleasant exceptions; and this is the case of the novel "84 Charing Cross Road" by the American screenwriter Helene Hanff.
The film brings to the screen the correspondence between Hanff (Anne Bancroft) "I am a writer with no money who loves antique books, but around here it is impossible to find the works I would like to have unless they are very expensive and rare editions, or in scholastic copies, dirty and scribbled, from Barnes & Noble" and a London bookseller (Anthony Hopkins) specializing in old used volumes; the story told never takes on, as one might think, the typical twists of a possible love story born between the lines (see "The Lake House"), rather if you can talk about platonic love, this can be referred to the passion for reading that the two protagonists have and which animates their letters "You will be positively amazed to hear (from me who hates novels) that I have finally landed on Jane Austen and I have absolutely lost my head for Pride and Prejudice, to the point that I cannot decide to return it to the library until you find a copy just for me." She is very extroverted, he with typically British irony, spend twenty years of their lives (from 1949 to '69) narrating and sharing with each other, involving all the other characters revolving around their own existences.
A taste for intimate portraits and delicate tones make this film a delightful tribute to life and the passage of time, a cinema of reflection on feelings and human relationships, at times melancholic and touching that cannot help but open reflections on the meaning of friendship and human generosity; you can give and receive much from distant people and never met and nothing from those with whom we live together every day, but also about what we leave of ourselves to the people who have met or casually clashed with us in that street called life.
Skilled David Jones makes the continuous jump between London and New York fluid. The film has its full expressive power in the two protagonists, and I recommend it to everyone who loves people and the stories that accompany them.
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