Very disappointing...

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

hyped garbage

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Unless you happened to see the play - by Robert Ardrey - on which the Boulting Brothers based their film then the only selling point is Michael Redgrave. By 1942 he was a seasoned film actor having served a distinguished apprenticeship in the theatre and although it did no harm to feature the likes of James Mason, Finlay Currie, Barbara Mullen and Lily Palmer in support by this stage of his film career Redgrave was fully capable of carrying a picture by himself. It is, of course, also necessary to remember that the film was shot in 1942 and released the following year, in other words right in the heart of World War II so it would be foolish if not futile not to expect a large propaganda element which now seems irrelevant. Bearing that in mind and making allowances this remains a half decent effort with Redgrave delivering the goods.

A Boulting brothers film is always a stunning treat if you are interested in humanity. They always choose very special topics that touch the very core of humanity and bring out all kinds of fascinating insights focusing on the treasures of human experience. This film was made during the darkest hours of the war in 1942, when Singapore was lost and the darkness of dictatorship and its violence reached its farthest limits and leading intellectuals and writers of the world committed suicide, like Stefan Zweig, and somehow the writer of this story (Bernard Miles, a great actor himself,) gets to the very heart of darkness of humanity and history. It is therefore one of those very rare and extremely metaphysical films.Michael Redgrave has given up on the world and is looking forward to the end of humanity and civilization, he doesn't care any more about anything as he wasted his best years on a lonesome crusade against fascism in Europe with no response at all, since people allowed the war to come anyway, so he absconds into a remote lighthouse beyond everything, where he doesn't even read books. But he finds the log book of of a ship of immigrants that went down by this lighthouse in 1849 with 60 lives lost. He buries himself in this manifestation of a cruel and unjust fate killing 60 innocent people, and in trying to understand this destiny he brings them back alive. Are they ghosts or are they real? They are real enough to him, and he is not alone in having made the experience that ghosts can be more alive than live people.The film exploits this strange field of occult metaphysics and succeeds in realizing all their different fates, that is six of them, including the captain (Finlay Currie), a Viennese doctor and his wife and daughter (Lilli Palmer), a suffragette 70 years ahead of her time and another family with a Dickensian background of hardship. As their stories develop and get more real the deeper you get into them, the web of humanity grows constantly more touching and convincing in its realism and gripping honesty, ultimately leading to the conclusion that there is always something left to do, you can't get rid of your human and universal responsibility whatever your disillusionment with the world might be, and, of course, the whole thing leads to a release of serenity.Someone said it was one of the most impressive movies in her experience, and I tend to agree. Even the music is perfect, somewhat reminiscent of a violin romance by Sibelius. This is a film for all times with a universal message that never can lose its actuality.

I wanted to see this film because it's a spooky ghost story set in a lighthouse, and I love lighthouse settings for movies. Sadly, this turns out to be a dull propaganda effort rather than a real movie, and despite a few atmospheric touches it's very murky and rather badly handled in my opinion.The problem I have with THUNDER ROCK is that the morales and beliefs conveyed therein are thrust down the viewer's throat from the earliest opportunity. Given that this is a WW2 era film, there's an anti-fascist message throughout, and the viewer is all but ordered to strive and carry on the fight.Niceties of plotting and characterisation are all but nil and most of the film is told via flashback, which just felt too obvious a construction for me. It's a shame, because the Boulting brothers are good film-makers, and the likes of Michael Redgrave and James Mason are strong actors. But a more subtle message and more straightforward storytelling would have resulted in a better movie.

That this story is an allegory is clear from very early on but the director seems to have wanted to disguise it somehow with unnecessary padding. In doing so he detracts from the overall message and loses his audience a little along the way. Take the opening scenes as an example where a phone call is passed higher and higher through a chain of employees. It's well played, well acted and amusing and of absolutely no relevence whatsoever to the plot. You may as well have had a Donald Duck Cartoon instead and started the film where James Mason lands at the lighthouse.It achieves some great moments both in and out of it's lighthouse setting, Michael Redgrave is very good but everything just goes on that little bit too long for it's own good.James Mason stardom puts him near the top of the billing, but he's really only a bit player in this and doesn't make any significant contribution to the overall film.