Mrs Lowry & Son 2019

Like so many films that are basically two-handers Mrs. Lowry and Son whilst it relies on the skills of many to bring it to the screen it lives or dies on the two actors that carry the bulk of the film. In this case with experienced actors Vanessa Redgrave and Timothy Spall director Adrian Noble and writer Martyn Hesford were in safe hands.

By the very nature of the story Redgrave has the ‘showy’ part leaving Spall the more challenging task of playing what is, in essence, an inert character, Lowry, who, in this story at least, only really reacts to his mother. Redgrave tries hard to give some light and dark to what essentially is a very unpleasant person and whilst, with the help of small flashbacks she succeeds in a small way, I really was left with the impression that in a two-character film she was very much the ‘baddie.’

Apparently in real life, from my reading, Lowry’s mother was worse than this depiction. Which definitely makes you shudder.

Here we discover her husband was in debt and had to move from a well-to-do middle-class area of Manchester to a more rough-and-tumble working-class area and you can sort of understand her upset and feeling of disappointment and let-down, but to then take it out on her son and shackle him down to what is essentially a life of servitude there is little light you can get out of this. Her only more positive moments are remembering the past, which is what makes her so bitter in the first place.

Spall’s interpretation of Lowry is somewhat of a dull doormat, with a kindly nature, who could see the beauty in the ordinary working-class vistas and people around him. Again, by reading about the man he was more than this, although, being fair, the focus of the story is on the fractious relationship with his mother. Perhaps expanding the story to show Lowry’s more humanist side outside of the family home would have made for a less claustrophobic one-dimensional story? The theatrical roots are there to see but perhaps clipping them back would not have been an entirely bad thing? Two-handers that start off as plays find it very hard to shake off those beginnings when they transition to the big screen.

It is to the director and actors’ credit that Mrs. Lowry and Son is eminently watchable. In lesser hands this could have been a drudge. Redgrave several times showed mannerisms and facial expressions that reminded me of my mother, who in her own way was a frustrated snob, but I hasten to add was not anything like Lowry’s mother, being both loving and supportive her entire life. Spall’s display of the steadfast loyalty and world-weariness of Lowry to his mother is subtly played throughout the film and is a credit to his acting skills.

The only problem I had was the age of Spall, which is nit-picking I know, but Lowry was in his forties at this time and Spall looked his 61-years of age making him somewhere around 15-years older than his subject and only 20-years younger than Redgrave, I keep thinking throughout the running time that if Lowry lived until the mid-70s and he was this age before the war (as Spall looked) he’d have been over 100-years old when he died, which he was not. It jarred with me,

Mrs. Lowry and Son is a fine film that cannot hide its stage roots and gives an interesting. if fictional look. at the relationship between this gifted artist and his damaged and highly damaging mother. It is not a treatise on the life and influences of the artist like Mr. Turner, Spall’s other artist biopic was. Therefore if you are looking for a similar film then I would suggest you will be disappointed but as a stand-alone film about a well-loved artists' strained relationship with his mother, this is a good film.