WHO’S IN IT?
Saoirse Ronan (The Lovely Bones), Tom Holland (The Impossible), Anna Chancellor (The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy), George MacKay (Defiance), Corey Johnson (The Bourne Ultimatum), Harley Bird (film debut)
WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?
Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland), director; Jeremy Brock (Charlotte Grey), Tony Grisoni (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), Penelope Skinner (Fresh Meat) and Jack Thorne (Skins), writers; John Battsek (The Imposter), Alasdair Flind (Fire in Babylon), Andrew Ruhemann (Project Nim) and Charles Steel (Marley), producers; Jon Hopkins (Monsters), composer; Franz Lustig (Don’t Come Knocking), cinematographer; Jinx Godfrey (Man On Wire), editor
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
Daisy (Ronan) is a teenage girl from New York who is sent to the English countryside to stay with her cousins for the summer. At first, it seems to be a blessing in disguise and she even falls in love with another boy called Eddie (MacKay). Unfortunately, Daisy and her family are soon forced to fend for themselves as they get caught up in the outbreak of the Third World War…
WHY SHOULD YOU BE EXCITED?
Of all the teen lit adaptations to have come out over the last while, none have truly managed to challenge their audience with the darker material of the source it’s adapted from. Even The Hunger Games, as good as that film may have been, nixed most of Suzanne Collins’ more graphic descriptions of child-on-child violence to target a much wider audience.
Thank goodness, then, for How I Live Now which aims to tackle that book’s much darker themes and messages without necessarily dumbing it down for larger audiences. Meg Rosoff’s tale of a teenage girl caught within the outbreak of a fictional world war took the lit world by storm with its mature take on subjects like sci-fi, war, incest and family, and was praised for its attempts to reach an audience outside of teens’ bookshelves. It was vital, therefore, that the film be approached in the same way as the book was, and starting off on that respectable path was the hiring of Kevin Macdonald as director.
Although his name is mostly tied to documentaries like Touching The Void, Marley and the Oscar-winning One Day In September, Macdonald can also be a powerful narrative filmmaker as State of Play and especially The Last King of Scotland can prove. While his experiences on those latter two films can work well with How I Live Now’s structure, his talent for documenting certain events and individuals also gives this new film an advantage by portraying a fictional event like World War 3 in the most realistic way possible. If ever there was such a time that a vision of the Third World War could be so harrowingly scary, then this is it.
Much of the film also rests on the shoulders of its dominantly young players, especially Saoirse Ronan as lead protagonist Daisy. Already an esteemed young actress with many good film roles to her credit (excepting The Host, which can properly rot in hell), the Irish-born Ronan inflicts a flawless American accent here and uses it to create an interesting and gripping lead heroine. Likewise, fellow cast member Tom Holland impressed many critics with his turn in tsunami drama The Impossible so is sure to be on top form once again here. The others, from George MacKay’s incorruptible love interest to young Harley Bird’s film debut after being the voice of Peppa Pig on children’s TV, are also ones to look out for.
While How I Live Now is not set to change how teen lit adaptations should be made from now on, it should be a major indent as to how to do one the right way.
