“Even good men thought by going to war they would win a kind of honour.”
Sword of Honour is an excellent made-for-British television film based on the Evelyn Waugh trilogy: Men at Arms, Officers and Gentlemen, & The End of the Battle, and the novels are brilliantly adapted for the screen by William Boyd. The hero of the drama–idealistic, solid, and dependable 35-year-old Guy Crouchback (Daniel Craig) plagued by notions of chivalry, honour and heroic endeavors seeks a commission as an officer during WWII. At first he’s rejected for being too old, but then his wealthy family’s connections pay off, and Guy finds himself training for the Royal Corps of Halberdiers.
The Halberdiers are just the first stop for Guy as a military officer. Eventually transferred to the commandos, Guy’s adventures include missions to Crete, Egypt and Croatia, and each step of the way, Guy’s belief system is assaulted by the realities of war. To Guy’s sense of honour, war should provide the opportunity to act for the collective good, but instead, his experiences reveal instances of supreme selfishness, and the abandonment of all morality in the face of self-preservation.
Some of the challenges to Guy’s beliefs are the absurdities he encounters–the war-loving Brigadier General Ritchie-Hook (Robert Pugh) for example, whose efforts to possess a portable toilet known as a Thunderbolt end in demolition. But other experiences cannot align with Guy’s naive notions of a war between “good and evil” conducted under honourable conditions by noble warriors. Guy witnesses the callousness of officers to the fate of the enlisted men, and the “expendability” of the relatively unimportant. This is an inept system in which scam artists, liars, and cowards thrive.
Episodes in Guy’s military career are woven with interludes in his personal life. While WWII is raging in Europe, there’s a certain segment of the British population who are whooping it up, and Guy’s capricious, materialistic, self-centered ex-wife Virginia (Megan Dodds) maneuvers her way through life–leaving a trail of abandoned lovers behind. To her, war is a mere inconvenience that may force a cancellation of the next party. Since Virginia moves in the upper class military set, it is Guy’s destiny to periodically meet Virginia, her other ex-husbands and ex-lovers. It is in his relationship with Virginia that Guy is shown as his most naive and vulnerable. In spite of Virginia’s appalling behaviour, Guy still cherishes romantic notions for his ex-wife and sees her as a damsel-in-distress.
This 191 minute–2 DVD set is wonderfully entertaining and stuffed full of the sort of rich characters expected from the witty, savage pen of Evelyn Waugh. There’s the fatuous pompous Major Hound (Robert Daws), the spit and polish, highly decorated Ivor Claire (Tom Wisdom) who acquires his medals under questionable circumstances, the opportunistic Ludovic (Guy Henry) who gathers material for his novel, and Trimmer McTavish (Richard Coyle)–the ‘hero’ of operation Popforce. Waugh fans should be delighted with this marvelous, entertaining, and well-acted satire.
