Movie Review: Summerland (2020). Netflix.

This pleasing family drama was a historical period piece about England during the Blitz in World War II, exploring one more of the endless possibilities of circumstance, individuals and relationships that faced life-changing pressures under the savage bombing attacks of a brutal megalomaniac and his industrialized war machine.

I’ve often wondered of late whether the war in Ukraine will spawn a very similar literature over the course of the next hundred years. If it does, I hope they translate the best of it to English. There are few such similar historical analogies before or since World War II, of a modern peaceful urban population suddenly facing an unjust onslaught of death and destruction from a murderous dictator. The millions of Ukrainians who have had to flee with the non-combatant members of their families, or stay and fight and endure, will have countless compelling and dramatic stories to tell, or provide the scenarios for fictional versions of what they and their entire society are currently experiencing.

In Summerland, an irritable young female English writer (peevishly played by Gemma Arterton) in the rural seaside west of England is assigned a young boy evacuee (Lucas Bond) from wartime London during the worst of the bombing, to care for and harbor in her little house. The boy arrives with no warning, and is presented to her by a local civil defense volunteer, who offers no opportunity for the writer to decline the duty of hosting the uninvited pre-teen guest.

In the beginning, the young woman behaves predictably badly. She tries ignoring the boy, and leaves him more or less to fend for himself. But of course as any parent who has lived with a child underfoot knows, that’s not a very promising strategy in the face of a real and present young person with traumas, individual needs and a personality that require an adult hand, direction and wisdom to survive, develop and prosper.

With time and passing events in their daily lives, the writer and the child start to build a bond, a sense of family and caring for each other. And to her credit, she slowly manages to become the generous person and responsible adult the boy needs, even before she learns the surprising news about the real personal connection in her own life that had brought the boy to her.

It’s a charming and heartwarming story, with a happy ending and plot twists I can’t reveal (spoiler alert). It is definitely worth watching, especially if you’re feeling a need for stories of people under duress rising to the occasion, and being kind to each other in the face of unimaginable horrors and dangers. Recommended.