The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society
The power of the written word, and the truth according to people and who own’s people’s stories are at the heart of this small sort-of historical story based on a book. The Guernsey wartime setting suggests a war film but this is a family drama uncovered by a stranger. The stranger is author Juliet Ashton (Lily James!) who, fresh from literary success in postwar London is inspired to visit the channel island after receiving a letter from the man who, it turns out, invented the Literary Society as an excuse to tell the Nazis when he and his family were caught outside at night. Tom Courtenay is quietly terrific as the wise patriarchal figure, and Juliet uncovers the story of what happened to the family during the Nazi occupation. It is he who invents the Potato Peel Pie, although the film is not as whimsical as that makes it seem: eating potatoes and nothing else is of course sadness itself, and more in keeping with the tone. The timelines flip between war and post-wa...