CASE STUDIES
Faintheart
Unleashing Hell… Weather Permitting
By the time you read this article the film relationships with his son and estranged fetes and on family trips to castles. I was
of my screenplay Faintheart will have
wife (Jessica Hynes). With its twin obsessions also (and still am) a big fan of anything
of swordplay and sci-fi (Richard’s best friend with a bit of swash in its buckle. This
received its premiere at the Edinburgh
Julian, played by Ewen Bremner, is a ranged from Richard Carpenter’s brilliant
International Film Festival. It was the
fanatical Trekkie), Faintheart also happens TV series Robin of Sherwood to films probably
closing night film and an unlikely to fit in with our current cinematic obsession best remembered through a nostalgic haze,
bookend to the glamorous opener The
with men who are more comfortable such as Krull, The Beastmaster and
discussing the schematics of the USS Hawk the Slayer.
Edge of Love, starring Keira Knightley
Enterprise than matters of the heart. Even as a kid, I was struck by the re-
and Sienna Miller.
Given that it is a new British feature that enactors’ passion, their dedication, and the
has managed to pull off that rare feat of way the “mortally wounded” would often
By David Lemon
making it onto the big screen, I thought a get back up again or be seen a bit later
bit of background information might be of making merry in the beer tent. It was this
F
AINTHEART is a comedy-drama interest, even if bearded blokes in chain mixture of the epic and absurd that attracted
about a group of battle re-enactors; in mail aren’t your particular flagon of mead. me: of men trying their hardest to recreate
this case Vikings. It is also a belated For a long time I wanted to tell a story an age of heroism and honour to a crowd
coming-of-age story for our hero set in this world. Growing up, I had seen more concerned with Cornettos and bouncy
Richard (Eddie Marsan) who finds his various Cavaliers, Romans and, yep, Vikings castles. Not that I just wanted to mock them.
passion for the past affecting his present day do their historically accurate thing at local It would have been a cheap dig at a group
of people who tend to laugh at themselves
anyway. I wanted this to be the re-enactors’
equivalent of Strictly Ballroom with
audience mockery giving way to affection.
By the end I wanted us to be as invested
in their world as they were, and cheering
them on.
My first pass at the script was not with a
feature film in mind. Call it the British
underachiever syndrome, but as much as I
loved the big screen, it just didn’t seem,
well, possible. I tried to think of my first
draft as a sort of feature length pilot for a
series. My initial idea was that we would
go into a different re-enactor’s life each
On the red carpet for the world premiere at Edinburgh International episode: the sort of technique Paul Abbott
Film Festival (left to right) Ewen Bremner, Vito Rocco (Director),
Chris R. Wright, David Lemon, Joseph Hamilton and Paul Nicholls
used to such brilliant effect in Clocking Off.
I was, of course, kidding myself. Apart
64 BY FILMMAKERS. FOR FILMMAKERS.
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