As the title says, this film is apparently, loosely anyway, based on the real life story of Cottingley Fairies, this story of course turned out to be fake, but this film at least creates the sense of realism felt at the time by many people, from director Charles Sturridge (Lassie). Basically, set in the early 20th Century, England, during the time that electricity and photography had been invented, many people have their own particular beliefs and become fascinated with phenomenas, including writer and Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Peter O'Toole) and magician, escapologist and stunt performer Harry Houdini (Harvey Keitel). The daughter of devoted father Arthur (Paul McGann) and mother Polly (Phoebe Nicholls) who is grieving for the death of the son, twelve year old Elsie Wright (Florence Hoath), has kept her dead brother Joseph's scrapbooks and stuff that relate to fairies. She is joined by her cousin Frances Griffiths (Elizabeth Earl) who has come from abroad while her father goes into action during World War I, and the two of them become close friends, spending much of their time at the brook and near the stream. It is there that they supposedly occasionally see actual fairies, and borrowing Elsie's father's camera they capture two photographs of them together with these fairies, and these are meant as gifts for Polly. However she takes them to Theosophist lecturer Edward L. Gardner (Bill Nighy), who gets them analysed by a photography professional who can determine whether they are fake or not, and they are pronounced genuine, due to fairy wings moving. Many adults say that the girls could have faked the photographs, but more say that they may be real, including Conan-Doyle, and Houdini sees them too, and two more photographs taken allow publication in The Strand, creating a big buzz. The attention however comes from some unwanted sources, with hundreds of people crowding the village looking for fairies themselves, or the girls interacting with them, such as reporters, like John Ferret (Tim McInnerny). The girls have become celebrities when they travel to London, and they get to meet Houdini again, and see his water tank escape performance, and the film ends with him telling Elsie not to reveal anything, only to leave people to make their own minds up, there is a brief return from the fairies, and Frances' Father (Mel Gibson in a cameo) returns from war. Also starring Jurassic Park's Bob Peck as Harry Briggs, War Horse's Peter Mullan as Sergeant Farmer and Four Weddings and a Funeral's Anna Chancellor as Peter Pan. The acting is as good as you are going to get from terrific actors like Keitel, O'Toole and Nighy, and it is a pleasant story, obviously if you knew that the five captured photographs from the real girls were faked it would technically ruin your belief, but either way it is a nice tale that works with the fantasy element, and obviously the small special effects to create the fairies supposedly captured, of course in real life they were gift book cutouts LOL, a worthwhile period drama based on a true story. It won the BAFTA Children's Award for Best Children's Film. Good!
Review of FairyTale: A True Story
