Sometimes a movie holds my attention and even excites me, though I realize it’s a flawed piece. Such is the case with the recent release Six Minutes to Midnight. The movie tells a story of Britain just days before war was declared against Germany in 1939. It’s a spy thriller somewhat in the realm of The 39 Steps, and it’s also the story of the real-life Augusta Victoria College for Women which was located in the coastal town of Bexhill-on-Sea. Six Minutes to Midnight brings us to the final weeks of that school before it was shuttered. As a school for the daughters and goddaughters of the highest-level members of the Nazi Party, its closure was imminent with a declaration of war.
The creative minds behind this film are co-writers Eddie Izzard who grew up in Bexhill, Celyn Jones, and writer/director Andy Goddard. Izzard is a surreal comedian and Emmy-winning and Tony-nominated actor. She describes herself as trans-fluid and transgender. She plays male in this film and is quite the action star. In her private life, Izzard’s pastime is running marathons, and she certainly gets a chance to show her stuff in this film. When we meet the character, Mr. Miller, he is a mild-mannered teacher, but for much of the film he is a man on the run.
The story is brimming with plots and subplots. There is the interesting assemblage of girls at the school. One is outspoken. One is an outcast. These characters and others among the students could form the basis of a fine movie plot on their own, but the writers have not stopped there. They give us teachers with hidden motives; one ends up dead towards the start of the film. What’s his story?
They top it off with another fascinating but confusing character, the elderly head of the school, played by none other than Judi Dench. What an enigma she is! Clearly, she has intelligence, yet she witnesses her girls thrusting their arms out and shouting sieg heil daily, a gesture used by the Nazis for a good many years by that time, yet she sees it as no more than a show of pride. When she overhears a teacher discussing differences between the biology of Christians and Jews, she appears to make moves to stop the discourse but walks away when she is ignored. Hasn’t she been reading the newspapers for the past years? Doesn’t she realize that her students are the Nazi elite? That they are girls who are being taught Anti-Semitic propaganda that already by 1939 was leading to mass escapes from Germany by Jews, as well as torture and deaths (which, granted, were less publicized)? Is she completely ignorant or is she in denial of the true brutality of the Nazis?
My favorite character is Izzard’s, the new teacher who is identified early-on as a British agent. Izzard has a remarkably expressive face which bears the feelings, the fears and the audacity, of this man who quickly becomes caught in a downhill pattern of setbacks. After being accused of a murder he didn’t commit, he goes on the run. He runs from police. He runs from spies. The spies, in particular, are a confusing lot because they don’t make their allegiances clear.
Throughout Six Minutes to Midnight, I wanted more transparency. Should this 90+ minute feature been made as a mini-series instead, there could have been a more fitting adaptation of the story. It’s unfair to the audience to give so little information on such absorbing characters and their actions.
Andy Goddard does a great job as director. He brings us into the story through an expert use of camera. He knowingly sets the scene. He has a fine feel for period pieces. In fact, Goddard directed five episodes of the 2011-12 season of Downton Abbey. His debut feature film, Set Fire to the Stars from 2014, also co-written with Celyn Jones, recreates New York City and rural Connecticut in 1950. The plot follows a university student who takes in hand his hero, the wild-hearted poet Dylan Thomas, and brings him to a retreat to escape the campus chaplains.
Six Minutes to Midnight has a talented cast playing intriguing individuals, lots of action and suspense, and wonderful atmosphere. With some plot expansion and clarification, it could have been brilliant.
Audrey Kupferberg is a film and video archivist and appraiser. She is lecturer emeritus and the former director of Film Studies at the University at Albany and co-authored several entertainment biographies with her late husband and creative partner, Rob Edelman.
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