You just wait until we get you home, young lady!
The Lady Vanishes (2013) is what I might call a typical British mystery thriller. Set in 1930s Europe, orphan and heiress Iris Carr, temperamental and unafraid of scandal, decides to leave a European resort for home. Dizzy and ill on the train, she’s taken under the wing of housekeeper Ms Froy.
Until she turns her back for a brief moment and loses track of Ms Froy.
This isn’t a problem until everyone from the old English ladies, eager to return home, across the pastor and his wife, to the minor noble family traveling with an ill family member, all swear up and down that Ms Froy doesn’t exist.
All of which nettles our woozy Ms Carr, a lass with little use for societal norms at even the best of times. In her search of the narrow, wobbling train, she stumbles into bridge-builder and linguist Max Hare, a young & somewhat charming man, and his Professor, also a linguist. This helps the search to proceed – both in the physical and theme spaces.
I reveal nothing even the casual audience member will miss, but the fun is somewhat enhanced by the notion that the ill passenger has a contagious disease and must remain isolated; that the consistent assertions that Miss Froy never existed rings so true as it comes from the pastor, and so menacing from the noble family’s matriarch; and the religious mania of the pastor’s wife leads to meditations on our current crop of hysterics, urged on as they are by mega-church pastors such as Copeland, today, and, in the past, Oral Roberts.
Remember the dictum that In order for evil to triumph, good people need do nothing? It plays a part here, too. Miss Carr, acting on her certain knowledge, is doing something rather than nothing; but what of those who do not have that certainty, yet would be good, such as Max Hare, the bridge builder? While the movie hardly dwells on the question, it is an important question, and well worth considering when an Administration puts migrant children in cages while keeping them apart from their families; denies the reality of the novel coronavirus; and attacks vital public institutions for reasons dishonorable.
Sure, that’s a digression, a little adventure for the voter dubious of their duty, to remind them that voting is not only about casting a ballot, but of self-education concerning their choices and how government should be run.
Back to the story, this is well-told in the comfortable and competent British way. You won’t be knocked off your chair by it, but you’ll almost certainly enjoy it. But it is unsettling if you allow yourself to consider its parallels with today.
