Another Country

Film Skool

| Steve Hayes celebrates Gay Pride with a loving look at Another Country (1984), directed by Marek Kanievska, written by Julian Mitchell, and starring Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, and Cary Elwes.

Based on Mitchell’s play, Another Country explores privilege, repression, sexuality, class, and political rebellion inside a 1930s British public school modeled on Eton and Winchester. Rupert Everett stars as Guy Bennett, a brilliant, defiant young gay man whose refusal to hide puts him at odds with the brutal rules of the school. Colin Firth makes his feature film debut as Tommy Judd, a committed Marxist and fellow outsider, while Cary Elwes plays James Harcourt, the beautiful boy who becomes the object of Bennett’s romantic longing.

Steve looks at the film’s connection to Cambridge spy Guy Burgess, the British public school system, the Cambridge Five, and the emotional force behind one of the great queer coming-of-age films of the 1980s. He also traces the later careers of Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, and Cary Elwes, from Pride and Prejudice and The King's Speech to The Princess  Bride and Robin Hood: Men in Tights.

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