
Tom Crick, a high school history teacher, is having trouble connecting - with his class, with his wife. He ventures into telling his class stories about his young adulthood in the Fens district in England. The emotional wounds from his younger life wash over him in present day, affecting his work and his relationships with his students and his wife.... (Full plot summary below)
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Tom Crick, a high school history teacher, is having trouble connecting - with his class, with his wife. He ventures into telling his class stories about his young adulthood in the Fens district in England. The emotional wounds from his younger life wash over him in present day, affecting his work and his relationships with his students and his wife.
Leave your thoughts about Waterland.
| Independent (UK)Anthony LaneIncest, drowning, teenage sex on a train: it's all here, but none of it clings to your mind. |
| Washington PostRita KempleySwift's elegant, descriptive phrases coexist inelegantly with classroom vulgarisms. And there almost making it all work as a portrait in despondency and realization is Irons, a walking requiem to lost innocence. |
| VarietyVariety StaffA talented but terminally parched piece of literary cinema. |
| New York TimesJanet MaslinWith a dazed, frightened expression and the keen sense that his life is coming undone, Mr. Irons's Tom becomes a rivetingly sad figure, and a sharp focus for the film's many reveries. |
| The SpectatorVanessa LettsThe odd thing about Waterland is that despite the extreme evens it depicts -- murder, incest, betrayal, drowning, abortion, baby-snatching, madness, job losses etc. -- it seems rather tame. |
| Deseret News (Salt Lake City)Chris HicksToo often the film is overly impressed with its own devices, and the story unfolds in such a haphazard manner that its emotions are muted. |
| User ReviewDonald TWhat is a good movie?? A good movie is something that can touch your feelings and let you feel the sadness, the joy, the horror... that is within the movie. And this is the kind of movie I am talking about. |
| User ReviewSayem GOne of my all time favourites! Jeremy Irons at his best! Ethan Hawke at his youngest! this movie animates nostalgia so vividly and the way irons' character hangs in between the moments of his imagination and the reality is depicted very articulately! |
| User ReviewMatthew AOne of those multiple-story films, extremely well done, interweaving history teacher's experience in the present with stories from the past, all to answer his students' questions about what's the use of history. Jeremy Irons is brilliant, and the book (by Graham Swift) is more than worth reading as well. |
| User ReviewNeal HHands down my favourite film ever. Seen it a million times. Both funny and poignant. |