It was about an era long, long ago - when people used typewriters and wrote letters and couldn't order everything online. Helene (Ann Bancroft) lives in New York City and has a love for old English books, but has no way to get them. Frank (Anthony Hopkins) runs an antiquarian book shop in London, and receives a letter from Helene one day asking him for help in finding the old English books she's looking for. That simple request leads to a decades long correspondence between the two, which blossoms into a friendship (made obvious in the latter parts of the movie, when Frank's rather formal and official sounding letters start to be signed off with "Love, Frank.")
The two never meet. They just correspond across the ocean. If that doesn't sound very exciting, well, it isn't. You don't watch this for the excitement. It's a very human movie. It's neither exciting nor in many ways particularly interesting, but it comes from the heart. The "pen pal" type relationship between Helene and Frank is very touching, and one hopes throughout that somehow and at some time either Frank will come to America or Helene will go to England and the two will meet. That they didn't could have come as a letdown, and yet it really wasn't. The movie ended on the right note, as Helene finally does travel to London to see the book shop at 84 Charing Cross Road, but only after she's learned that Frank died suddenly and unexpectedly.
We see a little bit of English and American history scattered through this movie. The British election that returned Churchill to power and the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II (not to mention the rationing that went on in London many years after World War II.) America, by contrast, is a land of plenty, but the student riots that break out in the 60's are depicted. It was an effective way of interspersing a bit of history among Frank and Helene's relationship.
The structure of the movie perhaps meant that Hopkins and Bancroft (both excellent actors) were somewhat underused. Mostly, they narrated; reading the letters they wrote to each other while we saw background "action." But this is an effective movie, and it does touch your heart a little bit as you learn of Frank's death, and as Helene finally visits the book store. (6/10)
The two never meet. They just correspond across the ocean. If that doesn't sound very exciting, well, it isn't. You don't watch this for the excitement. It's a very human movie. It's neither exciting nor in many ways particularly interesting, but it comes from the heart. The "pen pal" type relationship between Helene and Frank is very touching, and one hopes throughout that somehow and at some time either Frank will come to America or Helene will go to England and the two will meet. That they didn't could have come as a letdown, and yet it really wasn't. The movie ended on the right note, as Helene finally does travel to London to see the book shop at 84 Charing Cross Road, but only after she's learned that Frank died suddenly and unexpectedly.
We see a little bit of English and American history scattered through this movie. The British election that returned Churchill to power and the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II (not to mention the rationing that went on in London many years after World War II.) America, by contrast, is a land of plenty, but the student riots that break out in the 60's are depicted. It was an effective way of interspersing a bit of history among Frank and Helene's relationship.
The structure of the movie perhaps meant that Hopkins and Bancroft (both excellent actors) were somewhat underused. Mostly, they narrated; reading the letters they wrote to each other while we saw background "action." But this is an effective movie, and it does touch your heart a little bit as you learn of Frank's death, and as Helene finally visits the book store. (6/10)