Release: Now available on DVD
Running time: 95 minutes
Rating: M (mature themes and infrequent coarse language)

John Crowley’s Is Anybody There? is a sweet-centred fable of a friendship between a lonely young boy and an elderly, retired magician.

Edward (Bill Milner) is a solemn 10 year-old whose parents recently converted their house into a retirement home. Surrounded by the dying, Edward develops a fascination with the afterlife. Using a sound recorder, the young man attempts to capture the ageing residents’ departing souls.

Apparently, the film’s screenwriter, Peter Harness, based the film on his childhood experiences: like Edward, he grew up in a nursing home. For his doppelganger Edward, the doddery old folk are a source of initial frustration. He is also struggling to get attention from a mother preoccupied with work and a father who is on the verge of a mid-life crisis. Life in the house is pretty stale for the young Edward until the arrival of the mysterious Clarence (Michael Caine).

There is a playful innocence to the film, reflecting both Edward’s youth and the approaching senility of the home’s elderly. Crowley opens the film with a Christmas dinner whose chaos creates the story’s sense of childlike energy. This is reflected later in Edward’s performance of ‘Wheels on the Bus’ for the elderly residents. Crowley plays on the theme of mortality by presenting these murky issues from a child’s understanding.

Is Anybody There? uses dark humour to deflect the seriousness of the subject matter and Caine is especially brilliant, giving a brash, quick-witted performance. He is well complimented by the other retirees whilst the young Milner is delightful as the headstrong Edward barely on the fringe of adolescence.

The film explores the morbid theme of death with a playful honesty. It is refreshing to see such a complex, difficult subject portrayed with so much elegance and effortlessness.

Bridget Fitzgerald