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Page 1 of 2 The Brocklebank family, such as it is, (father Donald, bed-ridden mother Nancy, and emotionally and mentally troubled son James) are the vestigial tail of an aristocracy long since abandoned to wither and die in the English countryside. It is never explicitly stated in the movie, but the implication is that the lack of family funds and the traditional notion of British face-saving long ago led to Donald’s decision to sequester the embarrassingly autistic James in their home at Longleigh House, a situation which undeniable stunted what little growth James was capable of (think Sling Blade) . When Donald must make the painful trek to London to negotiate the sale of Longleigh House to subsidize Nancy’s medical treatment, he makes the gigantic mistake of leaving before the hired nurse arrives.
 | That mistake stems from James’s warped world-view, in which he could be normal if only he didn’t have to take so many medications, and if he were given some adult responsibility. So he makes the executive decision to lock out the nurse before she arrives, and eschew his medications altogether, a scenario that causes him to deteriorate further and further into his hyperactive delusional fantasies. The responsibility part comes in the guise of being the “man of the house,” and attending to his ailing mother. His mother is then confronted with the uphill task of appeasing James while maintaining a healthy fear of him, and trying to retain what little dignity she still has, and, indeed, her very life |
You see, James equates pills to health, and in the same way that not taking his must mean he is normal, so his mother taking extra pills will cure her sooner. When Donald comes home and finds Nancy all better, he will surely know that James is a capable and competent son, worthy of the respect and love that such a person is entitled to. Compounding this is James’s increasingly erratic behavior due to hyperactivity, and his inevitable waking dreams/nightmares. Such as when he finds his mother in a state of distress over some late-night incontinence, he puts her into a scalding hot bath. After rectifying that situation and getting her into a proper-temperatured tub, he is distracted by that pesky nurse trying to barge in the house again. He gets so caught up that he forgets poor old mum, and finds her later pruned and shivering from the now quite cold water. When he attempts to help her change into a fresh nightgown, Nancy loses what little sense of decency she has managed to hang onto during her convalescence, and it is truly heartbreaking.
In due time word gets back to Donald, and he goes ‘round the estate with the nurse and the fuzz. I don’t think a spoiler is involved to tell you a tragedy ensues. But the real tragedy is how the film takes a downward turn at this point, and the narrative enters James’s delusions and becomes too fractured to make any sense of. The viewer is abandoned by the film, and left out in the cold. It becomes impossible to tell which version of the story is the truth: what we have been witnessing so far, or what we witness afterwards. Director Simon Rumley seems to have been going for a Lynchian vibe, which to me equates to poor story-telling. Don’t know how to end it? Get surreal. No thanks.
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