To See or Not to See: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Netflix’s latest addition to its expanding film catalogue is The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a Mike Newell-directed film that will warm you like a cozy, old woolly sweater. Though the film got a proper theatrical release in the United Kingdom (where it was made) in April 2018, Netflix snatched the North American rights and made the movie streamable for American audiences. Indeed, this film seems tailor-made for the same crowd that gobbles up The Crown, Call the Midwife, or any number of quaint, quality period dramas that do well on the streaming service’s site – and they will no doubt embrace this movie too. But that is not to diminish the sincere charm and loveliness of this film. Though the title does not exactly roll off the tongue, the film itself is a comfortingly old-fashioned period piece that will delight and move you.

Based on the novel of the same name, it opens in London just after the end of World War II. Juliet Ashton (Lily James), a popular novelist who has not totally moved past the trauma of war, receives a seemingly random letter from a man by the name of Dawsey Adams (Michiel Huisman), a pig farmer on Guernsey, an island in the English Channel that had been occupied by the Germans during the war. Adams claims that he acquired a copy of a book that had once belonged to Ashton. The two begin an unlikely correspondence in which Adams explains that the titular book club was a means of escaping the grim realities of the occupation. Moved by the story of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Ashton decides to write about it – so she temporarily leaves her American fiancé behind in London and hops a ferry to Guernsey, where she meets the islanders and finds out more about the establishment of the society and what they had gone through during the war. Upon arrival in Guernsey, Ashton learns that one crucial actor is missing: Elizabeth McKenna (Jessica Brown Findlay), the founder of the society, has not been seen since before the war ended, and Ashton sets about solving the mystery of McKenna’s disappearance.

The film is more than your typical war weepie – it is a poignant and moving portrait of the transcendent power of love and literature. It is also an important window into a relatively forgotten chapter of World War II: though mainland Britain was never subjected to Nazi occupation, its Crown dependencies in the English Channel were, and islanders’ war experiences were fundamentally different from their English, Welsh, and Scottish counterparts. The Blitz may have brought the war to Britain in terrifying exclamation marks between 1940 and 1941, but Channel Islanders lived it every day.

Mike Newell – the director behind classics like Four Weddings and a Funeral, Enchanted April, and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – gives the film a big-hearted center that is enlivened by the performances of an excellent cast. Lily James, fresh off her sensational performance in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, brings warmth, intelligence, and sensitivity to Juliet Ashton, and sympathetically brings the character’s anxieties and uncertainties to life – a scene where she relives the war is particularly well acted. Michiel Huisman is an appealing, gentle, and quietly captivating Dawsey Adams, and you always get the sense that there is a bottomless well of unspoken emotion, insight, and experience lurking deep within him. Jessica Brown Findlay is a compelling Elizabeth McKenna, whose steely courage is merely an extension of her open, just heart. The rest of the cast are just as good and fill out their roles with humor and grace.

A treat for the head and the heart, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is the perfect rainy day flick. If you are a fan of British period pieces, then this is the film for you: with its intriguing story, fantastic cast, lovely costumes, beautiful shots, and irresistible blending of romance and tragedy, this film checks virtually every box for what an enjoyable period drama should be.

Photo Credit: Netflix