Cemetery Junction, written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant

Cemetery Junction, written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant

                There is a lot to like and enjoy about Cemetery Junction…

It is written and directed by the famous, creative, amusing, intelligent couple: Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.

                Cemetery Junction has an outstanding, virtuoso, formidable cast:

                Ralph Fiennes, Felicity Jones, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant…

Yet, this film and others created by Ricky Gervais do not have the success of his comedy series The Office.

His stand up work is also extremely appreciated, but Cemetery Junction, The Invention of Lying and other long features, if they have not completely tanked, they have not broken any box office records either.

One possible conclusion is that the inventive comedian is much more comfortable when he is not constrained by various limitations and he likes, if not absolute, at least extreme liberty, like at the Golden Globe ceremonies…

Nevertheless, Cemetery Junction is a lovely, endearing, amusing, meaningful if not ecstatic comedy.

Cemetery Junction may stand for all dead end towns, where inhabitants have little to no chance of achievement.

This is one way to look at the story, the other of course is that it does not matter where you live; you make your own life and success.

Three friends are the heroes of this story, with Freddie Taylor, as the more prominent of the three and more likely to escape a dead end, given that he appears more driven and determined to succeed.

Success, prosperity are not metaphysical issues, but if most people think that this means money, flashy cars, trophy and serial wives, huge mansions it is still does not mean that they are correct…

Prosperity and success actually mean something else, being satisfied and grateful with decent wages and a comfortable home, insisting on the close circle of family and friends, as the happiest people do- what they have in common, at the peak of the happiness scale is not money and wealth, but a strong social support.

Freddie tries to become an insurance salesman and he learns the ropes of the business, which means he sees how people have to be deceived into giving up holydays, which by the way are recommended by happiness studies more than material goods that involve hedonic adaptation.

Ricky Gervais plays the rather dumb, racist, isolationist, Brexiteer for sure, anti-immigrant father of Freddie.

Snork and Bruce are Freddie’s friends, the former working at the railway station and the latter in a factory.

Ralph Fiennes aka Mr. Kendrick and Mike Ramsay appear to represent success and achievement.

Mr. Kendrick is owner of the insurance company where Freddy works and he is a rich, rather powerful man, although he actually represents the epitome of failure, with his arrogance, mistreatment of his wife that he neglects to the point where he does not even see her anymore and says nothing whenever she gives him a cup of tea or does anything.

Freddy sees all this, manifests an incredible high Emotional Intelligence and warns Kendrick’s divine  daughter, Julie aka splendid Felicity Jones, that she will have the same ignoble fate as her destitute mother, if she marries the infatuated, self-absorbed, ruthless carbon copy of her father Mike Ramsay.

Julie wants to be a professional photographer, but in her sexist house and for her sexist fiancé, this is just not acceptable, even if Mike deceives her into thinking that, they will concentrate on her career, once she will have consolidated his.

Snork and Bruce have their own issues, the former is a gifted singer, but his jokes and stories with white and black bread are not vey alluring, they actually annoy most girls and the latter has a conflict with his father that the son despises as having been too weak when his mother left the home with another man.

Finally, Bruce learns from the local policeman the true story of his mother having abandoned her son and the father coming out on the street with a baseball bat and asking the officer to keep him in jail for the night, as to not compromise his son’s future.

Julie trusts her fiancé until she tries to see if he does ignore her, in the manner in which her parent ignores his wife and then she may to leave Cemetery Junction with the perspective of caring for her own life, her career as opposed to being a sort of slave in a house where the man is a sort of unannointed emperor…

Cemetery Junction is a good film.