The trouble with British cinema may not be that we have an addiction to realism, but that we have such a dull idea of what reality is. The opera-singing fish and chip shop proprietor criticized in another review here, is in fact a real guy, who really sings opera in his fish bar. Reality contains more than just misery, poverty and squalor. The miserable goes hand in hand with the beautiful and the absurd. It's always impressive when a film manages to do justice to all three aspects of existence, as Donkeys does.
An aging wastrel who fears he may be dying wants to make up with his estranged daughter. From this simple and powerful premise, the filmmakers weave a web of emotional and comic complications, aided by a fantastic cast who make sense of the dizzying shifts from tragedy to farce and back again, sometimes within a single scene or even a single spoken phrase. If you want to experience the messiness of life condensed into a compact and compelling narrative, with the release of both laughter and sorrow, Donkeys will move you.
An aging wastrel who fears he may be dying wants to make up with his estranged daughter. From this simple and powerful premise, the filmmakers weave a web of emotional and comic complications, aided by a fantastic cast who make sense of the dizzying shifts from tragedy to farce and back again, sometimes within a single scene or even a single spoken phrase. If you want to experience the messiness of life condensed into a compact and compelling narrative, with the release of both laughter and sorrow, Donkeys will move you.