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A Song for Jenny (2015) Online

A Song for Jenny (2015) Online
Original Title :
A Song for Jenny
Genre :
Movie / Drama
Year :
2015
Directror :
Brian Percival
Cast :
Emily Watson,Ryan Coath,Nicola Wren
Writer :
Frank McGuinness,Julie Nicholson
Type :
Movie
Time :
1h 17min
Rating :
7.3/10
A Song for Jenny (2015) Online

Julie Nicholson, vicar at St Aidan with St George in Bristol, lives with husband Greg and her children Lizzie and Thomas, her other daughter Twenty-four year old Jenny living in London and engaged to boyfriend James. On July 7 2005, after phoning James, Jenny leaves for work on a different subway route to her usual, due to a fault on the Piccadilly line. This costs her her life as shortly afterwards she is one of 24 victims slain by bomber Sidique Khan at Edgware Road station. Other bombs will claim more lives around the city. For the family there is an agonizing wait for news before Julie joins James in London and undergoes the painful task of identifying Jenny - from her hand. Angry and distraught she sets out to stay with sister Vanda in Reading and is indebted to a kindly taxi driver who takes her there and, recognizing her grief, refuses payment. Years later she is still unable to locate him to thank him despite her efforts. She will also resign from the ministry having lost ...
Cast overview, first billed only:
Emily Watson Emily Watson - Julie Nicholson
Ryan Coath Ryan Coath - Mourner
Nicola Wren Nicola Wren - Jenny
Steven Mackintosh Steven Mackintosh - Greg
Martha Mackintosh Martha Mackintosh - Lizzie
Laurence Belcher Laurence Belcher - Thomas
Alan Rothwell Alan Rothwell - Uncle Jimmie
Gwilym Lee Gwilym Lee - James
Anne Stallybrass Anne Stallybrass - Mother
June Watson June Watson - Auntie Karina
John Woodvine John Woodvine - Father
Sophie Dix Sophie Dix - Sharon
Nicholas Asbury Nicholas Asbury - Martyn
Edmund Digby-Jones Edmund Digby-Jones - Cleric
Paul Ryan Carberry Paul Ryan Carberry - Drunk Begger

Father and daughter, Greg and Lizzie Nicholson, are played by real life father and daughter, Steven Mackintosh and Martha Mackintosh.


User reviews

Mikarr

Mikarr

A song for Jenny is based on Julie Nicholson's book about the death of her daughter in the Edgware Road bombing in July 7 2005. This drama commemorates the 10th anniversary of the 7/7 attacks in London.

The drama is overwrought, distressing as we see the Nicholson family at first waiting for news of the fate of their daughter, hopes that she may be alive slowly vanishing as the days go on. Then there is the harrowing aftermath once her body is identified and making the preparations for the funeral while feeling anger for those responsible for the bombings.

Emily Watson gives a stoic performance and brings nuances to her character which shows her skills as an actress because I think the script was flawed which affected the drama. It lacked a time and place of the setting to give it some context.

I remember driving to walk on the 7 July, 24 hours earlier London had been awarded the Olympics by what seemed like a narrow margin. I was listening to the radio where sport stars were being interviewed of Britain holding the Olympics which was cut short as reports came in of power outages in the underground network and it slowly dawned that this was a terrorist incident. Jubilation turned into horror.

Then there were the wars Britain were fighting in the Middle East, in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Iraq war was divisive from the beginning and its repercussions are still being felt now something the film kind of ignored, given that this was a motive for the bombers however misguided. Terrorist attacks in the UK is not new in my lifetime. I grew up in an era of IRA bombings in the mainland. Dramas relating to Irish terrorism on British television went from how evil these people are to more neutral tones to even injustices committed to the republican communities such as wrongly convicted bombers. These things might not be in the book but the context was lacking which hurt the drama.

Jenny's father is absent from key parts of the events. I later found out that this was the same in the book, I just felt it was all part to keep Emily Watson centre stage. The drama should had dealt with this aspect better as well.

So a flawed drama which I felt was lacking in a stronger story which pains me given the tragic events of this true poignant story.

Julie Nicholson has since left the priesthood as she could not forgive the bombers and felt that this was incompatible with her vocation as a priest. She has also divorced her husband.
Mightdragon

Mightdragon

For Emily Watson, this would be the performance of a lifetime, if she had not already given audiences such performances time after time. Her overwhelming brilliance has come to be routine and expected in every project in which she participates. That being said, this is simply an astounding portrait of a woman devastated by the senseless murder of her daughter by terrorists. Watson does not simply bring the emotional turmoil, the soul wrenching pain of a Anglican Vicar tested beyond the limits of faith, to vivid life. Somehow she makes the viewer share that agony and make it their own. It is one of the most deeply moving performances ever filmed and while the film is incredibly painful to watch, it is also an important cinematic memorial to those who suffered and lost so much on 7/7. This is more than a great actor doing her usual astounding work. This is a performance of historic proportions, so powerful and majestic that it can never be forgotten. A beautiful accomplishment by everyone involved in this staggering production and nothing less than a superbly delivered tribute to the broken hearted survivors of that tragic day by the amazingly gifted Ms. Emily Watson. She is the heart, the soul, and the very essence of A Song For Jenny.
Kison

Kison

To be honest, I struggled to get through this. I watched it almost out of a sense of duty, as I was a distant acquaintance of one of the victims of 7/7 (not Jenny Nicholson). The BBC usually handles this sort of thing rather well (they certainly assembled a decent cast), but not in this case. The whole thing was ponderous and ham-fisted, full of pregnant pauses and awkward silences (this is what passes for dramatic tension in our modern world). The lead character came out with portentous statements such as "these are my daughter's Stations of the Cross-I'm her mother-I shall be with her to the end", and "she didn't hate-nor must I", which hardly reconciled with her frustration with the authorities, and anger towards her daughter's murderer...

There was little in the way of character development, yet new additions were introduced all the time, leaving the audience to guess their relationship to the (not yet confirmed) deceased, and nothing to indicate the crisis of faith that the main character faced (she has since resigned her position as a C of E Parish Priest) in coming to terms with her dichotomy of conscience: her anger directed towards Mohammad Sidique Khan, the suicide bomber responsible for her daughter's death, and her duty of care and forgiveness as a priest.

The whole ensemble felt rushed, yet strangely drawn-out and impotent-it should have been explored in greater detail over a two-hour slot (after ten years, surely the BBC could have afforded to dedicate two hours on a Sunday night to the memory of these victims) instead of eighty minutes, and perhaps allocated some decent writers to the project-it felt like I was watching a screenplay written by pre-teens-they know they want to express the emotions of loss, anger, grief and resentment, but they don't really know how to it... I give it 6/10, with an exhortation to try harder next time!..
Faebei

Faebei

Director Brian Percival has done an absolutely wonderful job bringing Frank McGuinness' deeply moving screen adaptation of A Song For Jenny. It is beautifully done film recounting one mother's loss of her young daughter in the 7/7 terrorist attacks in London. It is a tragic story and at times painful to watch. Emily Watson is perfect in the role of the heart broken, angry parent and what she does in this film is overwhelming. Watson always does stellar work but this is something quite special. There are few if any other actresses who could so powerfully convey the intense emotion and terrible pain of such a horrible loss. Her eyes alone express so much and even in moments of silence, what she does in this role is almost miraculous.
Nalaylewe

Nalaylewe

Powerful, emotional and a very tragic story. Great acting all round to make this one of the best TV Movies ever. :D
Trex

Trex

The quality of British dramas are superior to our American movies. It is easy to get caught up and forget they are acting. This emotional story made me physically ill as I felt for the family.
Broadcaster

Broadcaster

An uncomfortable film because it should have been half an hour shorter and less like a wildly distorted version of "Outnumbered".Miss E.Watson had the impossible task of portraying the Rev.Julie Nicholson whose daughter was murdered by one of the London bombers(the one whose father thinks was innocent and presumably had his bomb planted on him). Fine performance though it is,Miss Watson is unable to prevent her character from being almost saintly due to the way the story is written,and her family has disturbing echoes of so many others that inhabit TV dramaland. Grumpy but loving grandparents,nice but ineffectual husband,bright, happy and clever kids. Only Mr J. Woodvine as Mrs Nicholson's father displayed any human characteristics. Not surprisingly perhaps,her daughter's death caused a crisis of faith in Mrs Nicholson but she still apparently parroted the rhetoric of the Church even in extremis. Conspicuously not referred to was Mrs Nicholson's abandonment of the Anglican Church - for which she could hardly be blamed. There are no easy answers for her - indeed she didn't seem to be looking for any answers of any description. Nobody had anything nasty to say about the bombers' religion - which was remarkably tolerant of them in the circumstances. Quite what Mrs Nicholson's God was up to at the time is something she hasn't yet come to terms with. All in all,"A song for Jenny" was a respectful "tribute" - if that's the word - to innocent victims of terrorism that,despite an intense and moving lead performance was strangely uninvolving and,as such,rather a disappointment.
VariesWent

VariesWent

I have just finished watching the second half of this drama – I watched the first forty minutes and was becoming overwhelmed by the continuous stream of emotion-filled almost-whispered sentences. However, my curiosity made me watch the second half, hoping for a development of the plot – which never came. It goes without saying that we all sympathise with victims of terror attacks wherever they occur, and I for one could not imagine the depth of the suffering of parents and loved ones – this sensation came through very effectively. This drama was very well cast, with some excellent acting, but let down by a weak plot. The fact that this tragedy somehow "just happened" is a typical media "half-of the story". There are reasons for most things in life, and this attack was no exception. By focusing only on the heart-breaking reaction of one family, the author of this drama has chosen to ignore the other side of the story – "why did it happen?" The programme would have been much more effective had it been longer and contained and compared a sub-plot of an equally-suffering family loss in the Middle East, North Africa or elsewhere in the world. It would be totally naïve to believe these attacks have no causes – surely a grieving relative would want to know why they are happening, but none of the characters seemed to care. Perhaps an entertaining piece of work for the Islamophobes of this world – with a clearly-identified Muslim perpetrator of the attack leaving viewers rightly angry with "Islamic terrorism", but hardly a balanced look at causes and effects of such attacks. I feel neither entertained nor informed. Come on, you intelligent authors and producers, stop pretending you can't see the dots - start joining them together and inform us the viewers in a more rounded way. Without stating what is obvious, even most politicians now recognise the roots of these terror attacks.

It was, by and large, a waste of superb acting and casting, in what could have been a much better ten-year memorial to those so sadly killed or injured.