Mrs Lowry & Son

This marvelous film is steeped in Beckettian tropes and style. The mother son relationship is akin to Hamm and Clov in 'Endgame', or it might be Winnie in 'Happy Days'.

Even the reality of Lowry and his mother is not so far from Beckett and his own fractious relationship with his mother. Vanessa Redgrave even resembles Beckett as an old man with his spectacles.

The film echoes Beckett's maxim, 'to fail again, fail better' almost with the same sense as Lowry follows his own path against the odds and faces years of rejection and hostility, not the least from his mother who lacks imagination and only understands what she sees, not the meaning. Indeed the film has a very strong layers of social history in it as it reveals the neuroses and social anxieties of the period in England.

The excellent script is matched by admirable directing and editing together with technical features to make the 1930s flat and town vivid.

And then there are performances from Spall and Redgrave which are the pinnacle of skill and empathy. It is a consummate and perfectly poised interaction between the two.

If only other films gave their audience as much.