An average movie

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since it was directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, I was quite eager to check it out. Well, to be honest, it turned out to be rather hard to judge this movie after all. Indeed, the first issue was that I saw a very nasty version on YouTube (seriously, the first scenes taking place during the night were borderline unwatchable). The other issue was that I wasn’t familiar with Canterbury’s pilgrimage and, even though I heard about the Tales of Caunterbury written by Chaucer, I knew pretty much nothing about it either. Apparently, Powell and Pressburger thought it would be a great idea to combine this material with a contemporary story taking place during WWII but this mix was rather bewildering, at least, to me. Eventually, as a result, it was probably their most complicated movie to decipher and I might have to re-watch it at some point to really make up my mind about the damned thing. However, even if this movie, like most of the movies delivered by these two masters, seem to have a strong reputation, I still think that the plot was rather weak though. Basically, for about 2 hours, you have the main characters chasing some mysterious  ‘glue man’ which wasn’t exactly fascinating. The fact that this ‘glue man’ was so easy to spot right from the start probably didn’t help but, all in all, it was a rather lame story going at a terribly sluggish pace. Concerning the characters, at least, it was a nice time bubble showing the British people living in Kent around WWII but, even if it was interesting, none of these characters was really charismatic or entertaining enough. Anyway, to conclude, maybe if I would be more able to make the connection between the various elements included in this movie, I might be able to enjoy it more but, anyway, it is still worth a look, especially if you like the genre.