Lightdeossk Captivating movie !

Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

TeenzTen An action-packed slog

Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

ianlouisiana 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.

Prismark10 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.

gerald hall 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.

Adams5905 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!..