‘Hope and Glory' sequel a welcome update

To appreciate “Queen and Country,” John Boorman’s gently nostalgic, quasi-autobiographical film about Britain in the early 1950s, it isn’t entirely necessary to have seen his earlier “Hope and Glory.” You should, of course, see it, if you haven’t already: One of a handful of great movies that look at World War II through the eyes of a child, “Hope and Glory” is distinguished by mischievous good humor and by the unashamed acknowledgment that war can be fun as well as horrible.

At least that’s how it was for 9-year-old Bill Rohan. “Queen and Country,” which catches up with Bill (Callum Turner) at the age of 18, begins with a flashback to a memorable scene of childish jubilation during the Blitz, as the boy and his classmates respond with cries of “Thanks, Adolf!” to the news that a German bomb has smashed their school. A similar irreverence pervades this new chapter in Bill’s adventures. When he is conscripted into the army, his natural resistance to authority is both tested and given fresh opportunities to express itself. The military, with its endless protocols and musty hierarchies, is a nonconformist’s purgatory and a prankster’s paradise.

Rather than being sent to fight in the Korean War, Bill and his best pal, Percy Hapgood (the Cagneyesque Caleb Landry Jones), are put in charge of a typing class. Their supervisor is a humorless martinet, always eager to report the tiniest infraction to his commander (Richard E. Grant). There is a stark, contentious generational split between the older officers who served in the earlier war and the young men who are a bit sick of hearing about it and also eager to taste some of the freedom the elders fought to preserve. And Boorman, now 82, is steadfastly on the side of youth.

Playing the director’s alter ego, Turner is a sly, agreeable presence. Bill as a child (Sebastian Rice Edwards in “Hope and Glory”) was watchful in a manner befitting a future director, and in this chapter, he sometimes seems more observer than participant. But that is at least partly a self-protective ruse. Percy is a passionate rebel who eagerly courts trouble, for laughs and for revenge.

Another private, Redmond (Pat Shortt), is a seasoned skiver. This wonderful bit of slang connotes a special blend of scheming and laziness, a commitment to do as little as possible without getting caught. Bill is somewhere in between Percy and Redmond, wielding a quietly subversive irony as his weapon against the absurdities of army life.

Much as the war did in “Hope and Glory,” the army provides a loose frame around the action here. But Boorman approaches his story in the relaxed and generous manner of a raconteur, charming the audience rather than pushing us through the machinery of a plot. Our attention wanders into Bill’s romantic life, where his own attention is divided between Sophie (Aimee-Ffion Edwards) a warm, good-humored nurse, and a chilly, melancholy college student he knows as Ophelia (Tamsin Egerton). Each has other suitors, which is awkward, farcical and painful, like much of what happens in the movie.

“Queen and Country” doesn’t quite have the bittersweet intensity of its precursor. The terrible magic of the war is missing, and so is the heightened, wide-eyed perceptiveness of the child protagonist. A young man is a more pedestrian creature, and the ’50s a quieter decade. Bill’s family, the focus of much of the drama in “Hope and Glory,” is glimpsed here in a few lovely scenes. The update is welcome.

And so is the portrait, fleeting yet precisely detailed, of Britain at a time of change. The overt manifestation of that change is the arrival of the sovereign who gives “Queen and Country” its title, and who inspires cynicism and patriotism in its characters. But as the young Elizabeth II takes the throne, you can feel the ground shifting, and a different Britain coming into view: the one that would give the world angry young playwrights, rock ’n’ roll bands and resourceful, iconoclastic filmmakers like John Boorman.