From the director of Normal People, the beloved best-selling novel is being adapted for the big screen.
Based on the best-selling novel by Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is the inspirational and life-affirming tale of one man’s walk across England, and is coming to cinemas this April.
Now, RadioTimes.com has an exclusive first look at the trailer for the upcoming film, which stars Academy Award winner Jim Broadbent and Penelope Wilton as Harold and Maureen respectively. A word of warning: you may want to keep the tissues close while watching this one.
While the tale is an uplifting one of self-discovery and redemption, the trailer also shows it’s an emotional story of one man who embarks on a cross-country walk of hope, all with the target of reaching Berwick-upon-Tweed to visit his friend Queenie in hospice.
The trailer also shows us that while Harold initially only planned on leaving Queenie a message, he was moved to walk to her instead. “Tell her I’m going to keep walking and she must keep living,” he says to the operator before embarking on his journey.
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“I’m walking a long way but I haven’t quite got the hang of it yet,” he says to a child that he encounters on his journey and is quick to tell him that he smells. We see him bathe in streams and accept the kindness of strangers, but his wife is at home is increasingly perplexed at her husband’s actions.
Soon, Harold is everywhere and on the front of newspapers, amassing a loyal group of strangers walking alongside him on the way, too. But his wife admits: “I wish you’d come home.”
“I’ve spent my life not doing anything and now at last, I am,” he tells her. It soon becomes apparent that he feels as though he’s failed previously at being a husband and father to his own son, who he can be seen crying out for at the end of the trailer.
Will this new journey provide him with the feeling of completion he’s been looking for? Watch the trailer below.
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is most certainly the kind of film that will leave you welling up, laughing and leaving the cinema a little more hopeful, from the looks of it. It is directed by BAFTA winner Hettie Macdonald (Howards End, Normal People).
As outlined in the synopsis, the film follows Harold, a man who “leaves his seaside town in South Devon to deliver a message to an old friend”.
It continues: “Harold Fry was never meant to be a hero. He’s an unremarkable man who has failed at all the important things: being a husband, a father and a friend.
“Now, well into his 60s, he is content to fade quietly into the background of life. But when Harold learns his friend Queenie is dying, he is moved to act. He leaves home, walking to the post box to send her a letter, until he realises a letter is not enough.
“In that moment Harold decides to keep walking, all the way to her hospice, some 500 miles away in Berwick-upon-Tweed: as long as he walks, Queenie must live. Surprising himself as much as his wife Maureen, Harold embarks on a walk of hope, determined to travel the length of England to save his friend.”
The upcoming film is based on the best-selling book of the same name by award-winning author Rachel Joyce, who also wrote the screenplay.
The book was also long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, won the UK National Book Award for the New Writer of the Year and was the UK’s best-selling book from a new novelist in 2012, selling over five million copies worldwide.
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry will be in cinemas in the UK and Ireland on Friday 28th April.
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