 | |
List Price: $14.98 | | Label: Hbo Home Video
Salesrank: 39176
Released: June 19, 2007 |
| Our Price: $2.40 |
| Used Price: $1.95 |
|
MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD |
|
Editorial Review:
This HBO Films drama tells the true story of the British Lord Frank Aungier Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford, and his controversial, colorful, headline-making friendship with one of Britain's most notorious criminals, child murderess Myra Hindley. A devout Catholic, Longford often visited prisoners because of his passionate belief in forgiveness and society's need for prisoner rehabilitation. He meets with Hindley - a young woman serving a life sentence for child murders committed with her lover, Ian Brady - shortly after her imprisonment and the visits incite widespread public outrage. Their unlikely friendship ultimately undermined his career and, possibly, her 36-year attempt to win freedom.
DVD Features:
Audio Commentary
Featurette
Description of Longford:
In the hands of Peter Morgan (writer of The Queen and Frost/Nixon), the intertwined lives of a child murderess and an English lord become what can only be described as a moral thriller--a suspenseful story of evil and forgiveness. The Earl of Longford (Jim Broadbent, Iris, Topsy-Turvy) has devoted himself to helping prisoners. When he receives a letter from Myra Hindley (Samantha Morton, In America, Minority Report), he doesn't hesitate, though his wife argues that some crimes are beyond redemption; Hindley and her lover Ian Brady kidnapped and brutally murdered several children in Manchester, and their names provoke the same gut response that Jeffrey Dahmer's might prompt in America. But after meeting Hindley, Longford becomes convinced that she was under Brady's sway and fights for her parole, despite resistance from the media, the public, and his own family. Longford is riveting. In the hands of this fantastic cast (including Lindsay Duncan, Rome, as Longford's wife, and Andy Serkis, King Kong, in a chilling turn as Brady), Morgan's skillful script bubbles and seethes with hidden motives and self-deceptions. Broadbent's complete transformation into a man whose compassion and good intentions threaten to destroy him, coupled with Morton's astonishing vulnerability, give Longford a remarkable multilayered complexity, contrasting the committed faith of the advocate with the equally committed obsession of the serial murderer. --Bret Fetzer
Longford Reviews:
The limits of forgiveness 
2009-07-21 - Peter Morgan's "Longfellow" is not so much an 88 minute chronicle of a string of child murders that took place in 1964 1945, involving Myra Hindley and Ian Brady, two British nihilists who were considered at the time to be evil incarnate, as it is a rigorous and painful study in the limits of redemption and forgiveness. How monstrous can a person become before the idea of restoring them to a residual goodness seem ridiculous? Are there individuals who are even undeserving of it?
Frank Pakenham, the 7th Earl of Longford, a notorious and controversial member of British Parliament for his unwavering Catholicism and championing of the vilest criminals in history, did not think so. His performance by Jim Broadbent is so convincing, so eccentric even in the smallest details--he comes across as a neurotic Puritan, loving husband, and saint with a dark side all at the same time--that it feels like a documentary rather than a made for HBO film.
Longford begins feverishly corresponding with Myra Hindley(Samantha Morgan)in prison to the disappointment and confoundment of his family and friends. He insists to the press that this child murdereress and seemingly deeply evil woman was nothing more than a pawn in the scheme of Ian Brady (Andy Serkis, whose character is so sick and almost humorously depraved that he may as well have jumped out of a Sex Pistols' rock biography).
Each scene in which Longford visits Hindley reflects two things: a genuine compassion for the young woman who to all outward intents has destroyed herself, her life, and the lives of others. Also, though, Morgan implies some strange attraction between the two of them which is very disturbing. Whether this was actually the case is not known, of course, and should certainly not be assumed. Hindley converts to Catholicism turns her prison cell into a virtual shrine, insisting on attending Mass every chance she gets in prison. Brady insists to Longford that it is all an act and that she is laughing at him in secret, though we never do know. Even Longford's wife begins to feel some compassion for her as she sees the horrible treatment Hindley receives in prison.
The crux of the movie is when it is revealed that Hindley and Brady killed more children then was previously disclosed. For one minute, as Hindley looks at Longford, we see the killer and not the "innocent young girl" or candidate for rehabilitation. She decides to drop Longford as a legal representative and simply walks away. Longford endures harassment as never before.
Still, he holds to his guns and never denounces Hindley entirely. The end of the film is an example of real Christianity, as years later Hindley and Longford sit together on a bench outside prison. Lord Longford was one of those rare specimens of Catholics who devoted his life, staked his reputation and career, on the Gospels. Fantastic film.
CHAMPION OF CHILD TORTURERS AND MURDERERS 
2008-11-17 - This is a deeply dishonest and superficial HBO made -for-television movie about a marginal crank who gratutiouly intruded into the infamous 1960s Moors Child Murders case. To understand the magnitude of Longford's errors it is necessary to understand what really happened and the true character of Myra Hindley's pathology, rather than the film-makers' romantic fantasy of both these evil twins.
"Don't... Please God help me".
10 year old Lesley Ann Downey pleading to God as Myra Hindley and Ian Brady abuse her in Hindley's home.
Lesley Ann Downey ,age 10, went missing Dec. 26, 1964 after being abducted by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. They took her to Hindley's home where she was forced to strip naked naked.
Writer Colin Wilson describes how: they took 9 " photographs of Lesley Ann ... from 6 feet away standing on a bed, naked, legs apart, hands outstretched, clothed in nothing but a pair of socks while Brady and Hindley stood by sneering and laughing" at her. The little girl was "wearing a gag, with a terrified look in her eyes". At The Gates of Janus 290
Lesley Ann's also pleaded on the 17 minute tape Brady and Hindley made: " ... Ooh, it's cold, can I go home now"? They had sadistically put her in an unheated room with an open window.
When Lesley Ann begged " Please don't make me get undressed again" Myra Hindley shot back, "If you don't shut your mouth and stop crying I'll give you another good hiding".
Brady later asserted that also she insisted Lesley Ann call them mommy and daddy.
Lesley's head was caved in by Brady and Hindley. At p.296.
THE KEY DOUBLE STANDARD : Longford would have it that the God who ingored Lesley Ann's pleas did grant redemption immediately to Myra Hindley. If so, Longford's God is Himself a grotesque obscenity.
Twelve year-old John Kilbride, another victim of Brady and Hindley, was buried on the Moors with his pants and underwear pulled down pulled down around his ankles. The 17 year-old Evans was hacked to death by Brady while Hindley watched.
For this and four other child murders, Myra Hindley received a life sentence. Note the gross disproportion beween Hindley's life imprisonment and the five tortured, terrified and murdered children- not to mention the pain inflicted on their families. Hindley's punishment was mild indeed compared to her crimes.
Her release from prison- so ardently sought by Longford- would have been an insult and trivialization of the dead children's suffering.
Myra Hindley told the police about her relationship to Brady : "Where he has gone I have gone." It does seem implausible that Hindley would have killed on her own. She needed her partner Brady.
But Hindley was Brady's all too willing accomplice, a free moral agent who chose to put her patholgical attachment to Brady above the lives of five children.
The only thing Hindley could not abide was Brady's indifference.
And Motive in any event is not an element of a crime. Only Intent is. Whether she helped Brady torture and kill children to impress him is irrelevant. And on the tape she is certainly enjoying tormenting little Lesley Ann.
Brady and Hindley are the first of a depressingly long line modern child serial killers. And Myra Hindley the first woman serial child killer..
Neither British society nor the legal profession were prepared to handle them.
Brady and Hindley were cowards who only attacked the most vulnerable.
Emlyn Williams in his study of them stresses Brady's grandiosity. He was a very heay drinker, if not an alcoholic and a bastard.
By abducting and killing children, Brady sought to assert a secret superiority over the helpless children and Society. See his lording it over the tiny Lesly Ann. And of course his vassel Hindley. He was a coward and ineffectual. He never made a penny from his grandoise plans.
And he and Hindley surrendered meekly to the police. Both were entirely non- violent in the presence of authority.
"What tape" ? Quote by Longford.
The movie assumes Longford is an interesting character. Actually, he was just a silly crank and religious fanatic of the worse kind.
Longford was not even aware of the tape and indifferent to it. His willful ignorance about Hindley went beyond mere stupidity or gullibility to a kind od blissful fantasy romance he invented about Myra Hindley.
In his rush to absolve Hindley of all responsibilty for the torture and murder of the five children, Longford bizarrely ingored all the the evidence of her participation in the crimes.
He exonerated her for crimes that he refused to ascertain had even happened.
Yet the movie offers Longford as a laudatory figure for no apparent reason.
The buffonish Longford led a life of easy privilge and unearned deference, a Bertie Woster of upper class twits.
Longford had a grandoise ego as large as Ian Brady's. A morally superior prig, he was actually quite shallow and of almost sublimely stupid.
After being re-admitted to the Catholic Church {an obscenity in itself}, Hindley tells Longford: " at least I know in the eyes of God I am forgiven". Longford replies: "Well, if you are forgiven by God who are we to to condemn you"? Longford purports not only to know God's will, but to be His representative on earth.
And who appointed this moral imbecile to speak as we" ?
The dramatic license in "Longford is a license to kill.
The movie- makers posit an ambiguity about Hindley that is non- existent.
Both Brady and Hindley were classic psychopaths who wore masks of normality in their trivial daily lives. They were both adept at presenting a facade of normality. They led lives of lower middle class respectibilty and stupifying banality in Mancheste .
Hindley and Brady were also model employees at the same time they were abducting, torturing and murdering children. .
Samantha's Morton's intentionally misleading portrayal of Hindley as soft and feminine. She was in reality mannish and brusque. And a congenital liar.
Hindley was simply a self- interested manipulator and liar. She played the gullible Longford liike a violin.
Hindley never did anything that was not in her own interest. She lied at the trial in 1966, and she even lied to Longford.
And she could have left the relationship with Brady at any time.
Now she is a nice young woman". Longford asserted in the mid- 1980s. But Hindley had to choice but to be "well behaved"- compliant- in prison. This is hardly evidence of reform. It is just like her being a good employee from 1963 to 1965, and her otherwise normal life while she moonlighted as a child torturer and killer.
So ho cares whether Hindley "reformed" when she no choice ? Many criminals are well- behaved in prison. It is hardly relevant to their conduct outside.
Compare the sadistic Dr. Joseph Mengele who led a blameless life until age 32. Only then did he begin his fiedish medical "experiments" on Jewish children. And they lasted less than two years. After the war he escaped to South America where he led a furtive and harmless life until his death of old age. Did God forgive him too?
American serial killer Ted Bundy was a well liked figure in his daily life while killing young women at night, and his long term sleep-in girlfriend wrote a laudatory biography of him even after his crimes had been revealed
.
Longford asserted too: " killers of this kind almost always have a prior history of offending". She did- in fact five times! She started killing when she was age 21. Longford distorts the facts here yet again.
{Longford also hypocritically says "only God can take a human life", being completely indifferent to Hindley's having done it five times}.
Hindley's life imprisonment was small potatoes compared to the five children she helped torture and murder.
The Law is about secular Justice, not religious redemption. Indeed Redemption is for God- assuming there even is one- but in the afterlife.
If Longford wants to forgive Hindley- or Adolf Hitler for that matter- is his personal perogative. But he can hardly expect Socity to bow to his his own peculiar brand of theology.
And in fact Longford was almost totally isolated in his love for Hindley and his quest to return her to her life of banal normality.
No one else- including the Catholic Church-ever supported his quest to free Hindley, except fort his equally ditzy wife. "Lady" Longford however merely revealed herself to be yet another upper- class British twitwith her bizarre- and untrue- "feminism" that assumes women are incapable of Evil unless in thrall to a male.
There is no evidence or reason to believe Hindley was ever molested by her father or tried to escape Brady. This is more made-up "evidence" by Missus Longford, probably from more self-serving lies by Hindley herself.
Ironically, Ian Brady is the most reliable and insightful character in the movie among this motley crew of fools.
He knew Hindley for the manipulative liar she is. But- and not surprisingly- Longford rejects his help in order to perserve his fantasy of Hindley's "redemption".
Brady offers him the letters Hindley wrote, but Longford ignores them.
The screenwriter and director during their mostly irrelevant commentary on the DVD do not say if Brady's letters from Hindley were geniune. But Brady is shown to have intimate knowledge of Hindley's life in prison. And the letters show she was clearly manipulating Longfoed and regarded him with contempt. Not only did Longford ignore the letters, but he never even questioned Hindley about them. Yet more evidence od what a self- deluded crank he was.
So why believe Hindley and not Brady ?
{Incidentally, The real Brady was much less that the out-sized monster that the fim-makers created in the "Longford" movie. He was no Nietzchean Superman as he fancied hinself, but a cowardly weakling who attacked only children from ambush, and caved in meekly when confronted by authority}.
The film-makers also dishonestly portray the opponents of releasing Myra Hindley as animalistic cretins, while Longford and his screwy wife are bathed in an aura of holiness and goodness. Not one reasoned advocate of keeping Hindley in prison is ever offered by the film-makers.
Longford was every bit as perverse as Hindley and Brady. Championing Hindley was a only way for the ego-maniacial Longford to get public attention after his increasing political irrelevancy. Too bad he did not pick a worthy cause to bestow his dubious blessings on. But then no one would have paid him any attention. And attention was what he most obviouly craved.
Conclusion:
A very shallow and dishonest movie about a very shallow man.that omits key facts and distorts the evidence.
Yet the writer and director ask us to admire Longford, though he was merely a comic buffon of near total ineffectiveness- except of course for the further misery he inflicted on the victims' families. But Longford was indiffernt to that- as are the film-makers.
Perhaps next they can make a movie about Adolf Hitler's love of dogs.
For more truthful accounts of Myra Hindley see:
Emlyn Williams, Beyond Belief; a Chronicle of Murder and Its Detection { 1967}. This is still the best account of the Moors Murders written only two years after the murders and baesd on contemorary accounts and interviews. {Williams was also the author of the play and 1937 movie "Night Must Fall" portraying one of the first psychopathic murderers.}
"See No Evil: the Story of the Moors Murders" {2006} on DVD It also largely ingnores the actual crimes, but is far more factual in its portrayal of the case, and of Hindley.
Inspiring!!!
2008-04-09 - When I first watched it on HBO my first thought was "too bad they don't make more movies like this". Not surprised when it was the top Golden Globe winner this year with three TV awards.
Love the Sinner, Hate The Sin
2008-03-21 - Movie is based on a true story about Myra Hindley and Ian Brady, who were charged and convicted with the serial torture and killing of a number of children in Britain in the 1960's. Lord Longford, played by Jim Broadbent, plays the champion of prisoner's rights - he believes in parole and rehabilitation. Longford spends considerable time with Myra Hindley and despite the monstrous crimes and the social pressures from the government, his family and his wife - he continues to advocate for parole for Hindley.
The movie is slow, dark and "chilling" however the actors playing Longford, his wife and the two killers are exceptional. Longford/Broadbent is inspirational in his pursuit of "thinking the best of people" no matter what they have done and in his pursuit of "forgiveness" despite being personally hurt and wronged. Good movie...
Longford is worth the effort
2007-09-03 - I got just a few minutes of Longford while on vacation and was so absorbed in it I couldnt bear to walk away. It was intriguing and it was like watching a car crash where you could not turn away. Without giving away too much of the plot, Longford at first seems like a fool but in the end his character and morals remain intact. This is definitely a must see film.
