Not really, given the times and the people involved.
A girl calling her father "Darling" wasn't that uncommon at the time.
Joan invited Daddy Darling to the night club, a place where he doesn't like to be seen, with the intention of telling him about her forthcoming nuptials. But there are some other things that she has to do first like to get her money. She was probably bursting to tell him all the way through their meeting rather than it being a "by the way" sort of thing.
Lots of girls want to get married in remote, exotic and romantic places. Joan couldn't invite her father to the wedding because there were restrictions on who could travel during the war. But a war profiteer, sorry, a respected industrialist helping the war effort, could arrange for himself and later for his fiancée, to travel up to the Western Isles.
Joan is already a very independent young woman. She doesn't see her father every day and he travelled some distance to get to the night club so she's presumably not living at home with her parents. Is her mother still alive? She's never mentioned.
Joan was, at that stage of the film, a gold-digger, out to get what she could and what she wanted for what she saw as a comfortable life. She has dreams on the train of acting the part as Lady Bellinger and having everything charged to her account.
She's not an average girl, but there were (& are) people like that. In fact at that point in the film I would say that she's not a very nice person.
Steve
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miso5000
15 years ago
Hello, Steve. I appreciate your explaining things for me. You obviously grasped details that I didn't! But could it be that maybe the writer of this story went a little overboard attempting to create a gold-digging, pigheaded b***h of a character? Didn't you find a lack of subtlety here?
I see every professional reviewer and his dog giving this film 4 stars and while it is good enough, it does have flaws where Joan is concerned. I guess I can't identify with her & don't know anyone quite that awful.
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Steve Crook
15 years ago
Consider yourself lucky that you don't know anyone like Joan at the beginning of the film. She's not a very nice person.
But she does soon begin to learn that there are other things that are important in life besides money. Then she becomes much nicer.
As for those professional reviewers, they, and their dogs, don't appreciate a great story with some sublime performances. Most of them wouldn't know a great movie if it was screened in front of them
The Rotten Tomatoes guide does a summary of reviews from lots of reviewers, and they give it 100%
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/i_know_where_im_going/?name_order=asc
How many other films would still inspire people to travel half way around the world just to have a chance to visit the places where those events happened - 60 years after the film was made?
Lots of people have made their own pilgrimage to Mull to walk that hallowed ground. But when we organised a big trip there in October 2005 we were joined by one couple from the States and another couple from Tasmania! Both couples were planning holidays in Europe anyway and just timed things so that they could join us. See http://www.powell-pressburger.org/Trips/Mull/20051028/index.html
Steve
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miso5000
15 years ago
Many thanks, Steve, for all your info. I saw some of the additional features on the DVD of IKWIG; some of the contributors are at a loss for words, almost. This whole movie is like some great fantasy that people take to, almost like Star Trek, only nicer.
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