Closing the Ring
| Closing the Ring | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Richard Attenborough |
| Produced by |
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| Written by | Peter Woodward |
| Starring | |
| Music by | Jeff Danna |
| Cinematography | Roger Pratt |
| Edited by | Lesley Walker |
| Distributed by | The Works Distribution |
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Release date
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Running time
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113 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom Canada United States |
| Language | English |
Closing the Ring is a 2007 film directed by Richard Attenborough and starring Shirley MacLaine, Christopher Plummer, Mischa Barton, Stephen Amell, Neve Campbell, Pete Postlethwaite, and Brenda Fricker. It was the final film directed by Attenborough before his death seven years later.
The film was released in both the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom on 28 December 2007.
The film opens in 1991, with the funeral of a World War II veteran. The man's daughter Marie (Neve Campbell) delivers the eulogy to a church full of veterans who knew and loved her father, while her mother Ethel Ann (Shirley MacLaine) is sitting out on the church porch, smoking and nursing a hangover. When Ethel Ann begins acting strangely, only her friend Jack (Christopher Plummer) seems to understand why. It quickly emerges that there is a lot Marie does not know about her mother's past and the true story of her love life.
The movie flips to a time when Ethel Ann was young, lively, and optimistic (young Ethel Ann played by Mischa Barton). She is in love with a young farmer, Teddy Gordon (played by Stephen Amell), who goes off to war with his best friends Jack (Gregory Smith) and Chuck (David Alpay), but not all of them make it back alive. The plot lines intertwine with the story of a young Ulsterman in Belfast, Jimmy, who finds a ring in the wreckage of a crashed B-17 and is determined to return it to the woman who once owned it.
Inadvertently caught up in cross-border troubles, Jimmy flees Belfast, travelling to Michigan to give Ethel Ann the ring. Ethel Ann reveals a wall covered in souvenirs of Teddy, which Jack and Chuck boarded up for her in 1944. Marie is shocked and furious to learn that her mother loved not Chuck, but Teddy's memory. Ethel Ann travels to Belfast with Jimmy. She holds the hand of a dying British soldier caught in an IRA car-bomb attack. Quinlan (Pete Postlethwaite) finally confesses to Ethel Ann that he was on the hill when Teddy died, and that Teddy's dying words freed Ethel Ann from her promise to love him forever, that she was "free to make her own choice". A tearful Quinlan tells her he spent 50 years looking for the ring that was lost in the final blast that killed Teddy, and is filled with regret for never having fulfilled his promise to inform Ethel of Teddy's dying words. Joining Ethel Ann in Belfast, Jack finally admits that he has always loved her. Ethel Ann is finally able to cry and properly grieve. They share a long hug (and it's implied they finally begin a romance).
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