NEW YORK (AP) — By the time a film arrives on movie screens, its makers often strive to find ways to articulate how relevant it is, how it speaks to now. But that’s not so easy when your movie is about a handful of people off the coast of Wales brought together by old songs.
Yet one of many charms of “The Ballad of Wallis Island” is that it has no intentions of timeliness. It has nothing to do with “now,” which, in a way, might make it all the better suited to today.
“Weirdly, it’s not a right-now movie, but that’s what makes it a right-now movie. Hopefully it’s heartwarming, and everything’s falling apart at the moment,” says Tim Key, who co-stars in and co-wrote the film with Tom Basden. “So I guess that’s a good thing.”
“The Ballad of Wallis Island,” which Focus Features released Friday in theaters, stars Basden as Herb McGwyer, a famous folk musician turned pop star who, in the opening scenes, arrives at the rural seaside home of Charles (Key) for a private £500,000 ($647, 408) gig. After his chipper host helps him off the skiff and into the water (“Dame Judi Drenched,” Charles pronounces), Herb learns he’ll be performing for “less than 100” people.
Just how significantly less unspools over the gentle, funny and sweetly poignant “The Ballad of Wallis Island,” the springtime movie release that may be most likely to leave audiences saying: “I needed that.”
“Both of us have felt there’s a case to be made for stuff that isn’t relevant, that isn’t satirical, that isn’t a comment on the story of the day,” says Basden. “Those are the films that have meant the most to me over the years. They’re the ones that let me escape from the here and now. But it’s not always easy to get people to see it that way when you’re getting things made.”
“Both of us have felt there’s a case to be made for stuff that isn’t relevant, that isn’t satirical, that isn’t a comment on the story of the day,” says Basden. “Those are the films that have meant the most to me over the years. They’re the ones that let me escape from the here and now. But it’s not always easy to get people to see it that way when you’re getting things made.”
“The Ballad of Wallis Island” is, itself, a product of time. It’s based on a 2007 short that Key and Basden made together when they, and director James Griffiths, were just starting out in show business.
All three have since gone on to their respective, often overlapping careers. Key and Basden began in sketch comedy (their group was called the Cowards) and have been regular presences across offbeat British comedy. Key co-starred in Steve Coogan’s Alan Partridge series and hosted a comic poetry hour radio show with Basden providing musical accompaniment. Basden, who created the BBC sitcom “Here We Go,” has, among other things, written plays, including a riff on Franz Kafka’s “The Trial,” starring Key.
When Basden and Key, now in their 40s, made 2007’s “The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island,” they knew little of what lay ahead for them, let alone much about how to make a movie.
