The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (aka This Earth That You Walk Upon)

A revealing moment during the opening sequence of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (2023) occurs when the title character steps out of his house and onto the pathway outside. Harold's emergence from the porch shadows and his entry into the sunlight is framed in such a way to suggest that this is a momentous occasion, and that Harold has not felt the sun on him for some time. Harold has presumably stepped out of his house every day up until now, but this is the first time in a while that the act has apparently meant something to him, that he's felt any kind of leeway to participate in the world existing beyond his front door. The title shot, which shows Harold walking away from the walls that previously confined him, paints him as a metaphorical ex-con re-entering a society that has long passed him by. This is more-or-less what is happening with Harold, but that his imprisonment has been self-imposed.

Directed by Hettie Mcdonald and based on the 2012 novel by Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry tells the story of a sixtysomething man who goes out one day to post a letter, then takes rather a protracted detour before making it back home. If the premise of the film ever comes off as a little too self-consciously whimsical (like the title), it is always grounded by strong central performances, spectacular scenery and an emotional footing that proves surprisingly enduring.

Harold (Jim Broadbent, on typically brilliant form) is a retired brewery worker living in Kingsbridge, Devon with his wife Maureen (Penelope Wilton, also brilliant). The two of them have an austere relationship. They do not talk openly, and Maureen keeps the house spotless in a regime seemingly geared toward keeping their world free of emotional residue. One morning, Harold receives a letter from an old work colleague named Queenie (Linda Bassett). He and Queenie parted ways some years ago, but it is immediately evident that she has not strayed far from Harold's mind in the interim. "Who?" Maureen asks, with a barely suppressed bristle that conveys Queenie has never strayed far from her mind either, and that by acknowledging the letter Harold risks broaching forbidden subject matter between them. When Harold shares with her the difficult news, that Queenie is declining from cancer in a hospice in Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland, and has written to say goodbye, Maureen's response - "It's a nice day; why don't you get out the patio chairs?" - appears more designed to paper over the ramifications than to offer consolation.

Harold tries to pen a response to Queenie, but the right words aren't coming (Maureen's suggestion that he say what he means rings especially hollow, given that she herself is clearly incapable of doing so). He sets out to post his perfunctory attempt at a farewell, but each time he reaches a post box he cannot bring himself to let the letter go. Doing so would be tantamount to letting Queenie go, to surrendering to the cruelties of fate before returning to his stilted life with Maureen to wait for the inevitable day when it will call for him too. Instead, he keeps walking until he reaches a garage, where a conversation with a young tattooed girl (Nina Singh) working the cash register puts the idea into his head that there is another option. She tells him not to lose hope, stating that her aunt is a cancer survivor, an outcome she attributes not to medicine but to her personal belief that her aunt would recover so long as she never gave up on her. Harold leaves the garage, having finally figured out what he needs to say to Queenie. He writes "Wait for me" on the back of the envelope and lets it go. He has given her, and himself, some reassurance that this is not the end, but a whole new chapter in a story that must be continued. She has something to live for, and so does he. He does not return home to Maureen but instead goes on walking north, insisting that so long as he persists, Queenie will not die. Of course, if you know your UK geography, you'll know that Devon and Northumberland are at entirely opposite ends of England. That's a heck of a long way to travel by foot, particularly for a man with feet as aching and prone to blistering as Harold. It's a patently reckless decision, but the universe gives him immediate confirmation that it is the right one - one of the first spectacles Harold passes on his epic journey is a couple loading up a caravan on their front lawn, arguing about the fact that they never get anywhere because they always need to pack more luggage.

If Harold were to return home, even to gather the smallest of things, he would naturally talk himself out of going altogether. It's now or never, and he can only take whatever he has on him. Among the items he is forced to go without is his mobile phone, which he'd left on the kitchen table. This is consistent with what we already know about Harold as a man who doesn't gel with modern technology; Maureen had asked him earlier why he couldn't contact Queenie by email like everyone else. As Harold progresses further along the English landscape, he grows increasingly detached from the comforts of modern living. In the early stages of his journey, he behaves like any regular tourist, visiting the cathedral at Exeter and buying souvenirs. He goes from leading the life of a conventional traveller and sleeping in B&Bs to the life of a vagabond, sleeping in barns and unoccupied buildings. Eventually, he grows comfortable living off the land itself, sleeping in the wilderness, foraging for berries and washing himself in streams. Harold's journey is in many respects a rejection of technology - he insists on doing all of his travelling by foot, resisting offers from strangers of a ride, and in an increasingly online world his urge to meet with Queenie face to face could be read as a throwback to a simpler time when communication was less instantaneous but perhaps more intimate and personal (even snail mail is too impersonal for Harold). He later jettisons his wristwatch, his credit cards and his driver's license, sending them back home in a package to Maureen; he has learned to survive without money, out of time and with no tangible reminders of who he is. The interludes with Harold rambling through green hills and forests, accompanied by Sam Lee's folk tunes, suggest a reconnection with an ancient England that also exists out of time but is overshadowed by the omnipresence of modern civilisation - wherever Harold roams he is never far from another town, motorway or power station. Interspersed amid these sequences are shots of Maureen waiting in her comparatively drab domestic space, a reminder of how Harold's endeavours to disconnect himself have left her every bit as cut off. From her parallel narrative, Maureen sees a different meaning to his actions. For her, Harold's abandonment of his phone is a move that disempowers her, removing her ability to contact him and leaving her waiting on whenever he next deigns to call her from a telephone box. His rejection of his driver ID is an effort to cast off emblems of the life he has lived up until now, dumping the remains at her feet. Maureen does not express emotion easily, but is obviously distraught at Harold's desertion. She confides in her neighbour Rex (Joseph Mydell) that she had long contemplated leaving Harold but had never quite summoned the gumption to do so. Now Harold seems to have beaten her to the punch.

The word "Pilgrimage" in the title brings obvious connotations of religious devotion, yet Harold establishes upfront that he is in no way a religious man; his assertion that Queenie will not die if he keeps on walking is not based on any notion of his having made a divine bargain. The unlikeliest thing about Harold's pilgrimage, from the outset, is that he would accept at face value the garage girl's claims that she was able to cure her aunt's cancer by simply believing that she could. He seems a little down-to-earth for such thinking, and a whole lot too worn down by life. What she has given Harold, unknowingly, is the permission to take a step out of the personal inertia he's been mired in for years, and to make massive strides forward, with the hope of reaching something else. He is in effect able to put the onus on her for his uncharacteristic display of heedlessness. Toward the end of the film, when Harold chooses to write the girl a letter in which he bears his soul to her, in spite of not even knowing her name, there is a possible element of passive-aggressiveness in the action. His conviction that she, more than any of the people he's met, deserves the full story, betrays a latent desire to have her take responsibility by forcing her to understand the extent of the traumas she has prompted him to confront. For though Harold travels light, he has clearly brought a staggering amount of emotional baggage with him; unlike his material belongings, these cannot be so easily shed, and he intermittently collapses under the weight of it all. A particularly bitter source of tension between Harold and Maureen concerns the absence of their son David (Earl Cave), whom flashbacks indicate was a bright and promising young lad who became depressed and hooked on drugs after things didn't work out for him at Cambridge University. Wherever Harold goes he is perpetually haunted by the spectre of David, who seems to linger on various street corners. Lest Unlikely Pilgrimage ever play too much like a wistful nostalgia trip for a time when people weren't so damn obsessed with their tablets and their phones, the sombre figure of David offers a persistent reminder of the responsibilities older generations have to those who follow, and a cautionary tale about disengaging from the challenges they face.

Word of Harold's journey spreads over time, attracting media attention and causing Harold to become something of a folk hero among the masses. Before he knows it, there's an entire band of devotees who wish to literally follow in his footsteps and participate in his so-called pilgrimage, convinced that Harold's quixotic endeavours will reveal the path to their own enlightenment. We find here obvious echoes of the interlude in Forrest Gump (1994) where the title character embarks on an unlikely jog across America, purportedly with no greater motivation than feeling the irrepressible itch to keep running (in Gump's case, it is transparently a grandiose reaction to his love interest walking out on him for the umpteenth time). But whereas Gump was fundamentally indifferent to the legions who chose to follow him - he neither objected to their presence, nor had any qualms about leaving them without leadership or direction when his interest in running eventually petered out - Harold is much more attuned to the implications of having so many people behind him, erroneously believing he has the answer to whatever baggage they've brought along with them. He can't help but view the arrangement as somewhat parasitic - none of these people actually know Queenie, nor do they understand the nature of his prior dealings with her, or the deeper significance of what compels him ever onward. Overall, I find Harold's journey to be less evocative of Gump's than that of Alvin Straight, in David Lynch's The Straight Story (1999), who crosses the state of Iowa on the back of a lawnmower to reunite with his estranged and ailing brother. The initial reasoning behind his unconventional mode of travel is that he does not have a driver's license and there is no public transportation that would cover his full route. But Straight (much like Harold) also declines a stranger's offer to drive him the rest of the way, for reasons that have become apparent by the film's end - the punishing impracticalities of his journey were all very necessary in order to reach his brother emotionally as well as physically. A similar principle guides Harold. Like Straight, he is an older man having to compensate for a lifetime's worth of regrets by doing something monumental now. If he wishes to achieve what he's set out to do, then there can be no shortcuts or compromises. Every step he takes on his blistered and bloodied feet represents an attempt to confront the grief he has long suppressed for the absent David - scenes where the pain overwhelms him are accompanied by flashbacks detailing his struggles in seeing eye-to-eye with his wayward son. Like Alvin, Harold has taken a deliberately hard road in order to reconnect emotionally as well as physically. But there is a twist in Harold's case. Although he obviously wants to see Queenie, she is not the character he is actually looking to reach.

Macdonald's film is a thoroughly faithful adaptation of Joyce's story (not surprisingly, given that Joyce herself wrote the screenplay). The most radical departure is the near-total excision of the character Rich Lion (king and queen themed names seem to be a running gag in Joyce's story), a relatively minor figure who was nevertheless notable for being the closest thing Harold encounters to a villain on his travels. He was an aspiring pilgrim who chose to follow Harold, but quickly moved to co-opt the journey for his own egotistical means, eventually convincing the other travellers that Harold himself was dead weight and should be left behind. A small vestige of the character survives in Macdonald's film, in a bit part played by Paul Thornley and credited as Rich The T-Shirt Pilgrim - his most insidious act here is to attain a shipment of tacky t-shirts for Harold's followers to wear as outward advertisements of their devotion. Minus its most nefarious character, Mcdonald's film could be perceived as an all-round much gentler tale about the inherent goodness of people, one that genuinely believes the assertion, made by Maureen of all people, that "on the whole, people are kind". Although he spends much his travels avoiding getting bogged down with further connections, Harold remains fundamentally dependent on the generosity of strangers, often strangers who are out of view - he grows accustomed to collecting free produce and the occasional useful item left out on people's driveways. Perhaps the actual most unlikely thing about Harold's pilgrimage is that he never encounters anyone inclined to try mugging him, or more conveniently still, anyone inclined to challenge him for trespassing on private land (there are times when Harold appears to be traversing a version of England that's almost comically mythical in its openness, devoid of insurmountable fences or barriers). The most hostile response he ever gets is from a cafe manager who threatens to call the police on him for perceived begging. Mostly, his interactions with other people (as with the garage girl, he seldom stops for long enough to learn their names) reveal just how broken and vulnerable everybody is, even those of us who don't outwardly suggest it. At Exeter, a seemingly nondescript businessman (Nick Sampson) opens up to him about his kinky private life, and the dilemma that it's prompted. He tells Harold of his weekly rendezvous with a young immigrant man, which he keeps a secret from everyone who knows him. They do things together, some of which entails him licking the shoes of the young man. The question he needs guidance on concerns whether or not it would be proper etiquette to buy his companion a new pair of shoes - he has been troubled by the realisation that there is a hole in one, and while he hates the possibility of offending his companion, he's just as pained by the idea of him experiencing discomfort when he walks. Harold, who can certainly relate to the hardship of moving with inadequate footwear, advises him to buy the shoes. A little further on up the road, he meets Martina (Monika Gossman), a Slovakian woman who is a qualified doctor but unable to find any work in the UK besides cleaning (her medical finesse comes in handy when she is required to tend to Harold's feet). A year ago, Martina's partner left her for another woman; she has not heard from him since but goes about each day as if it will be the one on which he suddenly returns.

In one instance Harold encounters a soul so damaged that it threatens to derail his entire mission, by emphasising how feeble and limited he is in the face of such overwhelming despair. The first of the wannabe pilgrims to seek him out is a youngster named Wilf (Daniel Frogson), who claims to have received divine instruction to travel with Harold. He talks very openly about the love of God, something that should put him at odds with the quietly atheistic Harold, but Harold tolerates Wilf because he sees so much of David in him. Like David, Wilf is a drug addict, and is estranged from his parents - he has transparently turned to religion with the intention of purging himself of his many demons but has not been successful, and is now looking for a new avenue of salvation through Harold. Harold knows he has a grim track record when it comes to helping young people battling addiction, but sees Wilf as an opportunity to atone for his failings with David. He allows Wilf to accompany him and they form a bond that is, sadly, not fated to last. Wilf is out of his depth in the wilderness. The idea of hearing sheep without being able to see them is frightening enough to him. He also ends up being the character to cut Harold down to earth in the bluntest of ways. In one scene Harold catches Wilf attempting to steal the glittery hanging ornament he'd purchased at Exeter Cathedral and had earmarked as a present for Queenie. Wilf's knee-jerk defence is to remind Harold that "It's just a piece of glass." It coincides with the upsetting discovery that Wilf is still using drugs; his words are a sharp reminder to Harold of the futility of what he is doing. However grand his gesture and however noble his intentions, he will not save Queenie simply by walking to her, much as he will not cure Wilf of his substance addictions. Wilf himself has grown all-too aware that Harold is not the Messiah he is seeking; Harold awakens the following morning to find that his surrogate son has opted out of the pilgrimage and vanished without a trace.

For all the cold realities underpinning Harold's story, there are times when a genuine enigmatism suggests itself. Only when Wilf joins him does Harold become aware that a dog is also mysteriously following him, and he and Wilf adopt it as a mutual pet. We might connect the dog to Harold's earlier remark that David had always wanted a dog, and how he sees his failure to get him one as indicative of his broader shortcomings as a parent. The appearance of the dog seems to reinforce the idea that Harold has, in Wilf, some hope of vicariously restoring his relationship with David. Even when Wilf disappears, Harold retains his attachment to the dog, taking it with him when he gives the remaining pilgrims the slip. The dog, though, is uninterested in accompanying Harold much further, deserting him at a bus station and forming an alliance with another traveller, a lonely young woman who presumably has a harrowing tale of her own. It seems that Harold has been mixing with the British equivalent of the Littlest Hobo, an outcome he'd anticipated in his caution against ever naming the dog (the idea of dog names as extensions of their owners' identities is another running theme of Joyce's story - an interlude from the book that does not make it into the film is Harold's encounter with a popular actor who admits to being weary of hearing from fans who've named their dog after him). The dog's fickle attentions confirm to Harold that his story is really no more unique or extraordinary than that of any other lost soul wandering the earth; the dog seems to attach itself to such individuals, and with so many out there for it to find, its wanderlust could potentially go on forever.

(Third act spoilers now follow.)

The joint departure of Wilf and the dog serves to drive home Harold's separation from David, prompting him to relive the most terrible trauma of all - the day he arrived home to find that David had hanged himself. We discover, through the letter he writes to the garage girl, how Queenie fits into the picture. Contra the narrative the world has projected onto his actions, he is not walking to Queenie because he is in love with her, but because he is indebted to her for his past mistakes. In the aftermath of David's death, he and Maureen fought constantly. Harold turned to alcohol to ease his pain and at his lowest ebb caused significant damage at the brewery, for which Queenie voluntarily took the blame and lost her job. Unbeknownst to Harold, his debt was forgiven long ago - it is revealed that,before Queenie left Devon, she'd met with Maureen and asked her to pass on the message that she had no hard feelings about what had happened. Maureen withheld Queenie's message out of spite, since she did not like the idea of Harold finding relief when she had none. Still, we suspect that this knowledge would not actually have prevented Harold from setting out for Berwick-upon-Tweed. What bothers him most about the tragedies life has thrown at him is how they were rooted in his own inaction. He allowed David's deterioration to happen by doing little to understand him, much as he allowed Queenie to face the consequences for his self-destructive fury. Walking may be a futile action in the face of what he's up against, but it is an action nevertheless, and the only thing Harold feels it's in his power to do.

Harold's story can be interpreted as a parable for how one is expected to navigate through life in general, when death is inevitable and grief is so omnipresent. Harold insists that it the process as easy as putting one foot in front of the other, but even that proves immensely difficult for much of the time. Everyone he meets has their own coping mechanism for dealing with their particular hardships. The businessman puts on a facade for six days a week, but on Thursdays finds an outlet through his clandestine affections for the young man whose trainers he licks. Martina has chosen to keep things exactly as they were when her partner left; even if it will not bring her partner back, it allows her to maintain a connection to him. In another instance of ambiguous dog ownership, she tells Harold that the dog living on her premises is her partner's dog and not her own; by projecting his ongoing ownership onto the dog he has abandoned along with her, she retains some sense of ownership over him. The garage girl reveals to Maureen that the story she told Harold wasn't true - in actuality, her aunt died, and there was nothing she or anyone could do to save her. Why she told Harold otherwise is not made explicit. Did she want to give him some thread of hope, however misguided, or was she telling Harold things as she wishes they could have been, as a means of dealing with her own grief? Wilf and the other aspiring pilgrims rally around a common cause in Harold, seeing him as some sort of beacon in the darkness when he's actually as scared and as helpless as they are. It goes without saying that his walking does not actually heal Queenie. When he finally arrives at Berwick-upon-Tweed, he enters the hospice to find Queenie unresponsive. His only recourse is to leave the souvenir he brought at Exeter hanging by her window and go his own way once more.

But then it was never Queenie he'd set out to save. The real purpose of Harold's pilgrimage was previously hinted at during a conversation with a man outside a pub (Maanuv Thiara) with whom he'd shared a packet of crisps. He'd asked if Harold was in love with Queenie and was told "No, I'm love with my wife." He has, the whole time, been trying to find his way back to Maureen, in spite of the obvious contradiction that he's spent the duration of the picture moving further away from her. Harold and Maureen have somehow managed to share the same living space for the twenty-five years following David's death, but have been further apart than the emotional equivalent of 600 miles. Harold takes such monumental steps out of his situation not simply to prove himself to Maureen, but to awaken Maureen from her inertia and to guide her through the healing process along with him. Maureen stays in Kingsbridge for most of the narrative and follows Harold's progress from afar; it is nevertheless clear that she is going through her own more subtle but no less transformative journey, in gradually coming to terms with what her husband is doing. During the height of public interest in Harold's story, he even drives out to his current location to meet him, but declines his invitation that she literally accompany him for the remainder of his journey (Harold does not extend so open an invitation to anybody else). She insists that "I do need my things", referring not to the wordly luxuries Harold has forced himself to give up, but to the daily grief she is resigned to and feels incapable of moving on from. But Maureen is more capable than she realises. By the end of his journey Harold finds that she has made her own way to Berwick-upon-Tweed, ready to take her place beside him on a public bench; for the first time in decades, they are meeting at the exact same point.

The film ends with Harold suggesting to Maureen that they go home - a return journey that, compared to the gargantuan trek he has just undertaken, consists of a single step. He and Maureen reach across to one another physically and link hands. "Home" refers not to their abode down in Kingsbridge (both of them have walked away from its austere confines, if not literally then figuratively), but to their salvaged affinity. The trauma of losing David will obviously never leave them, but they are now in a position where they might be able to face that trauma together, instead of it putting them at such disparate odds. We also see that Harold's visit has, in fact, made some difference to Queenie; in her severely deteriorated state, she is aware of the light reflecting from the ornament Harold left for her, and draws visible comfort from it. This is followed by a montage of various other people Harold encountered on his travels - the businessman, Martina and the garage girl - all responding to the ways in which light interacts with shadow in their individual surroundings, as if noticing such detail for the first time. This emphasis on light might put us in mind of a statement Wilf previously made about finding the light of God - suggesting that Harold really was the Messiah, at least to these particular individuals, and the gifts he'd given them, whether tangible or emotional, have opened the doors to their personal enlightenment? Or perhaps it all goes back further than that, to the first significant step Harold took on his pilgrimage. His modest shuffling from out of the porch way and into the sunlight brought with it the knowledge that there was a wider universe out there, in which he was a participant. The sunlight is a connective presence, and Harold's intersections with each of these characters, however cut off and harrowingly defenceless they might seem in their respective haunts, has given them some clarity on the matter that they are not alone; there is a bigger world and they have a part to play in it. The final takeaway from Harold's trek is not the grandness of his overall gesture, but the collective power of his every little step, no matter how much blood and pus he was required to shed along the way.

PS: I realise I didn't say anything about the man in a bathrobe who asks Harold if he's seen any hedgehogs today. He's my favourite character, after the businessman.