Radiator is a delicate, finely-crafted exploration of aging

Radiator begins with an everyday nightmare: middle-aged Daniel (Daniel Cerqueira) receives a phone call from his elderly mother, Maria (Gemma Jones), asking him to come up to their Cumbrian home for a couple of days, since his ailing father Leonard (Richard Johnson) cannot move from the sofa. Once he arrives at the house, however, it is clear that things definitely aren’t right. His father has stubbornly bunkered down, and is exercising his tyrannical dominion over Maria; here is a man who, possibly in the early stages of dementia, is frustrated at his reliance on others, and acts out in the only way he knows how – psychologically taking charge of those around him. His cantankerous nature knows no bounds: in one scene he complains to Maria that she has bought the straws ‘with the corrugated neck’, while in the next he is seen snipping off their tops with the precision of an army major. Their house needs to be set in order, but Daniel isn’t up to the task. Instead the amount of clutter in the house slowly grows, infiltrating on the edges of everyone’s lives like a malignancy.

While Leonard’s prickly nature makes it difficult to warm to him, Johnson’s effective performance brings to us a sense of how helpless Leonard feels, having to get his wife and child to clean him up after using the commode. However, the beating heart of the film is with Maria, whose internal suffering is portrayed with extreme pathos by Jones in a masterful performance. With a coping mechanism that doesn’t extend past pottering around and making tea, Maria’s internal turmoil is reflected in the dramatic Cumbrian landscape, which plays a role in this film similar to that of the Norfolk Broads in 45 Years – another carefully constructed film about aging and intimacy. In a world that seems skewed against aging actors, it is extremely heartening to see that films are being made that take an unflinching look at the nature of aging, and the effects it can have on the individual.

That the film was Johnson’s last performance (he died earlier this year) adds a sense of poignancy, one that is reinforced by the fact that director Tom Fisher has mined deep within the seams of his family life. The plot of the film came from his own experiences with his aging, frail parents, and Radiator was shot in his own parent’s house in Cumbria, left untouched since their deaths. With shades of Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years and Michael Haneke’s Amour, Radiator is a subtle work, held up by powerful performances from the minute cast. The impression it leaves may be small, but it is certainly lasting.

Final Verdict: 3.5 Stars