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“A  TELEVISION  TRIUMPH”

John  Russell - SUNDAY EXPRESS

CAMPBELL LIVES ON IN A MOVING FILM TRIBUTE

 

The very destruction of machinery seems even to reaffirm the wonder of once its working. Only when the anonymous dead are brought back to life but the media as real humans does the guilt of our fascination begin to ruin the picture.

 

Tony Maylam’s powerful and moving film, ACROSS THE LAKE, about Donald Campbell’s fatal attempt in 1967 to break the world waterspeed record, skilfully wove in authentic film footage of Bluebird’s last run. 

 

But through the sight of the boat rearing up from Coniston Water and somersaulting still has a terrible beauty about it, the image never had the abstract anonymity of shots of some other disasters. Campbell was a national figure, his death the tragic ending to a drama followed by millions. A popular gladitorial ritual in which he literally disappeared forever from the voyeuristic public eye.

 

From the opening shots of Campbell’s blue E-Type — which like Bluebird, transcended changing fashions of style far better than Sixties clothes — director Maylam, paid quiet visual homage to the beauty of the machinery.

 

Anthony Hopkins as Campbell was superb, delicately nuancing the emotions of the man so vulnerable behind his ill-fitting patriotic shell that it is a wonder that he could go on, let alone drive himself at 320 mph to the point where he need drive no more.

 

THE TIMES

Andrew Hislop

A MAGINICENT RECREATION

OF THE LAST 60 DAYS

OF DONALD CAMPBELL

 

Across the lake was a magnificent film, moving and spooky, about the last 60 days of Donald Campbell’s life.

 

Anthony Hopkins played him with the shouting charm of a man who - between drinks and the debts and the women - suddenly looks up and sees his father’s ghost. The echoes of Hamlet were like sonar soundings, warning of invisible hazards.

 

When his Bluebird boat, her wings spread, slid into the list of Lake Coniston and the waters of the lake were yanked from under her as if a carpet was being pulled away, there was nothing left but Campbell’s fighter pilot voice reporting his own death very precisely. “Can’t see much, and the water’s very bad indeed. Getting a lot of bloody row in here. Can’t hear anything. Got the bows up, I’m going…”

 

After the bang, the rest was silence. He was breaking the water speed record when he somersaulted at 300 mph. This was in 1967, but it felt more like the Battle of Britain left over.

 

THE GUARDIAN 

Nancy Banks-Smith

THE ROLE OF

A LIFETIME FOR

HOPKINS

 

In watching Anthony Hopkins as Donald Campbell in ACROSS  THE LAKE, you were seeing one of those fusions of acting and impersonation that come once in a lifetime.

 

I haven’t been one of Hopkins’ most ardent fans - all that Welsh eloquence as Nazi smoothies in fifth rate mini-series. Nor did I ever know Donald Campbell first hand. But I remember the odour emanating from that drawn-out, doomed venture on Coniston Water, and my instincts tell me that  Hopkins had made himself more like Donald Campbell than Donald was.

 

THE DAILY MAIL

Review by Philip Purser 

TRIUMPH FOR

DOOMED DONALD

 

The performance of a lifetime came from Anthony Hopkins as Donald Campbell in the compelling film about the ill-fated water speed record attempt in ACROSS THE LAKE.

 

From the glassy stare to the dogged bravado the suspension of disbelief was total. Hopkins was Campbell.

 

The hard-drinking, hard-spending, obsessive womaniser was so real the production felt more like a documentary than a drama. And the way the footage of the crash was melded into the action by director, Tony Maylam, was brilliant. A television triumph.

 

SUNDAY EXPRESS

John Russell’s Tele-Verdict