Lancaster (Fairhead, Palmer, 2022)

Written by Tom Augustine.

The Lancaster jet, or ‘the Lanc’, is a mighty bomber plane, with an immense wingspan and iconic shape that makes it recognisable to the watchers of World War II movies around the world, even if the story of the plane itself is rarely told. Only two remain capable of being airborne. Much like the many, many faces of veterans who tell the stories of Lancaster, this old warbird’s time has largely passed – but it is because of the part they had to play in winning World War II that the landscape of the modern world looks the way it does. 

At once a gripping true-life account and a vital piece of archiving, Lancaster is the central film of this month’s ‘Extraordinary Stories’ series on Rialto Channel, which demonstrates the breadth and depth of stories on offer in the modern documentary-making sphere. With titles as varied as Million Dollar Pigeons, about a little-known world of high-stakes pigeon-racing; to Girl Taken, the fascinating account of a baby stolen from her mother’s hospital bedside, only to be discovered seventeen-years later less than three kilometres from the family home, it’s a series of wild tone shifts and rapidly oscillating moods. Lancaster is a sort of grand, lionlike presence in the lineup, a film that showcases the real pleasures of traditional war documentary storytelling.

Thursday nights in June, Rialto Channel is exploring true life portraits of heroism and intrigue in the Extraordinary Stories series. 

The centrepiece, war documentary Lancaster, is an intelligent and wonderfully old-fashioned detailing of the all-important Lancaster jet, the plane that helped win World War II for the Allies.

The film is narrated with crisp, dulcet voicework by Charles Dance, who brings a sense of gravitas and authority to Lancaster, which unites a cavalcade of veterans – many in their nineties – from countries across the Commonwealth to describe their experiences in the bellies of the mighty jets. Beginning early in the war, as the Royal Air Force’s depleted and outdated arsenal is being routed by Axis forces, the veterans make no bones about the immense shift in fortunes that the Lancaster precipitated. A large chunk of the film is devoted to one extremely pivotal mission – the bombing of the dams of West Germany, captured so memorably in black-and-white classic The Dambusters (clips of which are utilised in the rendering of the action here). The result is an account that is uncommonly involving.

The film is undoubtedly a misty-eyed piece of Allied Forces nostalgia, but with sharp, precise editing to ensure the film moves along at a steady clip, and stunning aerial footage that both recreates sequences of combat and showcases the still-inspiring display of power that the Lancaster can muster, Lancaster proves to be a documentary with the capability to grip both the layman (such as myself) and the World War II aficionado alike. It takes its place alongside other serious pieces of World War documenting, which seem to emit a kind of warmth, perhaps in their method of evoking a time in which the ‘bad guys’ seemed so clear and well-defined. These documentaries are the kind your Grandad would watch on Sunday afternoons, but with a slick new coat of paint and a renewed sense of urgency. The time of the Lancaster, and those who flew them, is coming to an end – but the forces they battled are re-emerging in the world. Lancaster is a reminder of the cost of peace and the way combat defines the lives of those who lived through it in the many years to come. 

Lancaster premieres June 22, 8:30pm on Rialto Channel.

WATCH THE TRAILER HERE