\n<\/p>\n
In 2017, Sally Bridges-Winslet died of cancer. She was 71. It was, her youngest daughter said, \u201clike the north star just dropped out of the sky\u201d.<\/p>\n
It would have been even worse, says Kate Winslet today, had the family not pulled together. \u201cI do have tremendous amounts of peace and acceptance around what happened because of how we were able to make it for her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Winslet\u2019s eldest son, Joe, was then 13. \u201cFor him as a child, seeing that love poured into this moment was huge. And then he discovered through conversations with friends that that\u2019s so rarely the case.\u201d<\/p>\n
Six years later, in 2023, Joe decided to turn the experience into a screenplay. A few drafts and some heavy-duty casting later and it\u2019s a movie, starring Helen Mirren as dying matriarch June, Timothy Spall as her blithe husband, Bernie, plus Toni Collette (flighty hippy), Andrea Riseborough (organic fascist) and Johnny Flynn (oversensitive) as three of their children. Winslet plays the fourth (stressed exec); the film is also her directorial debut.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever much I would try to separate my own personal experience from the experience we were having as this fictional family,\u201d she says, \u201cit was almost impossible. At times I almost felt like I was living out moments of my own mother\u2019s passing that I never would have witnessed. So directing actors in a tender way without falling apart in the corner was definitely part of the challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/span>\u2018It all come flooding back\u2019 \u2026 Helen Mirren as June and Kate Winslet as Julia in Goodbye June. <\/span> Photograph: Kimberley French\/Netflix<\/p>\n The challenge was exacerbated by another she set herself: to make it as authentic as possible. Overhead boom mics were banned and crew banished once the cameras were rolling, the easier for the actors to avoid distraction. \u201cThat certainly made it all come flooding back. It felt very present. Even just the shape of the hospital room; the noises \u2013 oh God, that beep. When you\u2019ve been through it, it does get you. That sense of monotony. The corridors. That it\u2019s C17 for a Snickers in the vending machine.\u201d<\/p>\n She smiles, clear-eyed and capable; friendly, professional and extremely keen the film (which she has also produced) not be misunderstood. Does cinema have a duty to be realistic about death? \u201cIt matters to me,\u201d she says. \u201cThis is very much not the movie version of someone who is slipping away with cancer. And that was hard for Helen Mirren \u2013 not because she\u2019s vain, but because it is emotionally difficult to be that broken-down and vulnerable.\u201d<\/p>\n There are no atheists in a foxhole. If you\u2019re about to die, you\u2019re praying to somethingTimothy Spall<\/p>\n Goodbye June is a curious and winning mix of uplifting and unsparing: 60% Love Actually, 40% Michael Haneke\u2019s Amour. Mirren does indeed look very ill, in bed and straining on the loo (the tumour has blocked her bowel). Spall has been issued with some strikingly horrible stunt legs, Bernie also not being in the best of health. Everyone looks like an actual flawed human being \u2013 unusual in a Netflix Christmas movie.<\/p>\n In one showdown with Riseborough, we watch as a blotch spreads across Winslet\u2019s neck. \u201cI really appreciate that you noticed that,\u201d she says, \u201cbecause when I get overwhelmed and stressy, my neck does go red.\u201d The makeup artist flagged it; \u201cYeah, we\u2019re totally leaving that in,\u201d replied Winslet \u2013 just as she did when someone pointed out a bit of bumpy tum in her 2023 Lee Miller biopic.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m infinitely more comfortable playing characters who don\u2019t look perfect all the time, because I don\u2019t understand that as a conceit. I want audiences to be able to see something of themselves, of their reality, in the stories playing out in front of them.\u201d<\/p>\n T<\/span>he complication is that Goodbye June could be held up as an example of palliative best practice. For all its scrupulous accuracy regarding June\u2019s condition \u2013 medical experts combed the script; it all feels totally kosher \u2013 her decline unfolds in an impeccably unhurried and compassionate hospital, to which June is rushed after a fall and allowed to remain for as long as she likes. Her family \u2013 so devoted their visits are put on a rota \u2013 deck out her en suite room with plants, tinsel, furniture and a fridge. She has morphine on tap and a specialist healthcare worker, Nurse Angel (Fisayo Akinade), who goes above and beyond.<\/p>\n I think the soul does live for ever and this is a transient experience. None of us know, and that\u2019s why it\u2019s marvellousToni Collette<\/p>\n \u201cMy initial thought was: could this be far-fetched?\u201d says Akinade on the phone a few days later. But two palliative nurses \u2013 and his own mother, a carer \u2013 confirmed it wasn\u2019t. \u201cNot at all. One said: \u2018The other week, we had a party in one room; I just put the family in there and closed the door.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Setting the film in Cheltenham, rather than London, was strategic, says Winslet, so the drama wouldn\u2019t be overshadowed by chaos or overcrowding. \u201cEveryone\u2019s experience is going to be very different. But I really did find the endless warmth and outpouring of support from the palliative care team overwhelming.\u201d<\/p>\n Later, Spall points out the film isn\u2019t explicit about whether June\u2019s care is fully NHS or partially private \u2013 \u201cwhether it\u2019s a mixture of them both, you don\u2019t know\u201d \u2013 though the absence of that conversation means that I, at least, assumed the former.<\/p>\n <\/span>Johnny Flynn as Connor, Andrea Riseborough as Molly, Timothy Spall as Bernie, Kate Winslet as Julia and Fisayo Akinade as Nurse Angel in Goodbye June.<\/span> Photograph: Netflix\/PA<\/p>\n For her own part, Winslet recently said that her mother\u2019s condition necessitated moving her into a private ward at the very end of her life, about which the whole family were \u201chorribly conflicted\u201d. Spall uses both, he says: \u201cIt\u2019s a bit of a lottery, which is the fault of the system. Some places are really organised and some are really struggling. If you\u2019re lucky, you end up in a place like this one.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt was important,\u201d says Winslet firmly, \u201cto maintain June\u2019s dignity and sense of pride as a woman.\u201d At one point, her children discover June has already drawn up a care plan. \u201cShe had made her choices. Sticking to that mattered enormously. It felt very necessary not to deviate from honouring the agency she had in her own decline.\u201d<\/p>\n There is some uncertainty among June\u2019s children about when their mother realises she is never going home. Not for Winslet. \u201cI think she knows exactly what\u2019s happening. She knows that it\u2019s coming and in those quiet moments when she\u2019s alone, she is fearful.\u201d<\/p>\n I<\/span>f Winslet the director has a proxy in Goodbye June, it\u2019s not the character she plays, but June herself: the woman in the middle, orchestrating everybody while trying not to look too worried. \u201cI wanted to let everyone be free to make mistakes,\u201d she says of being on set, \u201cand never let on if I was feeling the pressure of the time-crunch. Because if you\u2019ve only got 35 days, and Helen Mirren for 16 of those days, and seven children, you have to make your days.\u201d<\/p>\n She managed this by being \u201cvery, very good at being able to see everyone and assess what they need. I\u2019d be talking to Tim one minute and then just revolving my body and engaging with Helen in a completely different way about the same exact scene. I found that really fascinating, knowing how to flip and adapt, and being open to how different and sometimes odd people can be in the greatest of ways.<\/p>\n \u201cI can count on the fingers of one hand \u2013 or less, frankly \u2013 the tricky experiences I\u2019ve had with actors across 33 years. You have to be totally non-judgmental and embrace whatever that person brings into the room.\u201d<\/p>\n We\u2019re not encouraged to ask questions in the face of death. It\u2019s not in the interests of the powers that be that we really think about our purpose on the planetJohnny Flynn<\/p>\n Spall backs this up. He first worked with Winslet in 1996 and says he always knew she would be a good director. Still, the atmosphere on Goodbye June was \u201cexceptional, considering when you look at the lineup, you go: \u2018OK, fucking hell, this could go either way.\u2019 But instantly there was this warmth and kindness. She\u2019s worked with some of the best directors in the world, had good and bad experiences, and is ultra-intelligent, ultra-open.\u201d<\/p>\n Especially with the children \u2013 whose scenes are notably unforced and charming. \u201cYou get so many directors who are afraid of kids and let the handler deal with their stuff,\u201d says Spall. Winslet, however, would set up shots with a baby on one arm, a toddler at her side, playing with another one, chatting to actors all the while. \u201cShe\u2019s a mum, you know; got three kids of her own. Knows what she\u2019s doing.\u201d<\/p>\n It is too crass, I ask her, to suggest female directors do things differently? \u201cNo,\u201d says Winslet. \u201cFemale directors do operate in a different way. I really think so, just because of our sensibility. Typically, female directors are mothers and the amount of mothering that we do in our own lives automatically transfers because you want to look after everyone. It\u2019s just an instinct. This is not to say women are better than men. I would never ever say that. But it is different.\u201d<\/p>\n I<\/span> speak to Winslet solo in a Soho hotel room. Shortly after she leaves, Riseborough and Collette come in to pay tribute to her and talk about death. Of all the cast, Collette seems happiest to engage with that tricky thing: the film\u2019s potential place in the assisted dying debate.<\/p>\n \u201cI think society in general likes to manipulate and control,\u201d she says, forthright and smiley. \u201cAnd if you can\u2019t give someone the privilege of letting go of their experience on Earth with any kind of grace and space, then that\u2019s really fucking shit, isn\u2019t it? To be able to do it in the way that they want.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Toni Collette as Helen in Goodbye June.<\/span> Photograph: Kimberley French\/Netflix<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m a Scorpio,\u201d she continues. \u201cI have a very active, passionate, spiritual life and I think the problem with humanity is that we feel so disconnected from everything else. Not just people, but from nature. We are nature. I think the soul does live for ever and this is a transient experience. None of us know, and that\u2019s why it\u2019s fucking marvellous.\u201d<\/p>\n Riseborough nods. The two women are on the same page; one just reads it out a bit more. \u201cI used to be very, very angry,\u201d says Collette, \u201cabout the fact that our very existence is a mystery. It took a lot of time to work through it. Now I just think it\u2019s beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n After a screening of the film the previous night, says Collette, she cried thinking about people spending Christmas alone: \u201cIt breaks my heart a little bit.\u201d She trails off, then slaps her knee in mock cheer: \u201cBut if they\u2019ve got Netflix, they\u2019ve got us!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very healing to see people come together over death,\u201d says Riseborough. \u201cIt may sound morbid \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not morbid!\u201d says Collette. \u201cIt\u2019s part of life. And it can be a celebration.\u201d<\/p>\n I<\/span> speak to Spall in the same room, too, alongside tea and Johnny Flynn. Spall merrily reminds us he almost died, aged 39, of leukaemia, so he\u2019s had \u201ca peek over the precipice\u201d and has a \u201cvested interest\u201d in demystifying the whole business.<\/p>\n \u201cShitting and sex and death: all are taboo and all happen all the time, but we hardly ever talk about them properly,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen someone dies, there\u2019s a ring on the bell and the milkman wants his money. That\u2019s what happened when my dad died.\u201d<\/p>\n Both men happily bat back and forth what seem to be the film\u2019s most overt nods to religion: scenes in a chapel; God\u2019s-eye camerawork; the nurse called Angel; a nativity play just as things get really critical. Dying, they agree, makes such reflection inevitable.<\/p>\n <\/span>Timothy Spall, Toni Collette, Kate Winslet, Joe Anders, Andrea Riseborough, Fisayo Akinade and Johnny Flynn.<\/span> Photograph: Suki Dhanda\/The Guardian<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s an old saying,\u201d says Spall. \u201c\u2018There are no atheists in a foxhole.\u2019 If you\u2019re at war and about to die, you\u2019re praying to something.\u201d For his part, he reads and thinks constantly about \u201ceschatological matters\u201d. Names like Meister Eckhart, Rumi and Richard Rohr tumble from him. In 2023, he mounted an exhibition of his canvases of angels in anguish.<\/p>\n Flynn listens sympathetically. Spall paints; Flynn writes and records music \u2013 songs rooted in English folklore and rural mysticism. \u201cIn Christian liturgy there\u2019s this service I love called compline,\u201d he says, \u201cwhich is basically about getting ready for bed. It\u2019s really short, but it has a sense of like: right, I\u2019ve got from here to there.\u201d<\/p>\n Female directors operate differently. The amount of mothering we do transfers automatically and you want to look after everyone. It\u2019s an instinctKate Winslet<\/p>\n Contemplation is always helpful, however final the event it marks. \u201cAnd it always boggles me, the absence of meaningful spiritual conversation around Christmas. So it is really nice to have a small sense of that energy and meditation. In society today, we\u2019re not encouraged towards asking questions in the face of death, because it\u2019s not in the interests of the powers that be that we really think about what\u2019s going on in terms of our purpose on the planet.\u201d<\/p>\n June hopes to be reincarnated as snow, or to live on through the stories told by others. Flynn\u2019s father died when he was 18; he now sings to his children a lullaby his father wrote. \u201cSo, in a way, my dad is still singing my kids to sleep, even though they never met him. And they have this really strong sense of him.\u201d<\/p>\n Spall is moved \u2013 and heartened. \u201cWhenever you are in a strain of memory, you are immortal, because you\u2019re still living in other people.\u201d And there\u2019s more, he thinks; something deeper, something spookier: \u201cJust at the moment my daughter was born, a tiny little thing, I saw everybody I knew in my family flash right past her face, like a kaleidoscope.\u201d<\/p>\n Goodbye June is a film born from a similar impulse: to keep alive those who have gone before by sharing their memory, and hoping it helps others. To encourage ghosts, not exorcise them.<\/p>\n \u201cYou learn to live with the changing shape of grief,\u201d says Winslet. \u201cAnd whether you like it or not, you might see signs of that person in places and actually feel their physical presence. Particularly at times of year when you all would come together, like Christmas. In those moments, I certainly feel my mum is still very much around.\u201d<\/p>\n Goodbye June is in cinemas from 12 December and on Netflix from 24 December<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In 2017, Sally Bridges-Winslet died of cancer. She was 71. It was, her youngest daughter said, \u201clike the north star just dropped out of the sky\u201d. It would have been even worse, says Kate Winslet today, had the family not pulled together. \u201cI do have tremendous amounts of peace and acceptance around what happened because<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37305,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[10657,15532,836,4609,12131,10332,6935,1394,6755,1411,11644],"class_list":{"0":"post-37304","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-goodbye","9":"tag-grief","10":"tag-june","11":"tag-kate","12":"tag-lived","13":"tag-moments","14":"tag-mothers","15":"tag-movies","16":"tag-passing","17":"tag-red","18":"tag-winslet"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}