Matthew Warchus gives actors room to be funny without belittling the people they play. We recommend Pride for that generosity, with the caveat that his wish to move us can make difficult things look too simple.
Fi1m perspective
Warchus puts people together and gives them time to talk. In Pride (2014), the pleasure comes from watching a cast allowed to be funny without having their characters’ convictions made ridiculous. We rate him highly here: he makes the alliance at the centre of the film worth caring about before asking us to applaud it. We laughed, then felt more moved than we expected, because the humour had given us people to care about rather than just a cause to approve.
His film career has been intermittent, alongside substantial work in theatre. Simpatico (1999) was his first feature, a Sam Shepard adaptation which he directed and co-wrote. Pride was only his second feature, with the stage production of Matilda the Musical (2010) coming between them. The early screen work attracted less enthusiasm than his theatre; Pride gives us good reason to take him seriously as a film director without needing to consult the stage notices.
The reservation is how tidily Pride handles the difficulties of solidarity. Its screenplay does some determined nudging towards tears, and Warchus does not always resist the temptation to make things reassuring. We would have preferred a little less help deciding how to feel. But the cast earns most of the uplift, and his willingness to let a social comedy be pleasurable is worth defending.
Writers Stephen Beresford and Dennis Kelly, and composer and lyricist Tim Minchin, are among his collaborators. Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical (2022) takes a musical he directed on stage and rethinks it for the screen. His interest in making relationships matter amid the spectacle is a sound one, though Matilda also suggests that he can manage unruliness a little too carefully. Start with Pride, and allow for a screenplay that occasionally insists on the response its actors have already earned.
Biography
Matthew Warchus is an English theatre director, playwright and filmmaker. He was born on 24 October 1966 in Rochester, Kent, and studied at Bristol University.
Warchus has directed numerous stage productions in the West End and on Broadway, and has been Artistic Director of London’s The Old Vic since 2015. His feature films as director are Simpatico (1999), Pride (2014) and Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical (2022). He is married to actress Lauren Ward.
