"The Krays" isn't really about the famous London twin brothers who were gangsters. It's a feminist movie, about the plight of women during the Blitz in London, and particularly the collective trauma the wives of soldiers lived with when the war was over.
In one astonishing scene, the Krays' aunt gives a monologue about delivering a baby in the subway tunnels while German bombs rained down above. She had to kill the baby to protect the mother, but the mother died anyway. She imagines that if the subway tunnels are ever excavated, they'll be filled with dead babies - babies and bullets, signs of the true casualties of the war.
The women who lived through it, of course, are the only living remnants of it, and the trauma has forged a bond between them that is strong as iron. Interestingly, when one of the Krays leaves his girlfriend alone with his family, she is visibly uncomfortable. This particular sisterhood does not extend to her.
We are left wondering if this atmosphere of walking wounded produced the evil and violent Kray twins. The movie doesn't really make the connection. We see that the girlfriend, who then becomes the wife, is so unhappy in her life as a piece of property belonging to Reg Kray that she kills herself. She isn't treated as a human being by her husband, or his family. It's an easier conclusion to draw that the Krays were led to this objectifying attitude toward women by their doting, overbearing mother and ineffective father.
A problem with the movie is that wives suicide and mothers and aunts die, leaving us with... what? It's not about gangsters. It's about the war, and what the war did to its survivors, particularly the women. Without women in the picture, its purpose is removed, and the Kemps don't make that convincing gangsters.
The movie needed to be about what it was about, and only about that. There isn't enough of a connection drawn between it's major themes and the titular gangsters, for it to continue without that centre. It begins with astonishment and ends with confusion.
In one astonishing scene, the Krays' aunt gives a monologue about delivering a baby in the subway tunnels while German bombs rained down above. She had to kill the baby to protect the mother, but the mother died anyway. She imagines that if the subway tunnels are ever excavated, they'll be filled with dead babies - babies and bullets, signs of the true casualties of the war.
The women who lived through it, of course, are the only living remnants of it, and the trauma has forged a bond between them that is strong as iron. Interestingly, when one of the Krays leaves his girlfriend alone with his family, she is visibly uncomfortable. This particular sisterhood does not extend to her.
We are left wondering if this atmosphere of walking wounded produced the evil and violent Kray twins. The movie doesn't really make the connection. We see that the girlfriend, who then becomes the wife, is so unhappy in her life as a piece of property belonging to Reg Kray that she kills herself. She isn't treated as a human being by her husband, or his family. It's an easier conclusion to draw that the Krays were led to this objectifying attitude toward women by their doting, overbearing mother and ineffective father.
A problem with the movie is that wives suicide and mothers and aunts die, leaving us with... what? It's not about gangsters. It's about the war, and what the war did to its survivors, particularly the women. Without women in the picture, its purpose is removed, and the Kemps don't make that convincing gangsters.
The movie needed to be about what it was about, and only about that. There isn't enough of a connection drawn between it's major themes and the titular gangsters, for it to continue without that centre. It begins with astonishment and ends with confusion.