My name is Moira Buffini.
I'm the screenwriter of
I wanted to talk about this scene for two reasons.
One of which is that it's a scene that's very, very different
in the original book.
This is the scene where the plane is about…
It comes flying down over the characters
as they're looking at the boat.
In the book, this happens at Edith's garden party,
and it happens to kind of comic effect.
I thought, if you ask for a plane to come hurtling out of the sky,
that's a very expensive thing to ask for,
and it has to be used for really, really good effect.
So, what I've used the plane for…
The plane doesn't crash in the original book,
but it does here.
Robert…
This character, Rory Lomax,
we discover he's just joined the RAF.
And we know kind of what happens
to guys who join the RAF in 1939 in Britain;
they are highly likely to die.
When he runs down and sees that the plane has crashed into the river,
what he's looking at is effectively his own mortality.
It's also a scene of action. It's not a scene of dialogue.
And just because writers also write the scenes of action,
we are actually the first person who visualises them.
You know, before the storyboard artist, before the director,
before everybody else, before the cinematographer and VFX,
the writer visualises this.
And it's that moment of Rory just seeing the pilot's face
that seems to me, this is a story about people on the cusp of a war,
and it's a way really, for the first time in the whole film
of centring this character.
They train these boys in rickety planes from the Great War.
My husband said if you want your son to die, let him join the Air Force.
They say this war will be fought in the air.
What happened, mother?
There's a little bit of improvised dialogue
between the two women on the side of the river,
between Edith and Peggy,
and the little boy, in the script,
Peggy saying, look, I'll just tell him I need looking after.
Yes?
I feel rather faint.
Oh, well, when I feel faint,
I have a good lie down and a big glass of water.
That normally does the trick.
Thank you, that's exactly what I need. Will you take my hand?
It's a lovely little improvisation.
Not every actor can improvise, but they really, really can.
And this begins to show the effect that this incident has on everybody.
These links between death and life, the past and present.
So, it's this fear, this fear of death,
the way none of us know what the future is,
that that little scene…
From thinking, how do I use this scene with the plane?
What it really does is it tips all of the action in the film
into the final act.
There's a real dead young man,
and it just sort of seems to raise the stakes for everyone.
And over the layers and layers and layers of writing draft after draft,
you just begin to find it.
It's really a process of widening and deepening,
writing a screenplay.
…back at my tent.
Would you like some?