And You’ll Be a Man, My Son

The anguish that Kipling inflicted on himself and his family is the subject of My Boy Jack. Adapted by David Haig from his play of the same name, the film stars Daniel Radcliffe as Jack; Kim Cattrall as Carrie, Rudyard Kipling’s American wife; and Mr. Haig himself as Kipling.

The film was shot primarily in Ireland with an Irish crew. Though many of Kipling’s most popular early characters (Private Mulvaney in Soldiers Three, Peachey Carnehan in The Man Who Would Be King and Kim in the novel of the same name) are Irish or half-Irish, Kipling grew virulently anti-Irish in response to the rise of the Irish independence movement in the early 1900s. He called Dublin a city of “dirt and slop,” and the Irish Home Rule Bill of 1912 an invitation to “Rebellion, rapine, hate,/ Oppression, wrong and greed”. Under these circumstances Kipling must have found it mortifying to discover that Jack’s only military option was an Irish battalion.

The creators of My Boy Jack were aware of Kipling’s torturous relationship with the Irish but felt it had to be omitted from the story. For Haig, the family’s reaction to its loss was the strongest component of the drama. “The Irish nationalism was something I was prepared to sacrifice,” he said.

The film tells the story of Jack’s induction and military training; depicts the Kiplings’ squirearchal lifestyle at Bateman’s, their Jacobean manor house in Sussex. It builds rapidly to an extended trench warfare sequence, then hurls the soldiers onto the battlefield, where Jack soon disappears and is reported missing.

Next comes the more sombre aftermath, when, as Rebecca Eaton, the film’s executive producer, put it, the Kiplings must face the “unspeakable” possibility that they have lost a child, one they “have purposely put in harm’s way.”

The revelation of Jack’s fate comes with an added psychological dimension. Pvt. Michael Bowe (Martin McCann), the sole survivor of Jack’s Irish platoon, arrives at Bateman’s and gives a shattering account of Jack’s last hours. The whole family achieves a measure of catharsis, and even the self-assured bard finally disintegrates into sobbing.

The real-life Kipling never broke down. And, it can be argued, he used his art to avoid the truth, versifying that his son “was killed while laughing at some jest” and that at least “he did not shame his kind.” No one really knows how Jack died.

Asked if he thought Kipling would have liked My Boy Jack, Haig replied, “He would have resented any deepish investigation into his family.” But he said he liked to think Kipling would have found a “generosity of spirit and sensitivity” in the film.

Kipling might have been quite pleased by what is, after all, a meta-Kipling yarn. Like Harvey, the adolescent hero of Captains Courageous, Jack transcends a cosseted boyhood to become part of a manly, rigorous corps, inspiring his somewhat hapless Irish recruits, besting them in push-ups and, despite weak eyesight, in marksmanship as well. Later he leads them valiantly “over the top” and dies almost as heroically as Akela, the venerable wolf chieftain in the first Jungle Book.
-ROBERT F. MOSS (NYT)