Harold himself does not realise this right away. Though it may look like a journey turned towards the world, avoidance is essentially built into it. Walking in this way, for Harold, isn’t about meeting new people, or even admiring the landscape it’s about putting one foot in front of the other, with no time to spend on getting to know people or places in much depth. Several times, we cut from one situation to the next without so much as a goodbye. As Harold meets various strangers on his journey - offering a glass of water, or a place to rest his badly injured feet - the film does not imbue these encounters with outsized significance. It is the filmmaking here that gives us a sense of why, and how, the man keeps going.
Harold isn’t a religious man, and this belief obviously has no basis in reality - though hearing about his trip makes the lonely Queenie visibly chipper, according to her nurses. The wide-eyed Harold takes this story as his inspiration for the rationale behind his long journey: as long as he keeps walking, Queenie must keep on living. This decision is partly encouraged by a chat with a young woman at his local gas station, who casually mentions that her faith in her aunt’s recovery helped the woman heal.
But on his way to post his letter, Harold keeps walking to mailboxes further and further away, until he finally decides not to stop walking at all: he will travel the several hundred miles that separate him from Queenie, for that is the woman’s name, entirely on foot. Maureen’s non-reaction is a casually heartbreaking hint at just how common this kind of news must be for the elderly couple, and Harold’s decision to write back seems nothing more than the polite thing to do. It’s an ordinary day in their blandly decorated house in Devon when Harold receives a letter from a hospice in Berwick-upon-Tweed, written by a former colleague on her deathbed. The inciting event itself is anything but remarkable, and just as well could have passed unnoticed by the titular Harold Fry ( Jim Broadbent) and his wife Maureen ( Penelope Wilton).
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