In her devotion to her charges, Miss Rocholl is a bit too blind to the dangers they might pose to her own country while some of the girls seem genuinely innocent and naïve, others have clearly been schooled in Nazi ideals. The idea for Six Minutes to Midnight emerged from Izzard’s fascination with the school.Īs compelling as the raw idea may be, the plot of Six Minutes to Midnight could have been more finely tuned. (Izzard disclosed in December that she is transgender and uses she/her pronouns.) The Augusta-Victoria College was a real school, in operation from 1932 to 1939 the badges on the girls’ uniforms, reproduced in the movie, featured a lion rampant flanked by both a Union Jack and a swastika. Six Minutes to Midnight was written by Goddard, Izzard and Celyn Jones, and its subject has special meaning for Izzard: Her family is from Bexhill-on-Sea, and she spent a great deal of time there as a child. Even with her countrymen becoming increasingly suspicious, with good reason, of all things German, Miss Rocholl insists on believing in the basic decency of her young charges. But they’re also just girls, teenagers, and the school’s headmistress, Miss Rocholl (Judi Dench), has a great deal invested in giving them a proper English education, as well as simply keeping them safe. The attendees are all young German women from “good” families, very possibly the daughters, nieces or goddaughters of Nazi officials.
Izzard plays a teacher, Thomas Miller, who takes a job at Augusta-Victoria College, a finishing school in the coastal town of Bexhill-on-Sea that’s sort of a cross-cultural experiment between England and Germany. It’s August of 1939, and England is on the brink of a war whose scope it can’t yet imagine. Six Minutes to Midnight, an espionage drama directed by Andy Goddard and starring Eddie Izzard and Judi Dench, has a gentle spirit that you don’t expect from a period spy thriller-but then, there aren’t many spy thrillers with imperiled schoolgirls at their center.
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