My wife Janet and I watched the 2014 Mark Ruffalo, Keira Knightly musical comedy-drama "Begin Again" on Netflix recently. She liked it but didn't love it, I found less to appreciate about it aside from its somewhat accurate insight into the music recording industry in the mid-twenty teens. I thought it so lost and pretentious that the even transcendental performances of its wonderful cast, that included a 1964 Jaguar Mark X, couldn't save it from being a fluffy, soulless, and unsatisfying musically driven version of "When Harry Met Sally".
"Begin Again" is about Dan Mulligan, played by Ruffalo, a down and out record company executive who becomes professionally smitten, although we're led to believe not personally so, with Gretta James, played by Knightly, an aspiring singer he runs into at an open-mic night while he's on a massive, and I mean massive bender. The rest of the film deals with Dan attempting to produce an album featuring Gretta and, well, guess what happens next! And, no, not that.
We never find out, though, why Dan drives, of all things, a big old Jag. It's a prominent set piece in the film, but it's never disclosed why, of all fifty-year-old cars in the world, he drives something so offbeat. Oh, I know. The Mark X is just like Dan -somewhat alluring, inherently talented but innately flawed and unreliable. Err, I don't think the producers dug that deep. I bet they found it when scouting shooting locations up in Toronto and it fit the bill for what the director of the film called for; a car for Dan that was left-of-center. If that's the case, jump well done.
If anything, the Mark X adds a dash of elan to Dan even if that mystery is happenstantial. To most people, cars are appliances to get them from point A to B, us car wonks want to believe there has to be something more than needing transportation behind why some people drive cars we construe are more than utilitarian. Most often, that's not the case. For all we know, one day Dan may trade the Mark X in for a Hyundai Sonata.
The Jaguar Mark X, or "Ten", was Jaguar's big, range-topping saloon, that's Brit-talk for sedan, from 1961 to 1970. From 1965 to 1970 it was known as the "420" to highlight a bump up of displacement from 3.8- to 4.2-liters, but it was essentially the same car.
Mark X's and 420's featured much of Jaguar's latest technology found on the E-Type sports car which was also new for 1961. Dual-overhead-cam, inline six-cylinder engine, four-wheel-disc brakes, monocoque or unibody construction, double-wishbones up front and an independent rear suspension. Pretty heady stuff for the early '60's. It's styling, though? Beg to differ all you want and from some angles, like the brochure shot above, the design sort of works. From others? Well, an E-Type or Keira Knightley it ain't.
Jaguar broke their own molds with the Mark X's "pontoon" body, much of its ethos, Jaguar would emulate on their sedan designs for much of the next half-century. Jaguar replaced the Mark X ultimately with the far comelier XJ-6\12 they debuted in 1968; the XJ and Mark X were sold side-by-side through 1970. The Mark X replaced the very long in the grill Mark IX that dated back, in large part, to 1948.
With its odd proportions and being relatively elephantine, the "X" wasn't for everyone. It was intended to be competitive in North America, but it was too expensive over here for what it was - a big, heavy, thirsty Brit with American car like build quality with a questionable design. While more affordable in England, the Mark X didn't do well there either because "petrol", as they call gas, then as now, is way more expensive than it is here.
Given what it was up against even before we consider the subjectivity of its appearance, the big car that wasn't big enough for America and was too big for England, didn't stand a chance. Jaguar sold less than 25,000 of them over ten model years.
"Begin Again" is set in New York and The Big Apple makes several and very clever cameos. Technically, "Begin Again" is tight as a drum and very well acted. It's the screenwriting where it blows its head gasket.
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