Coogan looks at Dench with a concerned expression as she holds a photograph.
After 50 years of searching for her son she achieved very little but instead found political journalist Martin Sixsmith Coogan who would end up taking her to America to find the truth about her son in a heart gripping and extraordinary story that celebrates human love, loss and the celebration of life.
Sturgess is fine as the dull Edward, while Beckinsale keeps her character's madness just out of sight, so both of them pale in this colourful company.
It takes place in December 1999, as the new century is about to dawn and young doctor Edward Jim Sturgess arrives at Stonehearst Lunatic Asylum in a freakishly isolated corner of England.
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The movie is currently filming on location in Detroit, Mich.
Continue reading: Stonehearst Asylum follows the plot of Edgar Allen Poe's short story The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether.
But Coogan was striving for something more than making people laugh.