Brexit broke a lot of people’s brains. In one corner, the nationalists who get upset if someone forgets to wear a poppy or, god-forbid, kneels for racial justice; in the other, the Follow Back Pro EU types who never stop talking about how European they feel. It’s a never-ending national nightmare. Unable to move on, the UK is threatened with complete stagnation.
But perhaps there’s also the chance for reinvention. Not the usual kitchen-sink dramas that define so much of British cinema — calcifying misery with stories of people cheated by a heartless government. Cinema that pops off the screen, uses an array of tricks, that calls attention to itself and probes discursively and violently into the heart of Englishness, the Queen and the psychic break between ourselves and Europe… someone like Romania’s Radu Jude or Mexico’s Michel Franco.
Enter Alice, Through the Looking: À la recherche d’un lapin perdu. The multilingual title, referencing Lewis Carroll and Marcel Proust in the same breath, shows off the film’s often exhausting ambition, attempting to create a kitchen-sink fantasy that comments on everything from the nature of art to the impossibility of storytelling to the problem of England. Incredibly ambitious for a first feature, it might falter regularly, but at least shows a willingness to inject some Godardian spirit into British filmmaking.
The French New Wave might appear on the surface to have arisen as a result of café culture, rarefied intellectualism and the influence of Hollywood cinema in Paris. While that is true to a certain extent, artists like Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais and Jean-Pierre Melville were also responding to the atrocities of the Algerian War — finding new language to explore the unimaginable. For the #FBPE-types, Brexit is still a trauma they cannot comprehend, and must revisit again and again, unable to engage in the necessary therapy needed to process their grief.
If it feels like I am digressing in my review, it’s more like I’m responding in kind to the discursive elements of Alice, Through the Looking — which meanders, refracts, retracts and contradicts itself with blinding regularity. Using Carroll’s tale as mere scaffolding for its essayistic and philosophical inquiry, it tells the story of a French girl named Alice (Saskia Axten) looking for a man named Rabbit (Elijah Rowen) after they shared a one-night stand. Sadly for her, this is just after the EU referendum; plunging the expat into a universe where nothing makes sense.
Which takes us back to the French. Godard’s aim with a film like Weekend (1967)was to cram every frame with so much symbols that the meaning was completely lost — which itself was the point. He was presumably inspired by T.S. Eliot (also making an appearance here…) whose “The Waste Land”collides so many fragments of metaphor and conversation together, it’s hard to make heads or tails of it at a first reading.
What those two have is the ability to create a love of the art as it unfolds in the moment. This film has flashes of brilliance here and there, but we are often left with empty philosophising, wooden line deliveries and awkward cutting in favour of genuinely compelling moments. Like the cameo appearances seen in Godard’s masterpiece, Slavoj Zizek’s plays himself, making comments about appearance and essence or something (I zoned out); Steven Berkoff (appearing as both mentor and actor, like Melville in Breathless (Godard, 1960)) gives feedback on cuts of the film itself; the legend Vanessa Redgrave narrates. But ultimately the film finally belongs to Donen — gravitating to film from opera, pop music and radio dramas — himself, both in its success and its failures, the jokes that land and the many (many, many) that do not. He owns it completely and if it doesn’t all work, the ambition is still to be respected.
Social realism feels completely inadequate to our current, absurd moment. If Alice, Through the Looking contains various missteps throughout its runtime, at least those are missteps in a welcome different direction.
Alice, Through the Lookingplays in the First Feature section of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, running from 12-28th November.
At DMovies, we are proudly European. We believe in the values of internationalism, diversity and tolerance. We also believe that cinema should not be confined to the borders of one nation, and that we all benefit from the plurality of cultures, visions and perspectives. The characteristics commonly associated with Brexit – nationalism, intolerance, cultural and political arrogance – are an affront to the very essence of a dirty movie. A dirty movie is a movie that brings people together, that celebrates the universality of cinema in novel and thought-provoking ways.
None of our writers support Brexit. In fact, very few people in the film industry do, except perhaps for poor multimillionaire Michael Caine. Some of our recent interviewees have expressed their reservations about the Brexit, too. An elated Mike Newell told us a few months ago: “People like me are infuriated by Brexit. Brexit’s a very bad thing. Not just culturally, turning our backs on Beethoven, but where’s the money gonna come from?”. A more magnanimous Ken Loach stated, also in an exclusive interview a few months ago: “there’s a lot of fake patriotism, xenophobia, chauvinism. I think that cinema and the left in general should communicate that people are of equal value, whatever their origin, religion, the language they speak. Everyone is our neighbour. Our working class people have more in common with the working class of other European countries than with our ruling class.”
So we came up with a list of 10 dirty movies that investigate – at times directly and other times poetically and obliquely – the various phenomena that triggered Brexit, from overt and rabid racism to a general discontentment with the establishment and the feeling neglect in the more rural and impoverished parts of the country. We hope that these films will help viewers to reflect on the mistakes made, understand how unscrupulous politicians capitalised on these problems and sentiments, and restore our trust in a diverse, tolerant and inclusive Britain. We believe that the UK will eventually heal these wounds and rejoin the EU.
These films are listed in alphabetical order. Click on the film title in order to accede to each individual review.
Like a modern-day A Day in the Country(Jean Renoir, 1936), Bait observes the tension between rural and city folk and sees the darkness that misunderstanding can lead to. Edward Rowe’s increasingly desperate fisherman takes us along with him, as he lives hand to mouth and dreams of buying a boat to improve his catch. The tourists he was forced to sell his family home to, who repeatedly refer to themselves as a part of the community, keep trying to make his life even harder, though of course its all within their legal rights.
Bait is also great Brexit movie. But that’s not to say that it’s a single issue movie. This film will still be relevant long after we’ve got our blue passports, because these are battles that have always taken place, probably always will. But the way Jenkin relates past and present, generational and class divide, allows the film to take on mythic qualities.
The interviewees within this documentary are mostly in scrublands, council estates, broken down factories or a workingman’s club in areas such as the North-East of England, Northern Ireland, Clapton in Essex or the South West, describing their fears and what made them vote Brexit. The movie is was divided in two parts. We knew this was so because we were helpfully given the title “Part One: The People”, before the participants started talking. It was all vaguely interesting and amusing. The audience sometimes laughed out loud at some of the views held by this strange bunch, living somewhere outside the M25.
But there came a point when I was positively looking forward to what else we were going to get after ‘the people’, hoping that there would not be too much of it and that it was not going to go on for too long. Indeed, after “Part One: The People”, came “Part Two: The Experts. A group of half a dozen or so prominent individuals chosen to give their educated views on Brexit – one of them being Noam Chomsky.
Stephen Bannon is largely credited with the election of Donald Trump, which he describes as “a divine intervention”. Bannon remained his chief strategist until August 2017, when the two men fell out. It’s not entirely clear how close the two are right now. Nevertheless, Bannon remains very loyal to Trump’s cause and ideology. He works closely to the Republican Party. He was devastated when the GOP lost control of the House of Representatives, after the 2018 midterm elections.
The controversial political figure has made very good friends in Europe, with whom she shares many affinities. We see him meet up with Nigel Farage. They a passionate conversation about nationalism. Bannon believes that Trump’s election was a direct consequence of the Brexit referendum. “Victory begets victory”, he sums it up. We also watch him meet up with smaller and less significant leaders from the European far-right, including countries such as Belgium and Sweden.
This documentary does what the British media generally fails to do: it highlights the importance of personal privacy. In fact the UK seems to be moving precisely in the opposite direction. The highly controversial Investigatory Powers Act was passed last November with barely any objections from the political establishment, and very limited exposure in the media. The UK government now has unprecedented powers to snoop on our Internet history. While the film doesn’t highlight the UK context, if you are vaguely familiar with Tory privacy policy (or lack thereof) you might immediately realise the stark contrast.
It’s vital to note that, with Brexit, the UK may no longer be subjected to these laws, which could make the country extremely vulnerable to US corporate interests. Data privacy laws are very relaxed in the US, where an individual’s criminal and even health records are often publicly available or stored in databases with little to no protection.
This is not a film that overtly deals with Brexit. The film delves into the topics of infidelity and paternal abandonment with the thickest tongue-in-cheek, darkly flippant and ironic tone. “She had those eyes, almost as if something was wrong with her” Irfan (Asim Chaudry) tells Omar (Antonio Aakeel) about meeting Omar’s mother. Aakeel and Chaudry are on fine form, but Jack Carroll, playing the disabled Pete, is the real scene-stealer. Simply watching him trying to act anything but impish in a seduction scene (across from the sultry Natalie Davies) shows a comedic talent that stands beside the decided discomfiture of Peter Sellers and Stan Laurel.
Kevin Eldon, Johnny Vegas and Hayley Tammaddon punch up the supporting cast with strong supporting performances, with the right hint of subtle xenophobia. Despite his background, Omar’s foster mother suggests that he belong with “his own” (pointing to his Indian father), a particularly potent and shocking moment and one that supports an exclusivist England that voted for Brexit and one that touches on an all too potent nerve.
It’s too easy to take most British WW2 movies (e.g. Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan, 2017) and claim they bolster the idea of Brexit – Britain alone against the world, defeating the dastardly Germans and so on. Hurricane is different. Its Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots are refugees from the Polish Air Force, wiped out by the Luftwaffe in a mere three days and kept on ice by Britain’s xenophobic War Office following their arrival in England. When they’re finally allowed into the air, these Poles turn out to be much better fighter pilots than the majority of Brits who are being slaughtered by the enemy at an alarming rate. Indeed, it’s the Polish pilots that turn the Battle of Britain around.
Hurricane is named after the RAF’s most widely used fighter aircraft and those portrayed here, at least when flying, are computer generated. Much of the CG work has been carried out in India (nothing wrong with that) on the cheap. The aircraft looks like computer models partly because no-one’s bothered to dirty them up and partly because there’s no attempt at reflecting the weather on their metal surfaces as real flying aircraft surfaces would do. Consequently, the flying sequences have an air of unreality about them which a little more budgetary spending in the right places could easily have fixed.
This British comedy about haggling mother and son accidentally shipped to Morocco humanises refugees and also functions as a trope for Brexit.The essential misunderstanding between our heroes and their Spanish and French counterparts has overtones of Brexit negotiations, in which none of the countries can seemingly surmise what the other wants. While these later scenes meander at times, and rely on just a little too much flat sexual humour, they do get at the heart of why Britain and the rest of Europe seemingly can never properly get on.
Complemented by handsome photography of the Mediterranean Coastline and the Pyrenees, the rugged beauty of both Spain and France shows us what we are missing out!
Mihai (Cristanel Hogas) is an immigrant. And as such he is divided between two nations. His beautiful wife and his young daughter dwell in Romania. Mihai is in London, where he toils as a construction worker, presumably in order to save money and provide a better future for his family. His relationship with his family is vibrant and colourful, while his life in the UK is sombre and colourless.
Because the movie is not entirely chronological, there are hints of the disclosure in the very opening sequence. The outcome looks bleak yet inevitable. And it raises a number of questions: Could the psychological wounds of Brexit could stay open for decades? How will the “orphaned” generations react to having their king (and their kingdom) taken away from them? Is it possible that the young may seek justice with their hands? Is warring the only road towards redemption? One thing looks certain: solidarity has collapsed (perhaps to the point of no return), and the future is not bright.
It’s time to look back and evaluate what has been achieved since the referendum in 2016. Postcards from the 48%, as the title suggests, is a proud Remainer of a film. It lays out solid reasons as to why Brexit is insane, and the UK has been mis-sold a fantasy. It’s also a call to action: there’s still time to reverse a catastrophe. It’s mandatory viewing for those looking to consolidate their Remain views and opinions, and also for those in doubt.
A very pertinent analogy is made at the end of the movie. If you buy a house and find out it sits on a sinkhole, you should be able to to challenge your purchase. That’s why Britain should be given a second referendum and the opportunity to challenge the 2016 vote, which was heavily influenced by fallacies and lies.
The devastating effects of gentrification are meticulously observed in documentary The Street, a scathing indictment of Tory austerity over the past four years. An empathetic portrait of a community in flux, it doubles up as a wide-spanning lament for a country that has seemingly lost its way.
As the double infliction of Brexit and Grenfell Tower impose even greater mental and physical harm upon the local population, the tragedy of Hoxton Street over the past four years becomes the tragedy of London, and by extension, the UK itself. Do the government care about working class people at all? Judging from this film, all evidence points to the contrary. While pointedly didactic (it may as well have said “Vote Labour” at the end) it earns the right to be, caring deeply for its subjects and begging for an empathetic solution.
Mihai (Cristanel Hogas) is an immigrant. And as such he is divided between two nations. His beautiful wife and his young daughter dwell in Romania. Mihai is in London, where he toils as a construction worker, presumably in order to save money and provide a better future for his family. His relationship with his family is vibrant and colourful, while his life in the UK is sombre and colourless. This is emphasised by the photography, which switches from plush tones to black and white according to the geography and the protagonist’s state-of-mind.
The young Romanian gave up his own personal kingdom, complete with queen and little princess, in favour of a faraway and hardly hospitable Kingdom. He hasn’t seen his beloved ones in two years, he confides to a coworker. The United Kingdom is portrayed as a dark and divided nation. Immigrants are everywhere: there are Romanian and Bulgarian construction workers, and a Syrian refugee working in the local convenience store. Yet these people are not integrated into the heart of a nation that has become increasingly immigration-hostile and downright racist.
The action takes place shortly after the Brexit referendum. Enthusiastic Remainers are campaigning on the streets: “Not in Hackney, not in Brixton, not in our name, we want to Remain”. But the bigots are equally empowered, and the repression expresses itself in other shapes and forms. Mihai and other immigrants lose their job due to the prospect of leaving the EU, and Mihai has to work as a handyman in order to make ends meet. And he encounters violence on the streets: “Stop stealing our jobs and benefits, go back to your country”.
Memento Amare is a movie about wanting to move on, but being held back because of perverse circumstances. It is not a didactic and linear drama. The narrative is complex and multilayered. It zigzags back and forth: in time, between countries, between reality, allegory and imagination. Viewers are made to wear to shoes of a hard-working economic immigrant, and to experience his roller-coaster emotions and split allegiances.
Because the movie is not entirely chronological, there are hints of the disclosure in the very opening sequence. The outcome looks bleak yet inevitable. And it raises a number of questions: Could the psychological wounds of Brexit could stay open for decades? How will the “orphaned” generations react to having their king (and their kingdom) taken away from them? Is it possible that the young may seek justice with their hands? Is warring the only road towards redemption? One thing looks certain: solidarity has collapsed (perhaps to the point of no return), and the future is not bright.
In response to the ongoing recovery following the 2008 financial crisis, which saw Britain enter a period of austerity, former Prime Minister David Cameron’s message was that we were all in this together. Just shy of a decade later, Theresa May in her Brexit speech to the House of Commons in March of 2017 said, “…when I sit around the negotiating table in the months ahead, I will represent every person in the United Kingdom – young and old, rich and poor, city, town, country and all the villages and hamlets in between.”
What we hear in these disingenuous words are patriotic pandering to the masses. These are words chosen for effect, with the specific intent of convincing us that they are our champions or representatives. Yet of concern is how to the political elite, the diverse life experiences are an abstract concept, and their words or political spiel becomes a disingenuous version of the American Dream, better termed the “aspirational society”. And it is here that James Gardner’s feature debut Jellyfish is a scathing social and political indictment, bursting their proverbial bubble of a utopian dream of British unity.
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A stinging piece of filmmaking
Set in Margate, Jellyfish centres around 15-year old Sarah Taylor, who between struggling to get along with her school classmates and dealing with her overbearing boss at the amusement arcade, is forced to look after her unstable mother and two younger siblings. One day her drama teacher challenges her volatility, suggesting she look to devise a stand-up comedy routine for the graduation showcase.
From city bankers and financiers to Margate’s 15-year old vulnerable adolescent. From a former PM claiming we were all in it together, who owned shares in an off-shore investment fund, and May’s own financial interests secured in blind trusts, to a vulnerable young person giving hand jobs out the back of the amusement arcade to top up her part time wage, even conning men on the prowl late at night. While rich and poor, like so many words or phrases are abstract terms in political spiel, they have a real meaning for those they describe. Gardner’s film is a piece of socially conscious filmmaking, with its finger on the pulse of our contemporary society, that pierces the disingenuous.
So, is Jellyfish a fictional dystopia, or is it the truth beneath the lies of a disingenuous political system – one motivated by personal agenda and ideology?
Yes, Sarah is a fictional character played by an actress, but a film does not exist in a vacuum, especially cinema that leans towards social realist cinema. Similarly to the cinema of Mike Leigh and Ken Loach, it captures a snapshot of genuine experiences of the impoverished in our society. What this hopefully achieves is to create a greater empathy for individuals whose lives are blighted by such struggles as Sarah’s, using visual storytelling in order to create a visceral emotional understanding.
With its finger on the pulse, Jellyfish is in a unique position to humanise what the mainstream news media struggles to – the latter prone to evoking shock and anger. However, by taking us inside of the experiences of the impoverished, Gardner allows genuine empathy to flourish. Sarah is not only a victim of her situation and an ineffective social infrastructure, she is also a human being that can empower herself if supported by her society, and her rousing performance at the graduation show, of teacher and student empowering one another, is a testament of this.
Brexit has become the proverbial blame game for Britain’s inadequacies, echoing U.S President Donald Trump’s pulling out of storage Ronald Reagan’s “Make America Great Again” slogan. Ironically, it was Reagan and Margaret Thatcher that would play a significant role in deregulating the financial sector, that led to the 2008 crisis. If history has taught us a lesson, it is that a nation’s pursuit of greatness or prosperity leads to a greater division between the rich and the poor. The pursuit of British independence from the European Union has created what is effectively a smokescreen for the Tory government to install the Universal Credit system, criticised heavily for its ineffectiveness. Taylor’s sexual activities echoes recent concerns raised in the tabloids of March this year, reports of “survival sex”, of women on Universal Credit forced to turn to prostitution in order to survive.
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Very Brexit problems
Gardner’s films shows a dystopian truth beneath the disingenuous political system – of a PM who on the one hand asserts she is champion of the poor, yet compounds their poverty by supporting a withdrawal from the EU’ that has seen Labour opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn unable to fully challenge the failings of the Universal Credit system.
In one scene, the camera pulls back and leaves Sarah her in the managers office, where she is sexually assaulted. A character leads us on the journey through a story, and this is important to consider in looking at Jellyfish as a political critique. Gardner has delivered a genuine message of a Britain fractured, and while as a nation or a union of four nations we are a part of the Brexit narrative, sub-plots divide the life experiences of a diverse population. The abandonment of Sarah should act as a reminder of how connections are a matter of convenience or necessity, and just as she is necessary to the story, and May and Cameron had to appeal to the country, this connection can be terminated at any point by the person or persons who hold the power in the relationship.
Gardner through his decision to abandon Sarah becomes a metaphor of the British government, echoing the manipulative political machinations, specifically how Brexit juxtaposed with Universal Credit, the current political Tory elite are uninterested in uniting the country. Yet more poignantly, Sarah’s unseen suffering taps into a deeper feeling that has followed Brexit – of individuals no longer represented by the system, left to feel essentially invisible, as the rich and wealthy leading Tories gamble with future stability, selling off parts of the NHS in trade deals with Trump’s America. And who will be the one’s that will pay the price for these choices? The Sarah Taylor’s of our country, whose life experiences are an abstract concept to those individuals in power.
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Redemption through creativity
Jellyfish by its conclusion is a mix of cautionary optimism, remaining cynical towards the political establishment. It is indeed a celebration of the creative expression of the individual, and how art is a unifying force. Sarah finds a means to express herself and connect with people in a way she had previously been unable to, but beyond the end credits, Jellyfish is a cautionary tale of aspiration. The question lingers on what follows this momentary success for Sarah? Will she be allowed to succeed, to overcome her social and economic status, or will she remain stranded in an impoverished existence? The creativity of her comedy as a means of expression, in this age of austerity in which arts funding and creative careers are facing increasingly difficult times, leaves one with the impression that there is caution to be applied to aspiration. It calls for cynicism towards the political system that represents a select few – arts and creatives often a justified sacrifice.
Not every one is represented, but like Sarah in that room, there are those of us that abandoned or overlooked, and in this adversarial era of Brexit, it is the political elite pursuing their own agendas and self-interest. Can they really be said to be representing us all, or even a majority? The main two parties fight inner battles amongst their ranks, while other parties including the Liberal Democrats and The Greens are fighting to get the message across that they hear our voice. Yet whose voice? Beyond Brexit, there are sub-plots impacting ordinary Britons, and the adversarial disagreement between ‘Remain’ and ‘Leave’ only threatens to increase the hardships of the most vulnerable in our society.
Jellyfish is available on digital HD on Monday, June 24th.
This is one of the best, most distinctive, and formally stimulating films at Berlinale, while also a fully accessible, funny movie that draws unbearable tension out of pulling pints and nodding heads. Bait takes place in the height of Summer, though you wouldn’t know it from the murky black and white cinematography. As a Cornish fishing village is swamped by tourists tensions are on the rise after a rich city family has bought up a street’s worth of property and turned them into Airbnbs.
Like a modern-day A Day in the Country(Jean Renoir, 1936), Bait observes the tension between rural and city folk and sees the darkness to which such misunderstanding can lead. Edward Rowe’s increasingly desperate fisherman takes us along with him, as he lives hand to mouth and dreams of buying a boat to improve his catch. The tourists he was forced to sell his family home to, who repeatedly refer to themselves as a part of the community, keep trying to make his life even harder, though of course its all within their legal rights.
Bait is also great Brexit movie. But that’s not to say that it’s a single issue movie. This film will still be relevant long after we’ve got our blue passports, because these are battles that have always taken place, probably always will. But the way Jenkin relates past and present, generational and class divide, allows the film to take on mythic qualities.
That is motivated in part by the extraordinary formalism of the film, which features sustained use of extreme close-ups and rapid-fire editing. Rarely does a shot last more than 6 seconds. So when it does, you feel the stretch of time and movement across the frame. It controls you with that rhythm, toys with your heartbeat. Every cut manages to extend time by sort of starting again, a Bressonian method of separating people. Restricting perspective in this case actually spreads it, we see the community in snatches, views of the village through open doors or window panes. We hear things that we don’t see. This forces us to complete the village, to fill in the gaps.
One bravura moment has two conversations occur simultaneously, with each cut to a different face as the actor says their line. It almost moves too fast to follow, this constant dislocation between faces pushes you into the harsh anxiety within the pub, as you try to catch up on one conversation while falling behind on another. It’s a radical moment of sound design, I feel like I witnessed something akin to when M*A*S*H (Robert Altman, 1970)premiered, and audiences complained about its non-intelligibility. But this is almost the inverse of Altman’s maximalism, where the cacophony is achieved by stripping away elements from the scene.
This tableau approach to the framing of each shot means that the characters become figural, expressions of their status within the town, and the larger social class system. But within that, the actors give such spirited performances that mere gestures count for everything. When Simon Shepherd’s uber-Tory pulls a flat face at our fisherman to shut him down, his pout and sagging jowls belie an entire personality, an entire class of person who will keep on taking what they believe should be theirs.
Jenkin also uses this approach to turn his faces into the folkloric. The local pub is covered in statues of British insignia – so people look at the bust of Queen Victoria bust as though it’s a person, and Jenkin treats it as though that is the case. It’s a pub crowded with faces, British portraits in shadow, macabre and demonic, like faces in a Welles film.
Bait is real tactile cinema. The 16mm grain, the scratches and the flickers of light draw our relationship to these spaces. And those objects, which our characters have lived with all their lives and are seeing reappropriated for the sake of a holiday, become increasingly important to the film’s escalating sense of dread. When this film makes it into cinemas, it needs to be seen. Because nothing else coming out of Britain right now has the same rage or daring as this.
Bait premiered at the Berlinale in February, when this piece was originally written. It’s out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, August 30th. Available on various VoD platforms as of January 2023.
This is a film thatwastes no time getting started. Within the space of just 10 minutes, our central characters, mother Olga (Kierston Wareing) and son Ron (Tommy French) have an argument over stolen cheese, go for a shop at a petrol station and accidentally crash into an open shipping container bound for Morocco. Initially thinking they are in the afterlife, they find themselves stranded in a foreign land with no papers, no easy way to get back, and only each other for company.
It’s an action-first, character-second beginning that leaves us breathlessly catching up with the endlessly bickering odd-couple as they navigate their way back, humorously tackling everything from the refugee crisis to Britain’s relationship with Europe to the difficulties of truly connecting with your family.
Zipping nicely along from one wacky scenario to another, and coming in at a neat 86 minutes, this is a picaresque comedy that doubles up as a grand tour of Western Europe. While extremely broad in both its characterisation and comic chops, it’s grounded by the strong performances of Wareing and French, who locate the very real emotion of familial conflict to anchor this road movie on.
Why don’t they just fly straight back? Well it turns out that Ron isn’t actually a British citizen, and that his dad, long-thought dead, is actually a Frenchman – when Ron asks why they visited their “dad’s grave” every year, Olga replies that it was “good for your mental health”. In typical British fashion, the embassy cannot do much to help, leading the two of them to attempt the long way round. The early scenes, depicting paperless Brits stranded in a strange land, are the best in the movie, flipping refugee clichés on their head.
Not only does Ron end up getting a job as a taxi driver who doesn’t speak the native language, but they even attempt to cross over to Spain in a small and overcrowded dinghy. Done with too much heavy-handedness these types of scenes could be rather crass, but they gather their humour here by focusing entirely on the dim-witted Brits without resorting to North African stereotypes. Humanising the depictions that have been used to reduce them to statistics in the media, the king of thing is to make British people see themselves in the shoes of refugees or economic migrants.
Ammunition is reserved, however, for our European neighbours, Spain and France, who are seen respectively as sneaky drug traffickers and natural born philanderers. The essential misunderstanding between our heroes and their Spanish and French counterparts has overtones of Brexit negotiations, in which none of the countries can seemingly surmise what the other wants. While these later scenes meander at times, and rely on just a little too much flat sexual humour, they do get at the heart of why Britain and the rest of Europe seemingly can never properly get on.
Complemented by handsome photography of the Mediterranean Coastline and the Pyrenees, the rugged beauty of both Spain and France shows us what we are missing, making I Love My Mum’s 30 March 2019 release date (the day after the UK’s scheduled exit from the EU – that is, if it does ever come to fruition) rather apt indeed.
It premiered at the 38th Cambridge Film Festival in 2018, when this piece was originally written. It’s out in cinemas Friday, May 31st.
It’s too easy to take most British WW2 movies (e.g. Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan, 2017) and claim they bolster the idea of Brexit – Britain alone against the world, defeating the dastardly Germans and so on. Hurricane is different. Its Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots are refugees from the Polish Air Force, wiped out by the Luftwaffe in a mere three days and kept on ice by Britain’s xenophobic War Office following their arrival in England. When they’re finally allowed into the air, these Poles turn out to be much better fighter pilots than the majority of Brits who are being slaughtered by the enemy at an alarming rate. Indeed, it’s the Polish pilots that turn the Battle of Britain around.
Hurricane is named after the RAF’s most widely used fighter aircraft and those portrayed here, at least when flying, are computer generated. Much of the CG work has been carried out in India (nothing wrong with that) on the cheap. The aircraft looks like computer models partly because no-one’s bothered to dirty them up and partly because there’s no attempt at reflecting the weather on their metal surfaces as real flying aircraft surfaces would do. Consequently, the flying sequences have an air of unreality about them which a little more budgetary spending in the right places could easily have fixed.
Other elements more than compensate for the cost-cutting CG, however. The dogfight sequences are well put together and grippingly paced. The main characters are efficiently written and the film covers a lot of historical ground. The pilots speak Polish with subtitles when they’re alone together while the Brits speak English. There’s more than enough aerial combat to satisfy audiences, yet the scenes on the ground prove equally compelling – interaction between cocky Polish pilots who know they’re up to the job and members of the British command convinced the bloody foreigners are not, Poles fraternising with the native women and scenes in the air command bunker with personnel moving tokens representing groups of aircraft round a large table.
Welshman Iwan Rheon (from Game Of Thrones) else makes a fairly convincing Polish lead, but the surprise outstanding performance comes from decidedly carnal, command bunker girl Stefanie Martini who spends much of her free time pursuing pilots including the Poles. “A few years ago, I’d have been called a tart, but today I’m just a good sport.” she says enthusiastically.
If the film doesn’t make a big thing of British racism, it’s present nonetheless. Victory in Europe Day (VE Day) celebrations are overshadowed by the British government’s swift moves to send the Poles back home following a survey claiming 56% of Brits wanted this. That’s set against other, less racist images when Jan (Rheon) is helped down from dangling by his parachute from a street lamp by an old couple who invite him into their home, discuss their own son’s death in the conflict then feed the airman a thick and tasty sandwich. If the British establishment doesn’t like Poles much, the ordinary Brits pictured here get on perfectly well with them.
That’s a far cry from some of the anti-foreigner sentiment and the ascendancy of the far-right seen in this country since the Referendum. The suggestion here that immigrants to Britain can make a valuable contribution is refreshing indeed in the current political climate.
Hurricane is out in the UK on Friday, September 7th. Watch the film trailer below:
As the voice of Brexit drones on, it’s time to look back and evaluate what has been achieved since the referendum in 2016. Postcards from the 48%, as the title suggests, is a proud Remainer of a film. It lays out solid reasons as to why Brexit is insane, and the UK has been mis-sold a fantasy. It’s also a call to action: there’s still time to reverse a catastrophe. It’s mandatory viewing for those looking to consolidate their Remain views and opinions, and also for those in doubt.
Some of the arguments in the film are very familiar to most of us: only 27% of the UK population – 17,410,742 people – voted to leave the EU, key groups such as under-18s and EU citizens were denied a vote, the referendum was purely consultative and, perhaps most significantly, the Leave pledges were entirely preposterous (such as the infamous £350m for NHS painted on a bus).
But the film also investigates other reasons why the outcome of the referendum must be questioned and it does not represent the hackneyed “will of the people” mantra. It reveals that only 1.1% of the UK budget was destined to the EU. We also learn that fishery quotes were set up by the UK, not by EU, and that we will always remain subjected to international standards and laws, whether we remain in the EU or not, thereby undermining the “sovereignty” argument. “We will be poorer, and we will be weaker on the world stage, and that’s a crying shame”, viewers are told.The former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg notes that Brexit is “cloaked in patriotism, and that’s very un-British”. The current Lib Dem leader Vince Cable voices very similar opinions. Conservative and Labour Remainers are also featured in the documentary, if to a lesser extent. They include the Tory peeress Baroness Wheatcroft.
The hard border in Ireland and the likely collapse of the Good Friday Agreement is probably the most urgent reason why she should stop Brexit, and the one the film investigates in more depth. We learn that no less than 10,000 bomb attacks between 1969 and 2001 claimed the lives of more than 2,300 people, in what is euphemistically described as The Troubles. The director visits the most notable points-of-pain of Northern Ireland, such as Derry and Omagh, where he engages in conversations with locals about the eventual return of “borderism”. He crosses a picturesque bridge in at tiny Donegal village of Pettigo, reminding viewers that border controls could soon be implemented there, thereby shattering peace and destroying the quaint and idyllic quality of the community. The helmer is often in front of the camera, making this an intimate and conversational piece of filmmaking.
Other highlights include an elderly voter confessing that he illegally handed his vote to his 17-year-old grandson, whose future depends on the EU. A woman recalls her father crying at the formation of the EU, as that would prevent future slaughters such as in WW2. The labour argument is made during a visit to a soap manufacturer. The employer explains that migrant workers are not easily replaceable by British people, and he provides figure to support his views.
A very pertinent analogy is made at the end of the movie. If you buy a house and find out it sits on a sinkhole, you should be able to to challenge your purchase. That’s why Britain should be given a second referendum and the opportunity to challenge the 2016 vote, which was heavily influenced by fallacies and lies.
One question, however, remains unanswered in the doc. A question that became a chant in the last protest two weeks ago, when more than 100,000 people gathered in front of Parliament in order to demand a vote on the final Brexit deal: “Where is Jeremy Corbyn???”. The controversial Labour leader, who campaigned for Remain but has since embraced Brexit and even a departure from the Single Market, is virtually absent in Postcards from the 48%. His name isn’t even mentioned.
Postcards from the 48% was out in cinemas on Friday, July 6th. It’s available on VoD in March 2019).
Senan (Sam Keeley) is haunted by his past. Blood. Eating human flesh. He had no control after Conor (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor) bit him. Senan killed his brother. Now, years after the outbreak of the Maze virus across Europe, some 75% of former zombies have been returned to human consciousness but retain the memory of anti-social actions they could not control. Senan is one of their number, the cured. That leaves another 25% locked away in institutions. While the 25% sense that the 75% are like them and don’t attack them, they still pose a threat to everyone else who was never infected.
Senan has been reassigned to live with his bereaved sister-in-law Abbie (a terrific Ellen Page) who has agreed to take him in while he readjusts to society. He’s lucky: as the army’s Captain Cantor (Stuart Graham) tells him, not everyone’s family will have them back after what occurred. Just ask Conor: his father blames him for the death of his mother. Ireland is divided over the situation. The government talks of humane extermination for the 25%. Signs of a C with a diagonal slash though it have become the symbol to express anger towards the cured and there are ugly scenes and fighting on the streets.
Filmed amidst the familiar bricks and mortar of the streets of Northern Ireland, this is the zombie movie recast as a brutal essay on difference: us and them. People divided by forces not of their own making. Abbie just wants to raise her small son Cillian and feels tension between herself and the anti-cured world, between herself and Senan who may know exactly how her husband died, and between herself and Conor who she doesn’t trust but who feels an attraction towards her.
The cured are required to take low social position jobs as part of their reintegration and Senan finds himself assigned as assistant to the kindly Dr Lyons (Paula Malcomson) who is engaged on the treatment of virus sufferer Jo (Hilda Fay) for whom she believes a cure can be found.
Conor becomes increasingly angered by the situation and rallies other cured to take action, starting with firebombing houses and ending, towards the finale, with the release of the 25% “because they’re like us”. With Senan becoming increasingly hostile to Conor’s actions, the two are set for a head on collision with Abbie’s son caught in the middle in a heart-stopping climax.
A zombie movie with a difference, this uses the genre to conjure up images of prejudice, sectarianism and the fuelling of hate. Images speak to Northern Ireland’s past: streets where it isn’t safe to walk, people assaulted or abused by army personnel, a masked assailant attacking a man in his family home. The narrative speaks equally to wider situations too – an Ireland divided by a Brexit border, a Britain rebooted as a Hostile Environment, a Europe set against refugees from outside, apartheid, the Holocaust… any situation where fear pits one group against another. That’s really not what you expect from a zombie movie.
Consequently, one wonders exactly what zombie movie fans will make of it. On the flip side, it remains to be seen whether art movie lovers who wouldn’t normally go near something like this can be persuaded to endure the violence and mayhem for the sake of the searing dramatic content. This being a brave attempt at something very different, which comes off, you should make the effort to go and watch it.
The Cured is out in the UK on Friday, May 11th. Watch the film trailer below:
The past 12 months saw three major British war drama hit UK cinemas to a lot of noise. All three dealt with WW2. First came Jonathan Teplitzky’s Churchill last June, then the following month Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk was released, and finally Joe Wright’s Darkest Hour – with an Oscar-baiting performance by Gary Oldman, pictured below twice – was launched last Friday in cinemas across every corner of the country.
The fact that these three films take place during WW2 isn’t the only similarity they have. These movies also have a subliminal message of tub-thumping nationalism and anti-German resentment (and, by extension, anti-European) in common, which resonates with Brexiters. In other words, while not overtly pro-Brexit, these movies instill a sense of self-righteousness and moral superiority in the British people. The analogy is quite simple: the Germans are evil, Europe is under their control and therefore we must out.
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The writing is NOT on the wall
I’m not saying Teplitzky, Nolan and Wright are rabid nationalists and everyone who worked on these films is pro-Brexit. Subliminal messages are far more nuanced, often beyond the control of the filmmaker. They are driven by a much broader historical narrative that paints British soldiers and Churchill as heroes as the Germans as plain evil. There’s a dangerous Manichaeism, which conveniently omits the dark side of Churchill and the British Empire. It’s hardly surprising Nigel Farage (pictured at the top of this article) loved Dunkirk so much, and I would hazard a guess he would also like the other two films.
Churchill was not an nice human being. He was indeed an excellent war strategist, but also a ruthless one for that matter. He is directly responsible for the deaths of three million people in the Bengal famine of 1943. Churchill was driven by nationalistic values, not by solidarity with people in gas chambers. He was similar to Hitler on many levels: he was a racist, a vocal advocate of gassing and an outspoken supporter of eugenics (he once wrote: “I feel that the source from which the stream of madness is fed should be CUT OFF and sealed up before another year has passed”, in reference to “the unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the feeble-minded and insane classes”).
It’s also a mistake to think Churchill was pro-European and would likely be anti-Brexit (I used to think this myself, until I was challenged by one of our sharp readers). Churchill indeed believed in a United States of Europe, but he did not envisage the UK being part of it. His imperialistic values did not fit in with European unity. He once famously said: “We have our own dream and our own task. We are with Europe, but not of it. We are linked but not combined. We are interested and associated but not absorbed. If Britain must choose between Europe and the open sea, she must always choose the open sea.”
All in all, our mainstream cinema lacks historical balance and perspective. The perpetual demonisation of Germans and celebration of “the greatest Briton ever” in British films has played an instrumental role in energising nationalists, thereby letting the ugly beasts of xenophobia, racism and Brexit prejudices out of the cage. And now they are out of control, and no one seems to know how to capture and lock them up again. Under the Brexit logic, Brits are celebrated as war heroes, while Europeans are denounced as ingrates.
Below are some thoughts on the three films mentioned above, and why they help to bang anti-German/European resentment and thereby stoke up the Brexit narrative:
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1. Churchill (Jonathan Teplitzky, 2017):
In terms of message, Churchill is not too different from your average BBC period drama, or a film you’d catch on the History Channel. It celebrates British superiority ad infinitum. It comes under the disguise of exposing the frail and errant side of a mighty leader, but ultimately the message is quite straight forward: “the greatest Briton of all times may have been a little shaky and moody, but he cared about our soldiers and knew how to win the War. Great lad! Britain rules!”
Churchill’s boundless altruism is also constructed in the film. He has the most profound and genuine concern for the lives of the British soldiers, and he’s even willing to make the wrong decision in order to spare human lives. The film conveniently forgets that Churchill wasn’t such a pure and kind human being, and that his altruism was highly selective.
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2. Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017):
This is a movie about withdrawing from Europe, a heaven-sent analogy for frothing Brexiters. But that’s not all. It functions like a adrenaline-inducing video game or canticle, which can be easily misinterpreted. The Hans Zimmer electrifying soundtrack plays out at 140 bpm, in a tandem with your heart. Highly suggestible young people will undoubtedly leave the cinema subconsciously thinking: “wow, this is so cool. War is like a video game, what a wild ride, I want to be part of it”.
Plus there is no blood in the film, which was a conscious decision by Nolan so that he could get a PG13 certificate in the US and a 12A in the UK. These youngsters will think, again subconsciously: “war is not a bad thing at all. Worse that could happen is I will get covered in slime. I won’t get covered in blood”. That’s why a war movie should never be sanitised and made palatable to young people. These are the young people who Nigel Farage wants to recruit for his patriotic and xenophobic cause.
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3. Darkest Hour (Joe Wright, 2018):
According to this film, Churchill was a solo male figure who, in spite of his fellow parliamentarians’ doubts, stood up against a ruthless German superpower to guarantee Britain’s sovereignty. He even got a popular plebiscite mandate in an imaginary Underground sequence. Ever since the July 2016 Brexit referendum, the UK has faced an onslaught of modern Britain’s most idolised political hero. From polymer £5 notes to Churchill and Darkest Hour, there’s a creeping feeling that we’re gearing up for an epic battle.
It would be far more timely to examine Churchill’s flaws alongside his famed achievements. This is a man who spent his early political career opening concentration camps in sub-Saharan Africa, sending Black and Tan thugs after Irish Catholic civilians and advocating the use of chemical warfare against Kurdish revolutionaries in colonial Mesopotamia. This is a leader who clung onto the dying dregs of the British Empire for so long that he called for the death of Mahatma Gandhi and allowed 3 million people to starve in the 1943 Bengal famine. Is this really the sort of political legacy that 21st century post-Brexit Britain aspires to?
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Note: Richard Greenhill contributed to this piece.
Pigs might fly. And so Brexit might happen. Soon we will be getting our milk from hoses hanging down from helicopters, our potatoes thrown out of moving trains, and we will have to steal our potable water from the neighbouring countries, plus rely on international solidarity for tinned food. Sounds bizarre? Well, Brexit is bizarre. And this is my very own personal analogy between post-Brexit Britain and an independent Pimlico.
Ok, let me explain myself. This may sound a little confusing if you haven’t seen the 1949 Ealing Studios comedy Passport to Pimlico (directed by Henry Cornelius, at a time the director wasn’t too prominent). In this classic movie, a mixture of slapstick and sociopolitical satire, a street of Pimlico (now a posh London neighbourhood, not far from Buckingham Palace) becomes an independent state following the discovery of a medieval document buried underground.
The newly-formed sovereign state calls itself Burgundy, and soon “Burgundians” are basking in the perks of independence. They shun unwanted British laws (such as drinking regulations) and establish themselves as a smuggler’s paradise where “foreigners” can buy rationed goods without restrictions. A jolly good future lies ahead, it seems.
Well, not quite. Almighty Britain retaliates by shutting the frontiers and establishing border control, with passport et al. They also embargo the new sovereign state, which in turn runs out of food and water. It’s a sultry summer and a heatwave castigates Burgundians, and so they soon have to rob British water. The various London districts (Camden, Ealing and so on) join forces with the international community in order to demonstrate their solidarity with Burgundy. They literally throw and fly goods into the new state. Burgundians collect their milk from a hose hanging down from a helicopter (pictured above), a pig is flown in (below) and so on. The bizarre world that I described in the first paragraph of this article materialises.
And so the penny began to drop: Burgundy is but an illusion.
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The “independence” that never was
Passport to Pimlico isn’t just a hilarious movie. It’s the greatest mockery of independence ever made on film. It’s the perfect allegory of how enticing and yet deceitful rushed “sovereignty” can be. The lesson learnt is that a chop-chop separation is both unfeasible and undesirable. Particularly because there was never a requirement for a breakaway, and the whole process was short-sighted, driven by whimsical personal ambitions and a delusional notion of self-sufficiency. Just like Brexit.
At first, “Burgundexiteers” wallow in their newfound citizenship. “Blimey, I’m a foreigner”, cries out one of them. They can drink as much as they wish, they can eat whatever they like, they can trade as they wish, they can live as they desire, plus they can proudly boast their new national identity. But not for long. They are about to find out that such “freedom” is, in reality, a handicap. Once open borders and free movement cease the country begins to collapse. Does this sound prescient?
Very Brexit problems
The 1949 movie illustrates a very modern issue: how do you stop your “independent” country from becoming a deregulated paradise and trading mess? Brits flock to Burgundy in search of cheap rationed goods. Is this a harbinger of the post-Brexit risks? Could the UK become a fiscal paradise where foreigners come in search of lax regulations?
Just like with Brexit, the national newspapers help to drive the narrative of Burgundian independence. The headlines will ring bells to anyone vaguely familiar with the vocabulary used to describe the Brexit talks taking place right now with the EU: “door not yet closed”, “door still open, no quarrel with Britain” “talks: deadlock complete”, “Burgundy issue splits Britain” and “Burgundy bullied into submission” (see carousel above for these headlines and more). There’s even a touch of xenophobia, as the Daily Express mandates that its readers “stay out of Burgundy”. The flames of division are towering high into the air. The heat is on.
Burgundy finally realises that they are not in the position to call the shots. Instead they are vulnerable, and they have become the laughing stock of the world. A Home Office envoy warns them: “I trust you understand that the alternative is complete isolation. I do hope that moderation will prevail”. And so they begin to crush under the weight of the real decider. The final outcome is inevitable: Burgundy rejoins the UK. Is this an augury of Brexit?
Passport to Pimlico is available for viewing online on Google Play and YouTube.
