There's an article in this weekend's FT by Peter Aspden about the British films in the London Film Festival. He doesn't think much of them: "Kiera Knightly floating ethereally on a hot day in a boarding school; Colin Firth palying a stammering King, under the watchful eye of Helena Bonham Carter; some unattractive Mike Leigh characters indulging in bitter-sweet conversation; some unattractive Ken Loach characters swearing profusely and threatening to beat the life out of each other...British films...have nothing to do with the concerns of ordinary people." So far, so much am I in agreement. However, it turns out that it's my fault. "...this is less the fault of British film-makers than Britain itself....of the chino-wearing, frappuccino-drinking Britain of today... Do current economic and social trends make for great cinema? We are a culture besotted by reality shows, celebrities, sport, property prices..."
In other words, British cinema is poor because the English are shallow and crass. It's interesting that when he has to name some great films, he has to go back to the 1940's and 50's. Brief Encounter at that - a film which is so clearly a metaphor for the problems of the love that dare not speak its name that I'm always amazed anyone thinks it's about straight people. More recently, what about Local Hero, Heavenly Pursuits, Gregory's Girl, Unrelated, Movern Caller, Genova, Love Actually, Croupier, Close My Eyes, Truly Madly Deeply, Land Girls, The Ploughman's Lunch, Rag Tale, Strong Language, ...... ? All of these are wonderful films mostly with fairly believable, if rather well-paid, middle-class characters and all more recent that 1945.
The problem with the crass-culture-makes-for-crass-movies thesis is that much the same could be said about the French, but no-one is as rude about French cinema. Ah. There's the thing. L'Exception Culturelle. The subsidy and encouragement by the French Government for movies.
Someone green-lights these costume dramas and underclass horrors (Eden Lake anyone?), someone fund them and people (desperate for work) agree to appear in them. Someone writes them, and other people produce and direct them. Costume dramas are the one genre England can export - Four Weddings and a Funeral is a contemporary costume drama. Movies are a business and costumes are a good bet. Underclass horrors I have no idea about, but then I don't see the attraction of football either. British films are poor because people knowingly sign up to make poor films, not because I have a take-away cappuccino from Caffe Nero of a working morning.
Writing about the contemporary world is far more demanding than it used to be, because our world is far more complicated and a lot less economically attractive. Maybe people don't want to see films about contemporary concerns because they live with the threat of unemployment, a constipated job market, increasing taxes, declining real incomes, ever-shabbier public spaces and ever-less satisfying personal relationships (because everyone's working in spirit-sapping jobs) and are surrounded by fantasy-land stories of individual strike-it-lucky successes (hello National Lottery) and vacuous self-help (The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People anyone?).
Robert McKee points out that a writer must have an understanding of the politics and economics of the world of their story. How a writer is supposed to have that when politicians, economists, bankers and academics so clearly have no grasp of it at all, well, I'm not so sure. That doesn't excuse Kidulthood - nothing could - and nor am I suggesting that the British Government should subsidise movies. But it isn't my fault that poor movies get made - I don't go to see them (except Eden Lake on DVD, which I bitterly regret ever passing in front of my eyes).
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