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Journal of Popular Film and Television, Fall, 1994. Robert Emmet Long, The Films of Merchant Ivory, New York, Abrams, 1991/97. John Pym, The Wandering Company: Twenty-One Years of Merchant Ivory Films, London and New York, BFI/Museum of Modern Art, 1983. John Pym, Merchant Ivory's English Landscapes, New York, Abrams, 1994. Sarah Casey London (1994) [Production Company: BFI Productions/Koninck Studios. Director, cinematographer and writer: Patrick Keiller. Editor and sound design: Larry Sider. Cast: Paul Scofield (narrator).] Patrick Keiller’s debut feature defies the normal categorisation of cinema. Part visual essay, part chronicle, part pilgrimage, and part haunting homage to a sprawling capital city and its people, London (1994) is neither documentary nor fiction but transcends both modes of cinematic expression. It tracks the imaginary journey of its unseen protagonist, Robinson, accompanied by the invisible narrator (voiced by Paul Scofield), around London at a time of great social, political and cultural turmoil for the capital city, and at a time of profound personal distress for at least one of its characters. It makes reference throughout to sources of inspiration from English Romanticism and earlier literary flâneurs as they seek to rediscover a spirit of humanity and conviviality within a metropolis which appears on the surface to have been all but destroyed by international finance and the demands of commerce. As such, this film is not only interesting for its experimentation in form, and its contribution to the further blurring of boundaries between avant-garde and art cinema, but also as a highly policitised exploration of ‘capitalism, class, and history’ (Dave in Ashby and Higson 2000: 339) that sets out to reveal the reasons for the decline of this city and those who inhabit it. The work of architect-turned-director Patrick Keiller is often compared to that of other cinema poets such as the Peter Greenaway and Chris Marker, both references underlining the innovative, elegant and enigmatic intentions of Keiller’s work. The latter perhaps also pointed to the photographic, essay-like approach of London in particular which holds echoes of Marker’s seminal La Jetée (1962 France). However, when Keiller first approached the BFI for support for a feature-length project, he had only a few critically well-received short films behind him and just a rough draft of the script in place. (1) As Claire Smith acknowledges, this was a huge gamble on the part of both film-maker and backer, tempered perhaps only slightly ‘by the fact that it would be a kind of documentary, produced on a low budget (£180,000).’ (in Murphy 2000: 149) London clearly draws on Keiller’s fascination for such avant-garde movements as European surrealism and Russian formalism, in particular in the way both groups shared the desire of ‘refining creative methods to transform our experience of everyday life.’ (Dave in Ashby and Higson 2000: 340) In his earlier work, he revealed an interest in using image and sound to record events that were important on a personal and private level as well as on a more public scale. He experimented with the documentary form, and deliberately broke the conventions of authenticity by creating poignant land and cityscapes, usually in silence, and later adding carefully constructed soundtracks that combined scripted voice-overs with fragments of music from a range of sources. While Keiller resisted the convention of scripting his first feature fully in advance, and opened up a space for a different kind of relationship between subject and camera, he nevertheless had the clear intention of exploring London in the early 1990s as a place of conflict and contradiction, as a place where people felt neglected by society. He does so on the one hand through the juxtaposition of the imagery itself, and through the occasional deliberate dissonance between image and sound, and on the other through the decision to focus and comment upon key political and social events that transformed the life of the city in 1992. Images of contemporary events such as the relentless IRA bombing campaign, royal ceremonies, the crash and gradual recovery of the London Stock Exchange, the election of the fourth term of the Conservative government are presented and reflected upon via the deadpan, satiric commentary of the unseen, but apparently all-seeing Narrator. Intercut with these grander events are classically proportioned images of squalor and decay – buildings left to rot away and people left to fend for themselves, on the streets, in poor housing, on houseboats on the outskirts of the city. Much of this is set to the melancholic music of Beethoven, interspersed with more quirky upbeat sounds of Brahms’ Alto Rhapsody. Other impressionistic sounds which have been added to the score to enhance the sense of contemporary urban place and human existence include on-location recordings of singing by schoolchildren, church congregations, and Carnival gatherings. Many of the images are in fact static camera shots, held in a fixed position for several long, uncomfortable seconds, forcing us to gaze at the ‘lost’ spaces of industrial sites and supermarket car parks: images of bridges across the Thames abound, signalling the criss-crossing pattern of the route taken by the two characters as they travel around the suburbs and into the heart of the financial City itself. In fact, the film begins with a perfectly framed Tower Bridge in all its splendour, marking the location as one of the world’s most familiar landmarks. As the bridge is raised to allow a cruise ship to pass through, so the narrative begins with the announcement of the arrival of the Narrator in London along the Thames having completed work as a cruise ship photographer. It is assumed that the ship we see is the one from which the Narrator embarks when in fact it is probably just used as a device to trigger the story of his journey through the city. For all its formal complexity, the film’s narrative structure is quite simple: the Narrator returns to London after a seven-year absence and stays with his old friend Robinson, an eccentric academic prone to depression and nostalgic ranting. Robinson enlists his friend to accompany him on a series of short trips round London, exploring its problems and in search of its inner character. They do so with a blend of affection and despair at the way some things have changed, perhaps irrevocably and in most cases – according to them – for the worse. Their first journey is a kind or pilgrimage to the sources of English Romanticism, including the Gothic Villa of Horace Walpole, modelled in part on Westminster Abbey. Their second takes in the haunts of writers such as Apollinaire and Poe, and also includes a trip to observe the unveiling of yet another war memorial by the Queen Mother, an event that is slightly disrupted by jeering from sections of the crowd. (2) The third and final excursion is inspired by a desire to locate the house where French poets Rimbaud and Verlaine once lived together, prompting much controversy at the time. They find in its place the telephone exchange tower and despair at the cultural and artistic decline of this once great city. As Susan Doll suggests, Robinson ‘searches for a modern-day café society of bohemian artists and intellectuals that he can relate to, but he realises he will not find it in London proper – which has become a towering financial centre.’ (2006:10) As the characters travel from Vauxhall, where Robinson lives on a busy road, to other areas of South London and beyond, so the Narrator also reflects on matters of art and poetry, literature and photography, sociology and economics, shifting almost effortlessly from one topic to another in the manner of the free association techniques of the Surrealists of the 1920s and ‘30s. Through his sardonic commentary, it is made clear that 1992 marks a traumatic year for the city of London, with a government that seems interested only in financial success, an insurgent campaign that threatens to bring the city to its knees, and a royal family that seems cocooned by the pomp of its rituals and oblivious to the poverty and squalor suffered by many of the people on its doorstep. The Narrator begins by describing London, and by extension England, thus: Dirty Old Blighty. Undereducated, economically backward, bizarre. A catalogue of modern miseries. With its fake traditions, its Irish war, its militarism and secrecy, its silly old judges. Its hatred of intellectuals, its ill health and bad food. Its sexual repression. Its hypocrisy and racism. And its indolence. It’s so exotic. So, homemade. It’s without doubt a bleak picture, but one which spurs Robinson and his friend to go in search of some spark of hope and optimism that might lead them to believe in change and a fresh type of development that will create a more inclusive and less self-destructive society. As they meander in search of signs of life in places like Strawberry Hill, Richmond Park, Stoke Newington, Brixton and Elephant and Castle, a passion for flâneurs, writers and explorers of the past is quickly revealed. As Danny Birchall points out, they seem to be ‘obsessed with late nineteenth century French poets and eighteenth century Romantic English writers’ (2003: 1), the former group (like Robinson) being literary exiles in London at some point in their lives. On visiting Leicester Square, for example, they notice the monuments and placards which everywhere record the existence and presence of such influential people in their midst, now almost concealed by signs of consumerism, entertainment and general detritus. Even in Vauxhall, the starting point for their excursions, reference is made to the destruction of the beautiful gardens that once were there but which made way for housing and other development triggered by the introduction of the railway line and light industry in the 1840s. The gateposts that remain as dislocated signs of survival of that heritage ‘speak’ to them at the start of the film of time, people and events from the aristocratic past, but turn silent as the Narrator returns, unable to provide the answers he seeks. Rather than remain depressed by this, however, they deliberately seek out places where humanity seems now to be thriving, and which Robinson might use as a base for his writing: amidst the crowds of Brent Cross Shopping centre, the arcades of Brixton Market, on Routemaster buses, even amongst the huddled groups of street homeless. At the end of the journey, back in Vauxhall at the end of the year, things may have changed for the worse with some seemingly bizarre traffic policies and reference to the need for steel shutters to fend off the constant break-ins, but the film closes with an image of the local butchers’ shop preparing for business, with its shutters raised and lights glowing. Via this unflinching tour of the city by its key characters, London connects a whole range of disparate phenomena in an attempt to make sense of both the chaos and the splendour of modernity, and in so doing to reclaim a sense of the past. Notes
Further Reading Danny Birchall, ‘London (1994)’, www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/497617/index.html, 2003-06, accessed 2 February 2007. Paul Dave, ‘Representations of Capitalism, History and Nation in the Work of Patrick Keiller’, in Justine Ashby and Andrew Higson (eds) British Cinema, Past and Present, London & New York, Routledge, pp.339-51. Susan Doll, ‘A Guide to Robinson’s London’, Facets’ DVD notes, 2006. Claire Smith, ‘Travelling Light: New Art Cinema in the 90s’, in Robert Murphy (ed.) British Cinema of the 90s, London, BFI, 2000, pp.145-55. Sarah Barrow Land and Freedom (1995) [Production Company: Parallax Pictures. Director: Ken Loach. Screenwriter: Jim Allen. Cinematographer: Barry Ackroyd. Music: George Fenton. Editor: Jonathan Morris. Cast: Ian Hart (David Carr), Rosana Pastor (Blanca), Iciar Bollain (Maite), Suzanne Maddock (Kim), Angela Clarke (Kitty), Eoin McCarthy (Coogan), Tom Gilroy (Lawrence), Marc Martinez (Juan Vidal).] Placed at the centre of Land and Freedom there is a scene that is at the thematic heart of this film. Not only does it crystallise the understanding of the Spanish Civil War expressed in the film but it also embodies the essence of Ken Loach’s approach to filmmaking. In the middle of the war, with the power exerted by landowners and the Church over ordinary people’s lives seemingly broken, the inhabitants of a small rural area gather to debate the future of their community. In the commandeered grand house of the local aristocratic landlord, declared to be ‘the house of the people’, they discuss whether the land around their village should now be owned and farmed in a collective way. With them and welcomed to take part in the discussion are a group of international socialists who are in Spain to defend that country’s fledgling democracy. The dialogue-driven scene in which an array of characters stand and put forward their views lasts twelve minutes and defies our expectations of mainstream cinema. Loach allows the debate to run its course: the issues under discussion were at the heart of the Spanish Civil War and so must have their place at the heart of the film. Furthermore, the ideas rehearsed here are central to Loach’s ideology; he has absolute faith in ordinary people’s ability to organise their collective lives in a co-operative fashion, and his filmmaking displays this same faith in his audience. At this point the film is a drama of ideas, but it is the reality of ordinary people’s lives that gives expression to those ideas. For Loach his filmmaking must simply and unobtrusively tell a story, allowing the voices of ‘real’ people to be heard in the expectation that an audience will recognise the truthfulness of those voices. If we have been brought up on Hollywood filmmaking this can be experienced as ‘boring’ filmmaking in which ‘nothing happens’; there is no action, just people in a room talking (although this downplays the fluid intimacy of the cinematography that positions us in the midst of the debate). If we are studio executives we ‘know’ this will turn audiences off; the key participants are not even characters with whom the audience has previously identified and acquired some vested interest in what they have to say; and rather than highlighting the views of central characters the functional editing merely seems to give equal weight to each point of view. But for Loach (and Jim Allen, the scriptwriter) this is the most moving material possible, this is about people taking control of their lives, demonstrating their ability to effectively employ democratic processes. For the engaged reader this seemingly static scene involving a prolonged period in a single location is full of drama: one group of people have left their homes to travel to an unknown country to fight and die for their beliefs while most of the others have probably not travelled beyond the nearest local market town and yet together they are thoughtfully debating the possibilities for a more just way of life. Each character comes across as an individual and yet each is focused on discussing a single issue; what we are shown is newborn socialist democracy in action. Such a political process is not easy and Loach doesn’t shy away from this; the debate always seems liable to end in disagreement - this is the reality of such fledgling political processes and was certainly the reality of left-wing alliances during the Spanish Civil War. If we empathetically understand this scene, how it has been made and why it has been included, we understand the film as a whole (and we also, incidentally, understand Loach’s career). To do full justice to Land and Freedom we need to know a little about the Spanish Civil War and the political debates raised by that event. However, we should also be aware of more recent political events in Britain and the rest of Europe, and be prepared to consider how Loach might be seeking to locate his film within the context of an economically-rundown mid-1990s Britain (and Europe) within which attacks on ethnic minorities were increasing. As discussion of the scene above suggests we could also usefully consider Loach's approach to filmmaking in relation to what he might be attempting to achieve in that process. So, when the film opens in a stairwell containing right-wing graffiti and continues with handheld camerawork that gives a strong sense of the confined space of an old person’s flat we are immediately presented with a sense of the importance for Loach of political context and a realist filmmaking style. The Spanish Civil War (1936-39) resulted in around 600,000 deaths, thousands of them before General Franco's firing squads during and just after the war. It was a conflict between Left and Right that mirrored the political battle going on all over Europe during the 1920s and 1930s. One of the arguments put forward in this film is that if democratic governments and those who believe in democracy are not prepared to fight fascism wherever it emerges then it is allowed to gain strength; for Loach this is as true for Europe in the 1990s as in the 1930s. The viewer is offered the possibility of positioning themselves alongside the granddaughter, Kim, as a member of a later generation learning lessons about the past and coming to realise the absolute relevance to the present of an older generation’s experience. In 1931, five years before the Civil War, the Spanish monarchy was replaced by a parliamentary democracy. Liberals, socialists and Republicans promising reforms to benefit workers and peasants alike began to challenge the power of landowners, the Church and the army. In 1936 the Popular Front, a coalition of left Republicans, Socialists and Communists, won the elections and rightwing groups feared a complete social revolution. In July, the army (eventually under General Franco) attempted a military coup, but trades unions and political parties which believed in the new democracy formed militias and resisted. Land and Freedom offers a reassessment of this historical moment, essentially suggesting Stalinists within the left-wing coalition of the Popular Front brought about the defeat of a potential full-blown revolution. The film employs a classic narrative structure involving a journey told in flashback. David (Ian Hart) a young unemployed communist from Liverpool leaves his girlfriend, Kitty, and travels to Spain in autumn 1936 to join those defending the reforms. (1) While there he falls in love with Blanca (Rosanna Pastor), an anarchist. We accompany David not only as he travels through Spain but also as he develops his understanding of the politics of the period. Within the narrative there is a two-dimensional love story: there are David’s letters sent home to Kitty while he experiences a growing love for Blanca, but there is also the love of a granddaughter for a grandfather. This is a familiar pattern for the political film to follow: one of the most famous Hollywood romances, Casablanca (Curtiz, 1942) is essentially a plea for democracies (in particular the United States) to become involved in fighting the fascism of Hitler’s Germany. (2) It is clearly a common narrative device to begin a story in the present and then use flashback to show something that has happened in the past, but for Loach this is not simply a film about the adventures of one man in the 1930s. For Loach history is only important for its relevance to the present, for the ways in which it enables us to reflect upon the contemporary world. It is important that as a member of the younger generation Kim should be enabled to see a whole new world of ideas and possibilities through her grandfather’s experiences, and that she should discover how much we lose if we do not listen to and learn from previous generations. Loach and Allen align themselves with the final verdict on the civil war given to David: “Had we succeeded here – and we could have done – we would have changed the world.” For them the ‘we’ here is not the Republicans but rather those believing in full-blown, on-going revolutionary change. (3) Loach has said: It just grows ever more apparent that there are two classes in society, that their interests are irreconcilable, and that one survives at the expense of the other……You walk through the cities, especially the outskirts of cities, and you see people are not having a good time. The underlying observation of what people are experiencing is that things don’t have to be this way. There are better ways to live. (Fuller, 1998: 113) This film presents political arguments regarding the Spanish Civil War that allow for a reassessment of that conflict; demonstrates the ongoing relevance of those arguments to contemporary society; and subsumes all of this within a powerful human drama. Amongst all of the discussion of the politics the subtlety of the film construction can be missed. In addition to the cinematography already mentioned during the critical central debate and during the opening we could also, for example, consider the way Rosana Pastor as Blanca is photographed as she experiences the death of her lover Coogan (Eoin McCarthy). Here Loach’s determination to film in sequence is also key; from day to day the actors can see events unfolding but never know what will happen next to their character, so when one of them ‘dies’ the stress released creates real emotion. We could also consider a series of shots of David against blank white or grey backgrounds in the film as he attempts to understand the truth of the situation in which he finds himself: as he decides to ‘confess’ his part in Coogan’s death to Blanca, as she leaves him in Barcelona, and as he sits with her dead body in her parents’ home. It can be useful to know a little more about the POUM (the Trotskyist Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification), the CNT (the anarchist National Confederation of Labour), and the position of other groups involved in the struggle but it is more important to respond to the filmmaking – the way in which internationalism is expressed through both casting and use of language, or the way in which the subtitle (‘A story from the Spanish revolution’) gently puts this forward as but one story while also asserting that what was taking place was ‘revolution’, or the way in which a keyword such as ‘companeros’ recurs throughout the script. Notes
Further Reading Ian Christie, ‘As Others See Us: British Film-making and Europe in the 90s’ in Robert Murphy (ed) British Cinema of the 90s, London, BFI, 2000. Graham Fuller (ed) Loach on Loach, London, Faber, 1998. Jacob Leigh, The Cinema of Ken Loach, London, Wallflower, 2002. George McKnight (ed) Agent of Challenge and Defiance: The Films of Ken Loach, Trowbridge, Flick Books, 1997. George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia and Looking Back on the Spanish War, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1966. John White Secrets and Lies (1996) [Production Company: Thin Man Films. Director and Screenwriter: Mike Leigh. Cinematographer: Dick Pope. Editor: Jon Gregory. Cast:Timothy Spall (Maurice Purley), Brenda Blethyn (Cynthia Rose Purley), Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Hortense Cumberbatch), Phyllis Logan (Monica Purley), Claire Rushbrook (Roxanne Purley).] When Secrets and Lies was awarded the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1996 it was the latest in a long line of achievements for a director whose career spanned more than thirty years and whose output included work for theatre, television and cinema. Television plays such as Nuts in May (1976), Abigail’s Party (1977), Grown Ups (1980) and Meantime (1984) were popular with audiences and critically acclaimed. His earlier feature films, including Bleak Moments (1971), High Hopes (1988), Life is Sweet (1990) and Naked (1993), had all been enthusiastically received by critics and audiences alike. (1) By most definitions, Leigh is an auteur director, and his signature style, themes and working practices are apparent in Secrets and Lies. Leigh wrote the final screenplay for the film after improvising with actors in the early stages to develop his original concept for the story. The film shows his preoccupations with, as he puts it, ‘families, relationships, parents, children, sex, work, surviving, being born and dying’ (in Coveney 1997: 5). In common with all his films since 1990, Secrets and Lies was produced by Thin Man Films, his own company, allowing him maximum artistic freedom. All the hallmarks of a ‘Mike Leigh’ film are there: a distinctive kind of humour, approach to characterisation, visual style and narrative structure. Indigenous production in the UK has always taken place in the shadow of Hollywood and the dominance of that industry has meant that British cinema is often synonymous with ‘arthouse’ screenings, niche audiences and films which attract reverence rather than large audiences. Leigh has expressed his frustration at this situation: ‘the idea that […] any film I have made should be dumped in what are regarded as arthouse cinemas isn’t on. I am not concerned with making esoteric, obscure kinds of films.’ (in Malcolm 2002: 1). Nevertheless, his rejection of Hollywood conventions is equally clear, and he describes Secrets and Lies as a film that: deals with ordinary people in an unsentimentalised, non-sensationalised way – which is code for an un-Hollywood way […] the fact is there is a great tradition, which exists in Europe and plenty of other places […] of making films about real life, uncluttered and unfettered and uninterfered with by the kind of disease that you can – broadly speaking – diagnose as Hollywood. (in Miller 1996: 1) For many directors, the adoption of a British cinematic realism which has its origins in the documentary films of Grierson and Jennings is in itself the ultimate rejection of Hollywood values. However, while the complex narrative structure and flexible audience positioning in Secrets and Lies clearly come from a different vision of cinema than the straightforward goal-led narratives, rigid audience positioning and simplistic characterisation of most of mainstream Hollywood, the film also challenges the ‘transparency’ of this documentary realism. The opening sequence of the film demonstrates Leigh’s approach to narrative structuring. The shots of the funeral and the subsequent shots of Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) posting the letter to the adoption society seem to serve to set up the ‘narrative goal’ of the film. However, the intercutting of these with shots of Maurice (Timothy Spall) taking photographs of a bride, Monica (Phyllis Logan) stencilling, Roxanne (Claire Rushbrook), Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn) and Hortense at work, then the montage of Maurice’s studio portraits, offers the audience a series of different perspectives on family and work relationships rather than one simplistic view. This paralleling and contrasting of characters and situations is one of the ways in which Leigh creates a dynamic and flexible interaction between audience and film which is creative of meaning rather than reductive. He has said that: ‘I work on the assumption that my audience is at least as intelligent as I am, if not more so, which is another reason why I wouldn’t last for more than two minutes in Hollywood’. (2) The sequence resonates with visual and verbal echoes of the film’s preoccupation with families, relationships, and misunderstandings. ‘I expect he’d have had us up to visit by now if it wasn’t for her’ says Cynthia, referring to her sister-in-law, when just the previous scene we have heard Monica suggest that Cynthia and Roxanne are invited over. The film starts with Hortense weeping at her mother’s funeral, while Cynthia uses the loss of her ‘poor mother’ to emotionally blackmail Roxanne while they quarrel; Maurice and Monica lament the loss of contact with their ‘surrogate’ child, Roxanne; Hortense’s siblings quarrel over who is to inherit their mother’s house. After this series of glimpses into family life, an ironic, quirky montage of idealised family situations is shown through Maurice’s camera lens. Leigh’s structuring technique means that sequences which are redundant in terms of narrative progression are tightly woven into a thematic structure. The sequence introducing Stuart (Ron Cook), the former owner of Maurice’s studio, is a good example of this. Stuart presents us with a stark vision of life without family: ‘There but for the grace of God’ says Maurice, inviting us to reassess the frustrations of family life we have seen so far. The shot of Maurice and Stuart framed either side of a studio portrait of two children ironically contrasts with the other family portraits we have seen and resonates with ideas central to the film. Stuart’s discontent with the weather in both Britain and Australia provides a comic manifestation of Leigh’s exploration of the relationship between subjective and objective viewpoint. Stuart’s distorted vision of his own role in Maurice’s success, together with his easy assumption that Maurice has kids, is one of many points in the film where characters create their own distorted vision of their own and others’ situations. The audience is implicated into these false assumptions by Leigh’s exploitation of the misleading nature of the photographic image. The sequence starts with Maurice photographing the young woman injured in the car crash for her court case – ironically, this time using the camera to distort the ‘truth’ in the direction of ugliness rather than the idealised (Hollywood?) version of reality seen in Maurice’s previous photographs. Her bitterness and inability to get over the perceived wrong done to her, and the strength of her hatred towards the once loved boyfriend, is an extreme version of a tendency many of the main characters share, where subjective perceptions distort ‘truth’ yet become a ‘reality’ which define and limit their lives. The arrangement of the shot, seen first from her unblemished side before revealing the scar, makes the audience literally experience the limitations of seeing things from one side only, a central metaphor in the film, and also the intentional falsity of the photographic image. From one side, she is ‘lovely’, from the other side an object of pity and repulsion. Unlike the other characters, her scar is on the surface; the ‘secrets and lies’ which blight the lives of the other characters are harder to perceive. This challenges the ‘transparency’ of documentary realism. ‘There are a lot of different things going on at a lot of different levels in my films. As far as I am concerned, these are worked out in terms of imagery and metaphor just like any piece of art.’ (Leigh in Carney and Quart 2000: 146) When surface realism is used in Secrets and Lies, its apparent meanings are frequently undercut by conflicting meanings emerging through the narrative structure and symbolism of the film. The symbolic use of colour and mise-en-scene is not in itself unusual. The use of each character’s house as a reflection not only of their social status but of their emotional state (Hortense’s flat all white minimalism; Monica’s house cold blues and rigidly ordered) is a common one. What makes it distinctive here is the way in which this intersects with other meaning systems in the film. A central idea in Secrets and Lies is vision/seeing. While Maurice’s job as a photographer and Hortense’s profession are presented realistically and are believable within the context of their characters, they also provide the central metaphoric focus of the film. As a photographer, Maurice seems to be concerned with putting a gloss on the complexity and awkwardness of reality. The montage sequence of photographic vignettes makes it clear that real families not only differ from their photographic representation, but differ in different ways. Hortense’s professional goal is to make people see more clearly and it is therefore fitting that it is her narrative agency in the film which brings hidden family truths to light. The sequence showing Hortense with her young client reveal how difficult it is to be clear about what you see; in a different but related way, the wedding sequences and the montage of studio photographs Maurice takes show the unreliability of the photographic image. This central idea positions the audience to question the very ‘realism’ of the film’s images in ways which can be seen as a critique of the ‘transparent’ realism of documentary style and the photographic image generally. This idea is also reinforced through seemingly inconsequential ‘realist’ dialogue which often works to destabilise meanings. When discussing Roxanne, Monica resignedly comments ‘Well, she’s on the streets now’, a deceptive remark which is humorously undercut by the shot of Roxanne in her uniform sweeping the streets. Secrets and Lies abounds in conversations where there is a disjunction between surface and underlying meaning and much of the film’s humour comes from this discrepancy: from Stuart’s consistent contradiction of Monica’s relentlessly upbeat comments about his trip to Australia; to Hortense and Cynthia’s stumbling attempt at the family barbecue to convince the others that they work at the same factory. The ways in which these allusive layers of meaning are built up mean that by the climactic birthday party sequence, the film is stylistically different from both Hollywood and the social realist tradition. The sequence shot of the group gathered around the garden table which lasts over six minutes is reminiscent of Maurice’s deceptively happy family photos, but because of the way the film has encouraged the spectator to think about these, and about the characters, the irony is clear. All the deceptions and conflicts seething under the surface are recognisable. At the start of the film, Monica seemed a stereotype from the British social realist genre: the shrewish woman who has lost sight of real values under a welter of materialism. This judgement is recast in the light of subsequent revelations. Leigh’s style both adheres to a version of the British realist aesthetic but also interrogates and reveals the superficiality and limitations of photographic realism. The final shot of the garden of Cynthia’s terraced house – the archetypal ‘gritty realist’ icon of working class life – is juxtaposed with Cynthia’s apparent satisfaction with her lot, which acts as a rejection of the pessimism of the social issue film. The motivation behind Leigh’s working class characters is fundamentally different from those in a social realist film. Leigh’s interest lies with how individuals live within certain political and social structures. He does not see them as victims nor use them as vehicles to expound an explicitly political viewpoint. (3) Notes
Further Reading Ray Carney and Leonard Quart, The Films of Mike Leigh, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000. Michael Coveney, The World According to Mike Leigh, London, Harper Collins, 1997. Derek Malcolm, ‘Mike Leigh at the NFT’, http://film.guardian.co.uk/print/452168-101730,00.html, 7 October 2002 [accessed 21/06/06]. Laura Miller, ‘Listening to the World’, www.salon.com/weekly/interview960916.html, 16 November 1996 [accessed 21/06/06]. Jean Welsh The Full Monty (1997) [Production Company: Redwave Films. Director: Peter Cattaneo. Screenwriter: Simon Beaufoy. Cinematographer: John de Borman. Music: Anne Dudley. Editor: David Freeman and Nick More. Cast: Robert Carlyle (Gaz), Mark Addy (Dave), Tom Wilkinson (Gerald), William Snape (Nathan), Lesley Sharp (Jean), Emily Woof (Mandy), Steve Huison (Lomper), Paul Barber (Horse), Hugo Speer (Guy), Deidre Costello (Linda).] The Full Monty is a British film with the classic ‘feel-good’ values of a mainstream Hollywood movie (1): the city might be rundown, unemployment rife and men struggling to come to terms with changing gender roles and marriages at breaking point, but with a little screen magic the world can seem a wonderful place again. Dave clearly announces before the final ‘full monty’ stage-show that this is ‘for one night only’ and therefore nothing more than a very temporary solution to the working-class male predicament; but the resolution phase of a film has such special power that for the cinema audience the ultimate meaning of the film is likely to be a frozen moment of warm, finely-established emotional bonding between father and son (Nathan: They’re cheering out there - you did that. Now get out there and do your stuff.), wife and husband (Jean whooping and smelling Dave’s shirt), and even estranged wife and former husband (Mandy, importantly without Barry, catching Gaz’s belt). This is the traditional happy ending appropriate to the genre: it re-establishes order within society, celebrates human resilience and creativity, and reassures the audience that decent human beings in the natural order of things will eventually come to enjoy a good life as of right. To this extent the film is clearly selling the audience a falsely reassuring perspective on the disintegration of the UK’s manufacturing industries and on the divided nation created by government policies that the film has seemed to want to address. Yet, at the same time the use of a final freeze frame might be said to reinforce the fact that the future for each of these characters remains uncertain. (2) It is a feature of comedy that difficult, even intractable, problems are solved in a comforting way but The Full Monty takes this to extremes. The bleak hopelessness of Lomper’s attempted suicide becomes the occasion of slapstick comedy as Dave bundles him back into the fume-filled car and leads to the repartee of the set-piece discussion on possible suicide methods (set, we might note, in the open space of a green Sheffield hillside with the cold, grey city relegated to the background (3)). It is true that the darkness of Lomper’s day-to-day existence is emphasised with increased power by the cut from the light atmosphere and emotional warmth of this scene to the dingy claustrophobia of the house he shares with his invalid mother, but then the mother is never seen again and is conveniently killed off while Lomper finds life is worth living with the arrival of a clichéd, politically-correct homosexual love affair. This is uplifting, it is as comedy should be an affirmation of life, and yet it might also be considered a false representation of reality. Screenwriter, Simon Beaufoy, was it seems aware of both the commercial pressure on filmmakers and the way in which he was using the genre to enable him to approach social issues: ‘It’s a way of sugaring the pill – and sadly you now have to use more and more sugar’. (Owen, 2003: 287) From the beginning the very real psychological stress of unexpected, long-term unemployment is addressed with humour. In the opening sequence the hustle and bustle, bright colours and chirpy narrator’s voice found on the early 70s promotional film for Sheffield (4) is transformed into the muted greys, cold blues and hollow emptiness of the mid-90s derelict factory. The moment of change from one to another is startling and the contrast achieved by the edit (employing a stark black screen and simple inter-title, ’25 years later’) makes a powerful comment on the social consequences of industrial decay, but the audience is prevented from dwelling on the implications of the transition by the arrival of the film’s central comedy duo. In a later scene in the job centre Gaz and Dave (along with the other ‘men’ there) are clearly shown as having regressed to the status of schoolchildren; here in the factory with Nathan they are also children, ‘kids’ with too much time on their hands taking part in a bit of trespassing. The audience warms to them because of their comedy antics (Gaz grabbing Dave as the car they are standing on begins to shift in the canal and then nodding to the passer-by, for instance) but also because of the comic timing achieved not only in the delivery of the lines but in the editing (the initial cut from Gaz’s ‘Shut up, I’m thinking’ to the canal scene, for example). The success of the comedy throughout diverts attention from the seriousness of the issues under examination. This is not necessarily a problem; in fact, it is the nature of the particular comic form being used. This is not a biting satire but a gentle celebration of the human ability to make the most of any situation. In a scene such as that with Gaz and Dave on the car in the canal, it is the coming together of the script, the delivery of those lines, the performance and movement of the actors, the framing of the shots (particularly the final long shot along the canal), and the editing (for example, from the passer-by to Gaz and back again) that creates the humour. In other words, the elements of film construction (including, and this is clearly important for the whole film, the music) work to complement each other. The central characters in this film are men and the key focus is on men’s problems within a changing society and yet it seems to appeal as much if not more to a female audience than a male audience. In part this is because the gaze employed is essentially an observational one, looking in on males and their idiosyncratic ways and emotional difficulties. It is not a gaze that objectifies the male body despite the fact that this would be the expected implication of having a film with a plot revolving around men who become strippers. Burt it is a gaze by which men are placed as it were under a microscope. They themselves are increasingly aware that their former social position is not simply under threat but is no longer tenable (describing themselves, for example, as ‘obsolete’). Men are shown to be vulnerable, physically and emotionally deficient rather than strong and able to deal with problems in a traditionally male way. Within the conventional norms of British working class society men are expected to fulfil certain roles and embody certain values. They should be physically strong, emotionally strong, virile and strongly heterosexual; above all they should work and provide for the family. In this film Dave is fat, out of condition and impotent, Gaz is struggling to show his love for Nathan, Gerald lacks the courage to tell his wife he’s lost his job, Horse is worried about the size of his penis, and Lomper and Guy turn out to be gay. Most importantly they are all unemployed (‘scrap’ as Gaz describes it) and therefore unable to see themselves as ‘men’. By contrast, both Jean and Mandy are in work (with Mandy twice adding to Gaz’s sense of disempowerment by offering him a job) and Linda reveals strength of character her husband had failed to appreciate when she finally finds out he is unemployed. (5) In traditional terms, the men are seen to be emasculated by this society. But what the film also shows is the men struggling to re-define their roles in a new society, and indeed succeeding in doing so: Gaz successfully nurtures a developing relationship with Nathan (and, it is suggested by the ending, with Mandy), Dave successfully rekindles his relationship with Jean it seems, Gerald has secured a new job but remains loyal to his mates, and Lomper and Guy are accepted within the male group. Interestingly, the men find the strength to deal with the new situation facing them by drawing on an old source of strength: male camaraderie. Given this strong focus on relationships and emotions, a further way of exploring the film would be to consider it as a male melodrama and this might also be a fruitful area for further consideration of its success with female audiences. Politically, the men survive by re-establishing a sense of community in direct opposition to the self-centred individualism encouraged by Thatcherism. (6) It is in accepting and being prepared to reveal their vulnerability, literally to expose themselves to the community, that they find their way back to a place and an acceptance within their society. At a political level through its use of comedy this film could be seen as papering over the cracks rather than challenging the defects in society. But at a psychological level it is profound in its recognition of the need to be able to express vulnerability in order to come to terms with it. Because they are prepared to display their vulnerability the men are rewarded with a one-off pay day but more vitally with a sense of restored personal self-worth and the confidence it is implied by the ‘feel-good’ ending to move forward in their lives. It is through their involvement with the group that the men (who span sexualities, race and generations) are able to regain a sense of self-worth (Murphy, 2000: 185) but more importantly it is the strength the group gives them that enables them to reassess their relationships outside of the homosocial sphere. Each character is able to ‘come out’: Lomper and Guy obviously, Dave in talking openly with Jean, Gaz in expressing his love for his son, and Gerald in re-evaluating what is important in life. Finally, Horse, operating as a metaphor for all of them, is able to expose that part of himself about which he has always felt most vulnerable. Notes
Further Reading Nigel Mather, Tears of Laughter: Comedy Drama in 1990s British Cinema, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2006. Claire Monk, ‘Underbelly UK: the 1990s underclass film, masculinity and the ideologies of the ‘new’ Britain’ in Justine Ashby and Andrew Higson (eds), British Cinema, Past and Present, London, Routledge, 2000. Robert Murphy (ed), British Cinema of the 90s, London, BFI, 2000. Alistair Owen (ed), Story and Character: Interviews with British Screenwriters, London, Bloomsbury, 2003. John White Ratcatcher (1999) [Production Company: Holy Cow Films. Director and screenwriter: Lynne Ramsay. Cinematographer: Alwin Kuchler. Editor: Lucia Zuchetti. Music: Rachel Portman. Cast: William Eadie (James), Tommy Flanagan (Da), Mandy Matthews (Ma), Leanne Mullen (Margaret Anne), John Miller (Kenny), Michelle Stewart (Ellen), Lynne Ramsay Jr. (Anne Marie).] Something about the gentle, meditative force of Lynne Ramsay’s startling debut feature captured the attention of audiences, critics and jury panels alike when it was first released in 1999. And yet on the surface, there is little remarkable or distinctive about it at all. The narrative is simple and sparse, the setting familiar in its focus on the downbeat and the character ensemble likewise in their situation of poverty. In fact, in less assured hands, this film could easily have become yet another derivative piece reminiscent of all those by British directors before Ramsay who had sought to bring the world of the urban marginalised of Britain to the cinema screen. Instead, it is the emotional impact of Ratcatcher that sets it apart, and the sheer beauty of its cinematography that makes it extraordinary. Violence and tragedy resonate in every image, while moments of tenderness offer respite and hope by reminding the viewer of the overwhelming power of human love. With this film, Ramsay was praised for her deft ability to develop intense and harsh situations without slipping into manipulative melodrama. In fact, Ratcatcher was considered by critics and audiences to be one of the best British feature film debuts for many years. It opened the Edinburgh Film Festival in 1999 to great acclaim, and won its director a BAFTA award for best newcomer in British cinema 2000. (1) While her tendency to focus on the harshness of working class lives calls for comparisons with the films of Ken Loach, particularly his trilogy that is also set on Glasgow estates, Ramsay’s work has also been likened to that of Scottish film-maker Bill Douglas and Liverpool-born director Terence Davies, for their similarly poetic approach to the notion of growing up amidst poverty and brutality. Like them, she effectively combines the real with the magical, and with Ratcatcher powerfully captures a sense of place and a segment of society with a poignant story about growing up. Ratcatcher is set in a neglected part of Glasgow in the 1970s during the so-called ‘Winter of Discontent’, when a long strike by dustbin collectors meant that refuse remained on the streets for weeks. As such it is a peculiar take on the period heritage genre which in British cinema has tended to be taken as shorthand for a focus on the upper-classes. Here, however, the tight-knit world that is put under scrutiny is that of a loving yet dysfunctional family living in one the poorest parts of a city often associated in film with social hardship. They struggle against forces that are largely out of their control, and are revealed as being the forgotten victims of a social system that neglects those at the bottom of the pile, or blames them for being where and who they are. This is also, then, a vehemently political film, not in the didactic vein of a work by Loach perhaps, but political nevertheless in that it invites us to witness the most private moments and spaces of the Gillespie family home, and to understand and sympathise with their plight. Merging the poetic with stark realism, Ramsay treats all her characters with compassion, and casts harsh judgement on society for its refusal to do the same. The film’s main character is James Gillepsie, a twelve-year-old boy who accidentally pushes a playmate into a polluted canal and leaves him to drown. Immediately breaking the standard conventions of narrative cinema, and blurring the boundaries between victim and aggressor, Ratcatcher offers us a character with whom to engage and identify who is marked out from the start as a killer. Keeping his terrible secret to himself, he finds comfort in his friendship with Margaret Anne, a complex, slightly older local girl who also seems to be alone except for a gang of youths whose abuse she tolerates so as at least to feel noticed. The audience is thus placed in a privileged position of knowledge, of sharing James’s secret and witnessing Margaret Anne’s pain, and this makes the tender scenes between them seem all the more heart-rending. We also learn that James longs, like his mother, to leave the council estate and fantasises about life in one of the new houses in the countryside that he has discovered at the end of a bus line. Like her, he yearns for a different life but has absolutely no idea how to achieve it. Despite the trance-like beauty of its imagery, Ratcatcher is a dark, grim film about guilt and redemption, with the latter coming only through tragedy. Duncan Petrie describes it more specifically as ‘an intense and melancholic study of childhood dislocation, confusion and loneliness.’ (2000: 216) James feels responsible for the accidental drowning of his friend, and is unable to deal with the emotional turmoil that follows, even though no-one blames him at all. He also struggles to understand his father’s drinking and is unable to articulate his unhappiness even to his beloved mother. Little more actually happens in normal narrative terms, and yet, as Petrie points out, the pleasure of this film comes from the invitation to its audience ‘to experience a rich palate of […] emotions from James’s guilt and loneliness to moments of spontaneous bliss when he runs through the open fields.’ (2000: 216) Ramsay’s main achievement is to set up an intense connection between her characters and the film’s spectators such that we might understand the meaning of the lives depicted on screen, and share in the tragedy of their unrealised dreams. Alongside the painful exploration of loss of innocence that marks an abrupt end to childhood, this is also a film about what it means to be a man in such harsh conditions. The idea of traumatised masculinity is seen most clearly in the character of James’s father who uses alcohol as a means of escape from a life seemingly without hope. His mood swings rapidly from showing care and compassion for his children, especially his daughters who love him unconditionally, to uncontrolled violence when forced to recognise that he is incapable of providing for his family properly. Unable to articulate his emotional turmoil, to deal with affection, or to ask for help from those around him, he uses his fists instead and causes further misery for those he loves most. Again, only the film’s spectator bears witness to his intense sense of grief and powerlessness, a strategy that highlights the tragedy of the situation by foregrounding his isolation. The mystery and tension of the film is set up by the tone of the opening sequence, during which young Ryan Quinn (Thomas McTaggart), the boy who will die in the following scene, is shown wrapping himself up in his mother’s net curtain. He thus unwittingly creates a shroud-like covering, the significance of which only becomes clear as the film progresses. Filmed in ghostly silence and slow-motion and from a close position that obscures the context completely, the image only makes sense once Ryan’s mother (Jackie Quinn) has slapped her son hard (from off-screen) and woken him from his daydream with her sharp rebuke. The frame remains still throughout, so that as Ryan runs off, the audience is left pondering the sight of the gently unravelling curtain material and contemplating the sudden and violent interruption of the boy’s game. Such a moment of everyday conflict makes the mother’s grief at the loss of her child all the more unbearable since it eschews melodrama and sentimentality completely. Despite the overriding tone of bleakness, the film does also offer moments of pure joy that provide breaks from misery and emphasise the power of familial love and the importance of physical contact. When James and his sisters dance around the flat with their mum, for example, or when James shares a playful bath with Margaret Anne, such images demonstrate the way respite can be found in the most unlikely places and life can be enjoyed whatever the circumstances. James’s child-like escapades at the unfinished housing estate, and his excitement at exploring one of the new homes with its brand new shiny bathroom and views of cornfields provides particular pleasure (for him and the viewer) and a space for him to imagine another sort of family life. As Petrie points out, ‘the image framed by the window like a cinema screen […] functions as practically a fantasy of freedom and possibility for the young boy.’ (2000: 216) The fantasy sequences that depict his dream of family life in this house further allow for blurring of time and space that shows how important the alternative world has become for James and how difficult it would be for him to continue living without hope of change. Even more absurdly surreal are scenes such as those when friend Kenny attaches his pet mouse to a helium balloon and sends it squeaking off into space. And the final closing image of James underwater, accompanied by a minimalist other-worldly soundtrack is both intensely beautiful with the light shining in from above, and profoundly sad. Indeed, part of what is remarkable and bold about this feature is that so much is left unsaid, unexplained, or only half explained, right down to its denouement. In this and her subsequent films, Ramsay has been understandably described as ‘relentlessly experimental, [… bringing] a photographer’s eye to the cinematic image: through silence and space within the frame, her films unfold in expanded time, showing rather than telling’. (2) Thus rather than let her characters talk about the binmen strike, she provides visual evidence of the long-running dispute in the form of piles of black, split refuse bags and scenes of the children playing amongst the rotting rubbish, taunting each other with rats. The general social decay is likewise referred to via the sight of dilapidated flats and squalid stairwells which become the space for intense conversations or moments of private grief. Meanwhile, notions of claustrophobia and entrapment are reinforced by extreme facial close-ups, titled angles and repeated images of tightly framed doorways and window frames that also give the panoptic sense that those who live on such estates are constantly being watched by their neighbours. Use of sound is also remarkable for its intensity: empathetic music is sparsely used and only then at low volume, with haunting Celtic tones contributing to the melancholic tone of the piece. Key diegetic sounds, usually those that relate to water and thus suggestive of the multi-layered fluidity of its characters’ lives, are given just as much attention. Ratcatcher skilfully combines ordinary moments of everyday family life with more elaborately designed extra-diegetic sequences that reveal the inner feelings and thoughts of its young protagonist. It powerfully depicts a key turning point in the life of a boy whose world is torn apart by one terrible act of cowardice, and who is forced by circumstances to be more adult than he really is. The performances elicited from its child actors, notably William Eadie as James and Leanne Mullen as Margaret Anne, make even the tiniest moment, such as when James nervously touches Margaret’s bloody knee, intensely memorable. In many ways, Ratcatcher is a masterclass in cinematic economy, showing the bare minimum and leaving the rest to the imagination. Notes
Further Reading Harlan Kennedy, 'Ratcatcher', Film Comment, Jan./Feb. 2000, pp. 6-9 Duncan Petrie, ‘The New Scottish Cinema: Themes and Issues’, Screening Scotland London, BFI, 2000, pp.191-221. Liese Spencer, ‘What are you Looking at? Interview with Lynne Ramsay’, Sight and Sound, October 1999, p.18. Linda Ruth Williams, 'Escape Artist', Sight and Sound, Oct. 2002, pp. 22-25. Sarah Barrow Yüklə 1,18 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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