Big Boredom

“The thing I hate about you, Rowntree, is the way you give Coca-Cola to your scum, and your best teddy bear to Oxfam, and expect us to lick your frigid fingers for the rest of your frigid life” (Mick Travis, If…, 1968)

If you were to ask a selection of your friends to state their political leanings, the majority would probably respond with liberal. It does sound good mind you. Favorable to reform; charitable; tolerant and open minded. Terms that are characteristic of this great democracy we live in.

Let's not fool ourselves though; we live in an apathetic culture masquerading as liberal. We are governed by a political party that preaches liberalism yet remains cemented to the centre ground. The age of celebrity has bred a generation of disengaged and idle abstainers, merely waiting for their next fix of Big Brother (itself a cultural and artistic term lost on them).

Equally lost is the presence of any real reactionaries within the film scene at present. Lindsay Anderson's If... was released at the end of the 1960's, a period of fervent and passionate change. Class, capitalism and post-war angst were key issues that angered Anderson. The iconic image of Malcolm McDowell defiantly leading an uprising against his authoritarians in If..., is a visceral visualisation of such anger.

If… can be seen as one of the final films of the 'British New Wave'. A picture heavily influenced by the films that preceded it, kitchen sink dramas such as Look Back in Anger and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and 'Free Cinema' such as Refuge England. All these films can be identified as revolutionary. They went against the grain of typical British films of the time in order to comment on the country that they lived in. They were deeply personal films that stood as a voice for a generation.

It’s a shame that the voice of our generation is deathly silent. The news is forever reminding us that we are living in an unstable time, one of religious discord and social breakdown. Yet British cinema seems relatively stale at present. Artistic freedoms seem swamped by conservatism. Ken Loach aside, there are not too many directors who are willing to confront these issues with any purpose or originality. No director seems willing to use the liberal beliefs that are apparently privileged to us, in order to comment or assess our country. Instead they prefer to collect the dollars that Batman Begins or Hot Fuzz brings in to them. Hopefully they will delve in to their pockets and spend some of the fortune on If... when it gets its DVD release on Monday. Maybe then they will understand just how powerful and provocative British cinema can be.

Summer Loving? Not So Much...

The summer season is officially in full swing, and production company bores are left counting less pennies than they had been hoping for. Spiderman and Pirates aside, the summer big hitters have not been punching particularly hard. The Shrek, Die Hard, Oceans and Hostel sequels have all been lucrative, yet their drop off has been quick and their figures not especially obscene (Deadline Hollywood). The executives are left asking why. Let me offer a possible theory; perhaps audience’s are starting to get a strange sense of de-ja-vu when they look at the summer calendar. Another quest without any hint of character development from the ogre, yet more vacant smugness from Danny Ocean, another bad day for John ‘Yippee-Ki-yay, motherfucker’ McClane... It is all becoming strangely familiar, like we have paid our money to see these movies before. This is not simply sequel bashing. Terminator 2, Toy Story 2 and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade are all shinning examples of how Hollywood can get it right. Where these films succeeded, was in not merely bringing back what we loved from the first time around, but with crucially adding the key mixture of reinvention and originality. Put more simply, they had a new story to tell, not just money to make. It would be churlish to suggest that this years dip in blockbuster profit is the turning of a tide. All one can really hope for, is that the executives go back to the commissioning table and up their game a little. Unfortunately though, it is doubtful that turgid movies will ever decrease drastically from the summer season. For major changes to ever occur, it would need the boycotting of repetitive, formalistic and cynically greedy pictures all together. That would really make the suits sweat. But this is just wishful thinking. After all, the last time I checked there were still fat guys queuing up in McDonalds.

So where can the saving graces of this years American releases be found? In the hands of the old guard apparently. Early buzz suggests that there are returns to form for two of Hollywood's more elder statesmen, William Friedkin and Francis Ford Coppola. Neither director has really achieved commercial nor critical success since the 1980's. Yet early reports suggest Friedkin's high octane thriller, Bug, to be "like a young mans picture, filled with edge and energy" (Ebert). Meanwhile Coppola's return to filmmaking, after a ten year hiatus, has pricked a lot of peoples interest. Coppola himself has expressed his joy at finally returning to film a movie worthy of his talent, Youth Without Youth.

"I was so excited to discover, in this tale by Eliade, the key themes that I most hope to understand better: time, consciousness and the dream-like basis of reality. For me, it is indeed a return to the ambitions I had for work in cinema as a student"

Alongside the prospect of Cronenberg building upon the huge critical success of History Of Violence with his new feature Eastern Promises, it promises to be a fruitful year for vintage directors. American cinema can breathe a huge sigh of relief. You can always rely on your old man to bail you out of trouble....