Denis
Staunton, a columnist with The
Irish Times,
finds nostalgia at the heart of two recent films in his column on
20.11.2015. The latest James Bond film, Spectre,
is set in a globalised England. The Alan Bennett
bio-pic, The
Lady in the Van,
is set in Camden and Yorkshire, urban and
rural
bi-poles
of England. Denis Staunton writes that the films
take us deep into political values there.
If
you want to drop a plumb line into the soul of
England
today,
you could do worse than to watch the two biggest-grossing films in
Britain last weekend – Spectre
and
The
Lady in the Van.
He connects these
films with forms of political nostalgia he observes in England.
….
each is soaked through with an idea of England and English values
under attack, a nostalgia which is shared on the political left as
well as the right.
Denis
Staunton situates Spectre
on the political right. The
dramatic threat is from
a
global conspiracy bringing government and business together in a
sinister public-private partnership.
He
cites a former Conservative Party MP and an MI5 director-general in
support of his observation that
What
is arresting about Spectre,
beyond the killing, car chases and special effects, is the film’s
melancholic, almost elegiac mood, as if the spirit that made Britain
powerful, democratic, free and tolerant – in a word, great – is
smouldering in the ruins of the MI6 building on the Thames.
That's
quite a list:
powerful,
democratic, free and tolerant – in a word, great. Denis Staunton
offers them as descriptors of an England that the political right
hanker for.
He
puts The
Lady in the Van
on the nostalgic left of the political spectrum.
Bennett’s
nostalgia is for the England that created the welfare state,
nationalised the railways and introduced comprehensive education, all
rolled back by
Margaret Thatcher and her successors.
And he connects
Bennett's nostalgia with the current leader of The British Labour
Party -
Corbyn
himself also embodies a very English style of left-wing radicalism.
- without giving
us a helpful list of adjectives.
It's
not clear which of the two films Denis Staunton likes. Or if he likes
either one of them. He appears
to
be
uncomfortable with nostalgia. What does he make of the nostalgia-fest
Brooklyn,
an emigration drama set in Ireland and New York? Is it the case that
simple notions of left and right are not as readily deployed in
Ireland and placing a film in that way is not straightforward?
The
two films Denis Staunton writes about are
not nostalgic.
They are different treatments of the same political contest that
rages through time, for all time. One of their core elements is
'scale'. Is it to be 'great' or is it to be 'human'? Another is given
by the old Cicero line, cui
bono?
Who benefits? This
is the political contest of the past, present and the future.
Would
Cameron oversee the
successful
implementation of a global surveillance system?
Would
Corbyn?
This
is not nostalgia. Cameron is not bringing people backwards. Neither
is Corbyn. They are both seeking to drive England, and the world,
forward. The questions are 'to where?' and 'how?'
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