Why I hate British films
Rod Liddle says he refuses to be patriotic about our posturing, second-rate film industry It was Colin Welland who first uttered those terrible words ‘The British are coming!’ at an Oscar ceremony, back in 1982 — clutching his gold-plated statuette in his northern paw and grinning from beneath his deeply northern moustache. Colin had won an Oscar for having written the screenplay to Chariots of Fire, a film about some British people who could run quite fast, particularly Eric Liddell (or ‘speedy uncle Eric’ as we were wont to call him). Chariots of Fire possessed all of the qualities we have later come to associate with British films — resolutely well-meaning, somewhat stilted, implacably middlebrow and moderately sensitive, utterly devoid of sex, sin and glittering panache. And with a staggeringly irritating soundtrack by Vangelis. Since then, every subsequent Oscars ceremony has been portrayed by our media as a sort of replacement World Cup quarter final for people who find football a little outré. It has become one of the very few manifestations of belligerent patriotism to which I cannot possibly append my name — and frankly I do not know anyone else who leaps up and down with nationalistic fervour because Nick Park, of Wallace and Gromit fame, has won the animated film award once more. Does anybody other than our television and radio presenters see the Oscars in such a bizarre context? As a blow for ‘intelligent’ British film-making against the relentlessly commercial and soulless Hollywood dross which would otherwise dominate the proceedings? It was much the same this last week. ‘And how will the Brits do?’ Jim Naughtie asked the arts correspondent Rebecca Jones on the Today programme, as if we were hovering nervously by our television screens fearful that Reese Witherspoon might beat Keira Knightley on penalties in extra time (which is, sort of, what happened). We were expected to cheer when Rachel Weisz won Best Supporting Actress (for The Constant Gardener) not because she is beautiful and talented but because she’s a Brit. (Which is itself an assertion up for question: by lineage the babe is hybrid Austro–Hungarian).
Wallace and Gromit won again, of course, which served only to establish in me a sense of estrangement and social exclusion; I am quite possibly the only person in Britain who finds those allegedly lovable Plasticine animations unutterably predictable and tedious and wholly lacking the sharp wit and edge of, say, South Park, The Simpsons or even American Dad. I can take only so many jokes about trousers and Wensleydale cheese, if I’m honest. But I accept that I am in a very small minority here.
The whole premise about British films — a canard which allows us to be jingoistic whenever the Oscars come around — is that they are somehow ‘better’ than American films, more intellectually rewarding, less likely to pander to the lowest common denominator and that they probably contain within them some noble and life-enhancing message. The action scenes in British films take second place to the development of character and plot, we tell ourselves. British films explore social ‘ishoos’ and are of relevance to the wider multicultural community.
How terribly true much of this is. I would not wish to denigrate all British films, per se, and I was as affected as the next man to see the excellent and plainly decent David Puttnam pick up his recent Bafta award. His film The Killing Fields is one of maybe two or three British films of the last 20 years that one has watched out of genuine, avid interest rather than out of a misplaced sense of duty, sitting there bored beyond redemption in our cinema seats. Rita, Sue and Bob Too is another and all the more unusual in that it was genuinely funny. But if we’re honest, entertaining British films have been mighty thin on the ground: middlebrow Victorian novels scrubbed up for modern consumption, with the occasional intimation of sexual intercourse to hold our attention. Unspeakably saccharine and politically correct romcoms which fail to engage, entice or enchant (yes, Richard Curtis, I’m talking about you). Thrillers so staid and so dumb and so badly constructed that Hollywood wouldn’t give them a second glance (yes, Guy Ritchie, I’m talking about you). And worst of all, those aforementioned ‘social ishoos’ explored through either the most ham-fisted satire or the most deadening and anti-dramatic dramas. Who would have thought that our funniest and most original director of the 1970s, Mike Leigh, would end up churning out such humourless, stultifying and deadly earnest stuff as Vera Drake? It was widely applauded upon release — because of the subject matter rather more than what was done with the subject matter. Abortion? Yep, that’s gritty — gotta be good. I sometimes suspect that Mike Leigh got stung by some of that criticism early on — round about the time of Nuts in May and Grown-Ups — that he was unfairly poking fun at a disadvantaged tranche of the population, the working class, and has since resolved to make films which are more inclusive and democratic and consensual. His — and our — loss.
How we might yearn for a British film which breaks out and genuinely explores a social ishoo with wit and irony and drama — much as those idiots in Hollywood managed to do recently with Crash. And how we should all yearn for a British actor who could emulate the versatile and always compelling Matt Dillon by investing a politically unlikeable character with depth and humanity. You get the feeling instead that British films begin from a certain political standpoint and will not deviate from that position for even the briefest, most perfunctory line of dialogue; the message would instead be rammed home, over and over again, in every gesture and inflection. If Crash, a film about racial tensions, had been a British production, there would have been no room for nuance, nor for the final and uplifting redemption of the racist cop. In fact there would have been no Crash, full stop. British cinema sees only one side of the argument; hence there is no real drama.
We might in the end blame poor Colin Welland for everything. Chariots of Fire was a fine film, if by now rather dated and, give or take the odd Spielberg epic or John Landis comedy, Hollywood was not, at that time, punching its weight. But it suggested that we had attained the moral high ground, that Hollywood was incapable of providing anything other than chav-fodder, because of the inherent nature of capitalism. The truth, though, is that when Hollywood does left-field, it does it better than anyone. And when people shout out that the British are coming, most sensible people run and hide.
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