Threads (1984)

Not technically a film, and especially with the first half you can tell it's a BBC drama. But with the 1 hour 50 minute length and the cinematography, I figure it's worthy of mention even though it was never a theatrical release (heck, I don't think it would have passed the censors.)

I first heard of this film last year, when a clip was used in the 3-part Cold War documentary last year and there was commentary on the controversy (understandably so) surrounding it. Powerful clips of bodies caught in the middle of a nuclear disaster. Anyway, I eventually found a copy on YouTube, and spent a couple of months not watching it until I went back to the bookmark the other day to find it had been copyright claimed and eventually found it on a really shady website.

So anyway. 

Threads is a terrible viewing experience. It's more upsetting than any horror film out there, and is able to fuck pretty much anyone over.

Films of this nature nowadays tend to go either the patriotic route of "there were good men in 9/11 who fought for your country salute them" (the stories of survival by firefighters in World Trade Center, if I remember the plot synopsis correctly) or the Michael Bay route of "millions of people die but this is fun high-addrenilin action so just have fun watching shit blow up." And people totally didn't die in Man of Steel either.

This film goes a different route, instead sticking to intense realism. Perhaps the most emotional text which appears on screen comes near the end:
"Population levels will have reduced to possibly Medieval levels."

The film's message is the world is fucked. If you're underground in a concrete shelter with a bunch of politicians, it doesn't guarantee immunity. There is no Protect and Survive.

Our protagonist in the first half is a young Sheffieldian man who's engaged to a young woman and has to deal with family drama and what not. It's typical BBC drama fare, but from the background we hear news reports. In the pub, it plays in the background until the bartender switches it over to a Golden Age film before popular demand says these political movements need to be watched. In the first scene where he's trying to get close to the girl in his car, the radio moves from Johnny B. Goode (a motif in the film) over to news reports of Russian politics. Then we see a plane fly overhead. It's so intricately plotted. It's a typical BBC drama just with something out of the ordinary there - the media, which drama tends to silence. Here it's omnipresent and a scene isn't left alone without it. There is the conflict between either ignoring what is happening by shutting off the telly or embracing one's inevitable fate. He eventually vanishes without a trace, and we're left to follow the story in small bits exploring other parts of dead British society. The film doesn't need a protagonist, and it doesn't need heroism. Because both are going to die anyway. 

Each scene is permeated with a computerised display - each character and word given another military click - which gives the date and the political movements of each day. It's a projected future, but one which is so intensely real that you can't escape it. It's purporting to be the definite reality if things come to worst. It's not a mockumentary, because that would be retrospective. It's contemporary, as if we're hearing the radio and watching the news as it happens.

It's harrowing. Every fucking image it gives is harrowing. It doesn't matter in 2014 that the Cold War is long over and that nuclear warfare is not a contemporary concern, despite the fact North Korea is in existence. It's a snapshot of the paranoia of that era, and understood paranoia. Personally I don't believe the Cold War would have developed into actual conflict. What this film lacks is showing the world scene, as it's only concentrated on the UK, but if Russia were to drop the bomb then every sensible nation would turn against them and cue World War III. Would Chernenko and Russia's people be able to live with destroying a fair chunk of a nation? Nope. These are all hypotheticals - the whole film is a hypothetical question - but it's a terribly interesting one at that. Our fears may be alleviated but the idea of an apocalypse on this scale isn't alien. There's human pathos within it.

It's not even survival of the fittest, because we find old men still live (one man refuses to give shelter to the needy in his home, understandably) and children die. It's a different disaster to the Holocaust; it's many ways worse to the Holocaust. The Holocaust saw 11 million dead, but that was at least organised killing. It was a part of the regime to create a supposedly stronger Germany. But from this we see there is no differentiation. The Jews and the gays and the Roma (presumably, we don't see any) all die along with everyday men and women who have no perceived abnormalities of any kind. Millions die without any reason at all. Nothing which can be justified in any way, shape or form. Any. It's not just the dead people but the pollution, the cancer in the air and an entire country assaulted to the point of destruction.

The government are absolute assholes, becoming a militaristic shadow of its former self and literally shooting people, using tear gas, etc. It's depravity. People lack food, and hospitals lack resources. There is no optimism of any kind. The ending offers a small burst of hope, set years after the incident. But not much hope. We find an old television set routed up, a BBC children's programme playing.

"The bones of a chicken", it repeats, with diogram opposite in black and white. Because even with hope it doesn't negate the omnipresence of death.

The film is absolute art, with quick cuts, horrifying shots, moments of silence etc.

This is the ultimate dystopia. 

--

If you're looking for supplemental content, there's a Newsnight programme from 1984 available on YouTube discussing this and The 8th Day.

Lilting (2014)

There's a film which was released recently where the film could simultaneously refer to rainbow flags being paraded down the streets or a documentary about lions.

So, I didn't see Pride. There's something about a bio-comedy with miners striking, campaigners and Bill Nighy which doesn't sit right with me. It's probably going to end up being named the best LGBT film of the year, but let's hope not.

It's a reason called Lilting. Ben Whishaw, known as the most attractive Q yet to teenage fangirls everywhere, and to AS English Literature students butt naked as the androgynous Ariel in Julie Taymor's The Tempest, appears here as Richard, whose long-term boyfriend, Kai, has recently died. Now sporting a beard and plaid shirts, he is the crush of my dreams and, were he not in a civil partnership, I would find a way to see if he would get with some nerdy 17 year old half his age.

What surprised me was the audience. Elderly, heterosexual couples. Like, it's a film about two gay men in a long-term relationship, so where are the gay couples using this as a date movie?

I was approaching this from the perspective of Richard, as a young gay male looking forward in time to when I'll be wearing beards and plaid shirts and be in a long-standing same sex relationship, and be looking after aging parents even though I have a life of my own. Their entry point is through the mother, as the one being cared for by the son figure (Richard, who attempts to take on Kai's role) even though their son has a life of their own, and the search to find love again, the feelings of loss and their unconditional love for their children.

What I was expecting was an extended monologue, where Richard recounted to Kai's mum the story of their romance (cue extended flashbacks to Kai and Richard's developing romance), whilst changing a few names and disguising the nature of the romance in the process.

But the film isn't that. The film is so many different things. It's an exploration of different loves, different losses, age, memory, and so on.

It's refreshing. It really is refreshing. So many LGBT films are focused on the teenager growing up and understanding their sexuality that it drowns out the committed adult relationships which, you know, there are a lot of. That the idea is you'll have everything sorted out in your teen years and you can cruise through adulthood. And yet the film revolves around characters in their 30s coming out. It acknowledges that coming out isn't a process of one act; as Richard says, they're coming out all the time by the very fact they are two romantically attached guys hanging out in public together. Yet at the time it's closeted to the parents, maybe the new friend, and so on.

The film is not 'Kai and Richard make out for 90 minutes', although I'm sure that has its audience; they are not its protagonists, but its catalyst.

It's a film about communication. Kai's mum seems to find love in an older English man in the care home, who spends his time telling her how much he wants to fuck her (etc.) to her incomprehension, as though she speaks 4 different Chinese dialects, she doesn't speak English. Richard decides to hire a translator, a young woman with no training who ends up altering the meaning of words because she thinks it helps and ends up ruining things, when he would have been better off with a more objective professional. The film is about Richard breaking down those communication barriers and the lies of "he was my best friend" to be able to be honest. What I'm sure a lot of you will be able to relate to is the anxiety over coming out and the tension and worry about what happens if your parents disown you. These aren't issues expressed exactly here, but it's a theme which is there and in the end the worry has caused more trouble than it was worth, because in the end the parents still love you for what you are.

Lilting: The tacky flowery wallpaper in the relic of a care home, juxtaposed against a songsung on vinyl and a shiny silver CD player, a relic of the early 2000s.

The past is not a foreign country, but is simultaneous, inseparable, continuous, at one with the present. The flashbacks aren't the past but the present; in one scene the camera pans between rooms as Richard lays in bed with Kai, the doorbell rings, he gets up and puts on underwear as a shirt, only for him to open the door and find Kai's mum and the translator, weeks later. Which is much how flashbacks work in real life, really. You get so engrossed in what happened before and then suddenly reality shakes back at you at the most unexpected of times.

ALSO RICHARD'S HOUSE IS AMAZING OMG I WANT THOSE LIVING QUARTERS

It's a good film. It doesn't feel entirely perfect, and it is criminally short, and yet it gets so much right from the art of each shot to the message it's trying to portray and Ben Whishaw.

Check it out.