Out with the old in with the new

After much tweaking, refining and noodling the Big Picture website is finally up and running.
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Film Review: Synecdoche, New York

If I didn’t know any better, and I’m not sure I do know any better, I’d have to regard Synecdoche, New York as writer and first-time director Charlie Kaufman’s stab at a cinematic suicide note. So from the outset if the prospect of witnessing the chronicled dwindling on a man towards inevitable painful death is not something that appeals to you I’d strongly suggest that you join the line of easily pleased customers queuing for Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past right about now.

Even if you’re the sort of filmgoer who relishes the kind of intellectual challenges that a film like Synecdoche, New York throws in your path I would still advise caution. Having one’s mind bent and patience tested by the temporal jigsaw puzzle that Kaufman languidly invites you to piece together might just possibly appeal to those of us who fancy the idea of a game of Sudoku with no starter numbers in the grid, but only just. Furthermore, if you’re at or near the age most associated with the symptoms of mid-life crisis, this is as much a drab shop widow display of forthcoming ‘attractions’ as it is a depressing personal meditation on the diminishing returns of the creative process, and about as appealing and satisfying.

An early scene shows the central character, theatre director Caden Cotard (played for the most part by Phillip Seymour Hoffman with all the suitably lumpen weariness and dread of a bee-stung orang-utan on death row), probing his own excrement for signs of blood, an obvious indicator that an awful lot of protracted paranoid self-examination will shortly follow. Audio-visually speaking, it takes a good forty minutes or so for the film to rise up from the mud of incoherence. You know you’ll be lingering a while in the under-lit recesses of Cotard’s (Kaufman’s) mind when the only flash of early colour is the unexplained green poo produced by his four-year-old daughter.

Hoffman’s carefully palsied performance is matched in these initial stages by that of Catherine Keener, underplaying the part of Cotard’s ex-wife Adele with all the bleary ennui she can muster. Adele’s own artistic success, based on a series of postage stamp sized paintings that require a pair of magnifying lenses for the onlooker to appreciate, leads her to relocate to Berlin, robbing Cotard of access to his daughter. The nearest thing to amusing irony in the film is that the success of these miniscule works of art manages to overshadow Cotard’s own vast creative enterprise.

A huge and unexpected MacArthur ‘Genius’ grant (an award given each year to a handful of US citizens who show exceptional merit and promise for continued and enhanced creative work, in case you were wondering) allows Cotard the chance to mount a gigantic dramatic recreation of his own life inside a cavernous Manhattan warehouse, played out on a sprawling recreation of the city, the synecdoche or stand-in of the title. Cotard populates his set with stand-ins for the people that have touched his life, and as the ‘production’ peters along over months, years, the stand-ins themselves become inveigled in the director’s experiences and inevitably wind up being portrayed by further stand-ins, each iteration embodying a less and less focussed representation of the originals.

One might expect this gradual ‘Russian doll’ disassembly of layers to reveal hidden truths about Cotard’s character and life, but the result ultimately is a blurring of reality, an ironing-out of detail and meaning. Perhaps regrettably this is the truth, or at least the truth of the creative endeavour as Kaufman sees it. The more one pursues the meaning of art, the less distinct and quantifiable it becomes. The film’s final gradual fade to grey-white caps this notion succinctly. It is the ashen colour of physical death and also the blank page or canvas of creative death. Quite what Kaufman will follow this with is anyone’s guess – is there life after death?

Recommending a viewing of Synecdoche, New York is a little like ringing your mates up to let them know there’s a guy about to jump off the building across the street from them. Except it's not quite as exciting as that. So forgive me if I pull back from the brink of a full endorsement, even though I feel compelled to by its anti-mainstream posturing. I would anticipate that even Kaufman fans will struggle to digest it; it makes the intricacies of Being John Malkovich and Adaptation seem about as unfathomable as a Kate Hudson romcom. This much I can say by way of advocacy: the supporting cast, numbering Brits Samantha Morton and Emily Watson in their ranks, are as committed to Kaufman’s thesis as Cotard’s players are to his. As such the direction is firm-handed although for the most part the visual palette he deploys is some way off the realisation of a Spike Jonze or a Michel Gondry (who’s promo video for Björk’s Batchelorette this partly resembles) and his editing style possesses a dry truncation that will annoy rather than intrigue.

If you do choose to go and see it, and I fear the queue will be short, I can at least relieve one possible anxiety for you. It’s pronounced ‘sin-eck-da-key’.

Jez Conolly

Interview with State of Play and the Last King of Scotland director Kevin Macdonald

On a recent visit to Bath to promote his new conspiracy thriller State Of Play, Director Kevin Macdonald took time out before attending a screening of the film, organised by Bath Film Festival, to talk to Jez Conolly about the process of adapting the television series for the big screen, Walkabout (Nicolas Roeg's 1971 film, not Brad Pitt's much-discussed departure from the project) and his next film The Eagle Of The Ninth set, rather appropriately given the location of the interview, in Roman Britain.

J.C: Were there any elements of the State Of Play TV series that you would have liked to have included in the film that you had to leave out in the process of cutting six hours of material down to two?
K.M: Yes and no. I realized early on that it had to be its own beast. The film had to exist outside of the TV series to do something different. I ceased to think of it as a straight adaptation. It was the central ideas that interested me. I wanted to take those and run with them and make something that was my own interpretation. I was concerned that everyone was going to remember the TV series and question why it should be taken to America, but I think the themes of the material are strong enough to withstand that kind of adaptation. The ideas at the heart of the series, friendship, betrayal, guilt, are all there. I loved the idea of making a film about journalism, I’m a big fan of newspapers, I wanted to be a journalist myself. Everyone will tell you that newspapers are dying and so I wanted to tell the story of a dying newspaper and how a journalist on the trail of a huge, huge story in some ways saved the newspaper temporality.

What has been the off-the-page response from newspaper people to the film?
The actual reviews have been middling to good but the informal response from journalists themselves at previews, in the UK at least, has been fantastically good. Some journalists in America have said that it’s not really accurate, but we made quite a lot of effort with the central character of Cal McAffrey, to figure out who he is within the hierarchy of the newspaper and what his actual job is. Some of the critics have described him as an investigative journalist. Of course he’s not, he’s what they call in America the metro reporter, a relatively small time employee, somebody who works on local crime, corruption in City Hall and the like, but they didn’t pick up on that.

Brad Pitt’s walking away from the project is well documented. How much did Russell Crowe bring to the development of the character in the relatively short run-up or during the shoot?
Because he got involved at the last minute quite a lot of the things that go into forming the character were already there, the script was there, the sets were built including his apartment. He had to come in and ask ‘Okay, this is where I live - what am I like?’. I worked with a fantastic production designer (Mark Friedberg) so Russell started from the page and was then able to know what his car and apartment looked like on the inside. From that Russell was able to build up the character of somebody you’d believe you could meet walking down the street. He turned up the day before filming saying that he wanted to wear a pink cancer awareness armband. He felt that Cal’s mother had died of cancer and that this might help to explain why he had been unable to or refused to develop a long term relationship with a woman. He also wanted a little shrine to the mother on set, which you never see but it was important to him for it to be there.

You recently talked about Nic Roeg’s Walkabout on The Film Programme on Radio 4. You mentioned that films like Walkabout are emblematic of something we’ve lost in filmmaking. What is it that we’ve lost, and can we get it back?
We’ve lost a lot of things I think. To start with it’s impossible to imagine a film like Walkabout being made today and distributed in any kind of commercial context. We’ve lost a broadness, a cineliteracy in the audience, and I think that even extends to something like State Of Play. Five years ago a film like State Of Play would have made a lot of money in America. These days it’s the fifth or sixth grown-up movie in a row that hasn’t really performed at the box office in America, which is sad and indicative of the fat that adults don’t want to go to the movies any more, that teen and early twenties audiences don’t really want to be challenged in any way, they want to have an experience that is about sensation, they don’t want to think about character, the story isn’t even that important to them. Nic Roeg was able to express the content of the film visually in a way that very few filmmakers have successfully done, through the use of the camera, editing, music, sound effects. I think the days when you could make mainstream art movies in Britain are pretty much over, but they may return.

With your move from documentary to feature, how much do you see the sensibility of documentary influencing mainstream feature films?
There have always been two schools of cinema; at the beginning you had the Lumiere brothers setting up cameras to record real events and almost simultaneously you had Georges Méliès creating works of fantasy and imagination. These two strains of cinema continued through the years and so on the one hand you had Hitchcock following the Méliès tradition, where every single thing is controlled, virtually every gesture is scripted, and on the other hand you had Vittorio De Sica and Italian Neorealism and Humphrey Jennings in Britain trying to make films that have spontaneity and capture real life, and I’m very definitely in the Vittorio De Sica tradition. One of the things that I love in a drama is that little sensation you get when there’s something in the way a person is talking or the way they move their face that feels very real. Mainstream entertainment cinema has adopted some of the tricks of the documentary trade, for example the use of handheld cameras. Effectively they are the same old Hollywood stories but with the veneer of the documentary style. With my own work one of the interesting questions I’m always grappling with is ‘who is the camera?’ Is it the audience or a person in their own right? What perspective is the camera giving? When you use the documentary camera as I do what you’re saying is the camera is a person, and that immediately differentiates how you view the movie. If you feel like the camera is moving like it’s a person, if it feels like it’s only in positions that a person could get into compared to a camera that is totally mobile and fluid, then I think it’s more honest.

I read a short piece by you about the much-missed cinematographer Jack Cardiff in which you single out The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus as the height of his achievements. Thinking back to what you had to say about Nic Roeg’s pure visual cinema, do you see yourself moving further away from documentary-style realism and into more painterly filmmaking?
Like many people I’m driven by cravings for new experience and adventure. I don’t have a grand master plan to adhere to a dominant aesthetic that will surmount everything in my life or in my work, so yes I would and if the right circumstances came along I would love to do something like a musical or a comedy. I don’t know if I’d be any good at them but if somebody gives you the opportunity to do those things I’d think why the hell not?

What can you tell me about your next picture The Eagle Of The Ninth? I believe it’s based on a childen’s novel.
It’s a teen novel really, and it’s certainly not a children’s film. It’s a book I read when I was 12 or 13. It comes from a genre of writing that doesn’t really exist anymore, at least not in its original form. It’s a teen adventure, quite sophisticated, historically textured and accurate. It was written by Rosemary Sutcliff who wrote many historical books set at the time of the Roman Empire and the Dark Ages dealing with the clash between the Celtic and Roman cultures. I found out that the producer Duncan Kenworthy owned the rights to it and I pleaded with him to let me do it. The idea is not to make something like Troy or Gladiator. I’m not going to have armies of 100,000 computer generated Romans. There’ll be a little bit of CGI used to recreate Hadrian’s Wall, but it’s really a character drama about the relationship between a Roman soldier and his Celtic slave. It’s an exciting old-fashioned adventure.

Was there a particular film that had a big effect on you as a youngster?
I had very unsophisticated tastes as a child. The film that I remember seeing as a ten-year-old and enjoying the most was called Sky Riders. It’s an adventure story about a very inventive gang of thieves who rob a fortress using hang gliders. It was made by someone called Douglas Hickox, and weirdly the very first award I received, for my film One Day In September, was called the Douglas Hickox Award given at the British Independent Film Awards.

What later films got you interested in filmmaking?
There are two films; one was, unimaginatively, a film made by my grandfather [Emeric Pressburger]. When I was at university I went to the film club where they showed The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp. I watched the film and was so moved by it because it felt so personal to him and everything I knew about him, but also because it was so entertaining and yet intelligent. That was something that I took on board; I wanted to make films that were entertaining but don’t insult the audience’s intelligence. I recognized so much of him in it and he died very shortly after I saw it so it’s a movie experience I remember very vividly. The other movie that really got me interested in making documentaries was The Thin Blue Line by Errol Morris, which is for my money the greatest documentary ever made. It changed the whole aesthetic of documentaries. It proves a man innocent of murder - what more can you hope to do in your life – and it used the camera like a psychiatrist’s couch. To get people to reveal things about themselves that they would never ever want to have revealed. There was a formalism about the film that I found completely mesmerizing. Morris used the same 50mm lens on every single interviewee and placed them all a certain length from the camera. I found that formalism, in opposition to the wild, handheld observational style which was very prevalent in documentary at the time, to be fascinating and influential on the documentaries that I made.

What was the last film you saw that excited you?
Rachel Getting Married by Jonathan Demme. I haven’t seen much in the last couple of years that I thought was really new cinema. I loved that film because I thought it had a documentary sensibility to it and a warmth and inclusiveness. It also had the greatest surprise performance I’ve ever seen. Anne Hathaway gives a wonderful, ambiguous, unlikeable kind of performance in the movie which I thought was fantastic, and even though the film has faults I like the faults. I thought it was the kind of movie they don’t make any more, it was a 70s style movie and I enjoyed it very much.

State of Play is on general release now

Interview by Jez Conolly
With the kind assistance of Alexandra Chapman from the Bath Film Festival

Film Review: Chéri

Imagine a world in which you have servants to run your bath; you have a wardrobe which no shopping spree could ever hope to improve on and a home that even the upper class would lust after, and you’re imagining the life of a retired Parisian courtesan in the first decade of the twentieth century.

Adapted by Oscar winning screenwriter, Christopher Hampton (Atonement, Dangerous Liaisons), from a novella by the late French novelist, Colette, Chéri tells the story of a love affair between an ageing courtesan beauty, Léa (Michelle Pfeiffer) and the title character, Chéri (Rupert Friend), the son of a competitive and interfering ex-colleague, Madame Peloux (Kathy Bates).

Director Stephen Frears (The Queen, Dangerous Liaisons) presents us with a visual array of colour. The camera takes us on a smooth and seductive tour of 1920s Paris with clothes and architecture to die for. Despite the setting, Frears does not bombard us with the stereotypical shots of the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe to remind its audience where this is set. Instead we periodically go for drinks at Maxims or get a passing shot of the Seine.

Chéri is a pre-World War I Pete Doherty. The music scene aside, the pale skin, dark features, excessive alcohol consumption and drug use along with his skin and bone appearance is somehow completely alluring to beautiful women, in this case the (getting close to past it) Léa. His almost gothic appearance leads you to wonder if he’s just stepped out of one of Tim Burton’s dressing rooms. Raised without a father and surrounded by beautiful women and their accessories, Chéri has a pertinent attraction towards feminine material items. He wears silk pants and has an obsession with pearls and despite Léa’s attempts to convince him of ‘something more masculine’ there is no male figure to guide him. It’s quite a contrast to see Friend play such a feminine and dark character in comparison with his recent amicable performance as Prince Albert in The Young Victoria. We will be seeing more of him no doubt and his re-emergence in period drama draws a likeness with the quick rising talent of James McAvoy.

Have Pfeiffer’s eyes always been so blue? Despite the title of the film, it is Pfeiffer that steals the limelight. In her first liaison with Frears since the Dangerous one of 1988, her performance is outstanding and the closing shot of the film, which I won't spoil, reaffirms her status as one of cinema’s leading ladies. Undoubtedly aided by her magnificent costumes, her appearance is mesmerising and many a character are drawn to her looks. Others remain green with envy.

Kathy Bates, as always it seems, plays the maternal figure. Suitably annoying and perhaps the film’s main antagonist, if there is one, Bates portrays the rivalry between the courtesans superbly. Chéri’s virginal bride, Edmée (Felicity Jones) was cleverly cast and is the perfect Blousey Brown character suitably envious of Lea’s Tallulah beauty.

Frear’s uncredited narration is reminiscent of that in Woody Allen’s Vicky Christina Barcelona. Used with success at the beginning and end of the film, it occasionally reappears like the voice of someone sat behind you in the cinema, talking in your ear, making you jump as you had forgotten that they were still there.

As you might expect in a world where the women know nothing but how to pleasure the opposite sex, Frears presents us with numerous love scenes, some more alluring that others. Oysters, despite their notorious aphrodisiac qualities, have never been such a turn off.

The costumes are as delectable as one would have hoped. The use of colour is well thought out reminding me of Vivien Leigh’s dramatic colour changes in Gone with the Wind to reflect shades of character. On Chéri’s first departure, Léa purchases a green emerald ring - the ultimate symbol of jealousy. However, on Chéri’s return the tables are turned and he assumes the ring to be from a new lover transforming him into the green eyed monster.

The script is witty; the score–performed by The London Symphony Orchestra–is quirky, cheeky even seductive but disappointingly the ultimate draw of the period drama– romance – is lacking. Despite their performances and the undeniable chemistry between Friend and Pfeiffer there is no heart pounding realisations of true love in this film and sadly this will not meet the majority of audience’s romantic expectations.

Joey Beard

Accounting for taste (or ‘You like what??!’)

We were getting on famously, this girl and I. Our tastes in music, books, comedians, pet peeves – all were lining up nicely. We got on to classic musicals.

‘Easter Parade?’ I ventured.

‘Crikey yes,’ she returned. ‘Singin’ in the Rain?’

‘Absolutely,’ I murmured appreciatively. ‘Singin’ in the Rain. Still, if push came to shove, I’d have to go with Astaire rather than Kelly.’

The lengthening pause told me that something was awry.

‘No,’ she said finally. ‘Mine would be Gene.’ She sighed, crestfallen. This wasn’t going to work out.

Everyone loves a good barney about movie favourites. But we can't help finding significance in people’s cultural preferences; we scan each other's bookshelves and DVD collections for clues to their character. The complete works of Leni Riefenstahl? Yikes. Especially if the CD shelf includes Wagner's Ring Cycle.

I always preferred Astaire’s gangly introspection to Kelly’s compact, muscular eagerness. The climax of the ‘Broadway Melody’ sequence in Singin’ in the Rain always makes me tense up – we seem to be about to collide with Kelly’s gleaming all-American gnashers. And don’t even get me started on that 'aw shucks' thing he does when he pushes his hat askew mid-routine. But can you divide the world into Astaire fans and Kelly fans, like some Myers-Briggs personality test? Are those in the Fred camp more prone to dark fits of brooding? Do the Gene contingent show more of a tendency to break out in twinkly grins? Unlikely - they're not sufficiently different to polarise opinion.

The Chaplin-Keaton dichotomy, on the other hand, can divide a room pretty neatly: do you go for the ambitious all-rounder obsessed with his own legend or the melancholy underdog with a self-destructive streak? Buster is easier to love, probably because he went easier on the sentiment and because his own life was fairly crammed with pathos and misfortune; Chaplin's plucky little guy always on his uppers seems a little too self-serving for a man who became immensely wealthy by playing a tramp. Who in their right minds would prefer Chaplin? Who am I to pass judgement on their judgement?

Sean Connery’s 007 v Roger Moore’s 007 is less contentious, although there are doubtless a few individuals who disdain Connery's ever-so-slightly feral charisma in favour of Roger Moore’s smirky Yacht Club lothario. How narrow-minded of me to consider this an indication of some kind of dysfunctional personality. But surely, you'd have to be round the bend...

By the same token, people unfortunate enough to have witnessed me ranting about the crass stupidity of Kevin Smith's Dogma, or the appallingly misjudged mawkishness of Life is Beautiful, have most likely come to their own conclusions about the ranter. We should all, of course, exercise some latitude in judging the taste of others, and overlook the odd penchant for - let's say - Cheech and Chong or Adam Sandler. Then again, spying a box set of Fassbinder in someone's collection should still give one pause. I mean, you have to draw the line somewhere.

Nick Riddle

The modern Bank Holiday movie: ‘move along please, nothing to see here’

Oh the agony of choice! When faced these days with the dozens of viewing options on movie channels, online or on the walls of rental shops I start to experience a throbbing tension around the temples, a mild blurring of vision and a distinct inability to make up my mind what to watch.

The condition is always at its worst around Christmas, Easter and bank holidays. I think I know why. Back in the 1970s, in the days of three-TV-channels-and-that’s-yer-lot, I felt, somewhat ironically, spoiled. Boxing Days were a seamless watch of chocolate factories and mad, mad, mad, mad worlds and great escapes and airport 75s. Bank Holiday Mondays promised Sinbad and Argonauts and lands that time forgot. I’d sit there, soaking it all up, my face growing as hot and red with excitement as those of the cast of The Towering Inferno or The Poseidon Adventure. This was my movie nursery; I suckled at the teet of Irwin Allen, played soldiers with Lee Marvin and learned to ride a bicycle with Newman and Redford.

All I had to do to gain this education was turn the television on. The relative lack of choice meant I was forced to watch only quality movies. I have genuine pity for today’s youngsters, able as they are to tap into hours and hours, days and days, of indistinguishable pre-digested movies with all the character and depth of baby food/shit, falling off the end of the Hollywood turd factory’s conveyor belt, onto a small screen and into their small heads.

However, let’s discuss that word quality. I wouldn’t want to suggest that all of the films that ticked my boxes as a lad were uniformly quality productions. They certainly weren’t. I’ve seen most of them again in adult life and on more than one occasion the total lack of quality, when the readings of grown-up critique are taken, is painfully evident. I’ve even gathered friends together for screenings of some of them, only to suffer from audible toe-curling when the non-toxic-crayoned memories of youth viewing are embarrassingly laid bare.

I think I’ve learned my lesson though. When the urge to blurt out ‘you really must see Monte Carlo Or Bust’ to a co-worker comes over me I tend to bite me lip nowadays (although I do reckon the whole 1960s Edwardian-Jallopy-Racing sub-genre deserves another look) and pull back from opening out what would probably be a very one-sided discussion about Bank Holiday movies on TV. With one exception.

I must have been about six the first time I saw 633 Squadron. Released in 1964, it depicts the exploits of a fictional RAF Mosquito squadron as it attempts to destroy a German V-2 rocket fuel plant secreted at the end of a Norwegian fjord. When you’re six you don’t question the fact that the very Mediterranean-looking George Chakiris is meant to be Norwegian. You don’t quarrel with the logic that led the Germans to conveniently build their fuel plant directly below an enormous precipice just big enough to crush it if the bombs were dropped on the right spot. And you certainly don’t mind that the effects team sourced plane models from their nearest Airfix retail outlet.

Somehow at that tender age you get caught up in the whole brio of the picture, and at the end you feel almost like you’re sat there next to Cliff Robertson and Angus Lennie in the cockpit, not stopping to question the lousy back projection behind you, not worrying about being cropped as a result of some lamentable 70s pan-and-scan. That’s your thumb on the release button as the kite heroically disgorges its payload onto the craggy Norwegian rock (played by a craggy Scottish rock filmed at Glen Coe).

Several years passed. The Ron Goodwin theme tune with its ‘da-da-da-da-da-da-daaar-daaar-daaar’ six/three time signature provided the soundtrack in my head for many a stiff-armed sortie in the back garden as I dive-bombed my tortoises with assorted pieces of Lego.*
Then I went to the pictures to see Star Wars and that was when it got interesting.

The main reason why I still extol the virtues of 633 Squadron to this day is because I came out of the cinema that warm afternoon in June 1977 telling everyone that George Lucas had, almost shot for shot, ripped off 633’s ending for his assault on the Death Star. See, I was a movie bore even at the age of 11. Nevertheless whenever Star Wars comes into the conversation I still question the originality of its denouement and point people to 633 Squadron for proof.

So if you’re stuck for something to watch over either of the upcoming Bank Holiday Mondays you could do worse than seek out this flawed masterpiece, with its acting and sets chiselled from the same piece of balsa wood and its plot and planes suspended from the same nylon threads.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OZq-tlJTrU

Jez Conolly

* No tortoises were injured in the writing of this piece.

Death of the Cut: The changing face of film censorship

Although Zombie Flesh Eaters was granted an X-certificate cinema release in 1980, the BBFC sliced out a hefty 106 seconds of footage before passing it. This included the infamous shot where a woman’s head is forced into a wooden splinter, bursting her eyeball - nicely disgusting, although it lacks the sheer bewilderment of the ‘zombie vs. tiger shark’ fight.

Thanks to such hefty cuts, the BBFC was often accused of being over-zealous in its censorship between the 1950’s and 1990’s. The cuts weren’t just limited to violent titles such as Straw Dogs and Last House on the Left either. Even Rebel Without a Cause was meddled with, for fear it would encourage ‘teenage rebellion’. Of course, films containing graphic sex or violence were always the ones dealt with the most harshly. Banned scenes were the subject of great excitement amongst horror fans, especially those lucky enough to find a ‘hardcore’ uncut version on video.

There was no legal requirement for videos to be classified up until the early 80’s, but concern grew that these titles would fall into the hands of impressionable young children, who would undoubtedly grow up to be cross-dressing serial killers. This resulted in the Video Recordings Act of 1984. From then on, all commercial videos for sale or hire in the UK had to be classified according to their suitability for ‘home viewing’. However, through the passing of the Video Recordings Act, the BBFC had already begun to evolve away from their censorship past. This was reflected in a title change, from the British Board of Film Censors to the British Board of Film Classification.

The term ‘video nasty’ soon became a media buzzword, one which was bandied about with glee by the likes of the Daily Mail. This attitude sadly continued well into the 90’s, but despite media pressure, the BBFC had become cautious about unnecessarily cutting any so-called controversial titles. Larry Clark’s Kids was swiftly labelled ‘child pornography’ by the press, but the BBFC passed the film with only minor cuts after investigating the actual age of the main actors. Crash was another movie thrust into the spotlight, thanks to several graphic sex scenes featuring car crash victims - including a memorable shot of James Spader getting it on with a vulva-like scar. The BBFC screened the film to a group of disabled people before passing its verdict, eventually releasing it uncut.

At the turn of the new millennium, the BBFC decided to poll the UK public for its opinions on film classification. The results showed that people weren’t quite as bothered about violence and bad language in movies as previously thought. For parents the main concern was drug use, as well as violence in the lower classification categories that could be easily imitated by their sprogs. Not amazingly shocking - even the likes of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had been vilified in the past, for encouraging kids to construct katanas or nunchucks out of bits of wood.

Sex scenes, however, appeared to get a big thumbs-up from most of those polled. The result was that real sex became acceptable in 18-rated films, as proved by the likes of Intimacy and 9 Songs. Sexual Violence was still a grey area, especially in the case of Baise-Moi, a 2001 film featuring an explicit rape scene. The film inspired much debate over whether the sexual content was actually pornographic - Director Coralie Trinh Thi suggested not, because it was “not for masturbation.” The BBFC limited their cuts to a 10-second penetration shot, which they claimed eroticised sexual assault, then passed it with an 18 certificate.

Recently, the BBFC has taken to providing detailed consumer advice about every UK release on both the film posters and its own website. Jurassic Park 2 was the first to get this treatment back in 1997, with a warning to parents about ‘scary scenes of violence’. Since then we’ve been treated to cautions such as ‘contains scenes of criminal activity’ for Pickpocket, and ‘contains sexualised posing’ for the recent Fast & Furious (surely ‘contains Vin Diesel’ is all you really need to know). Perhaps the most legendary advice so far is ‘contains mild peril’, already notorious for being almost completely meaningless.

Still, at least the BBFC are now clear in their role as a classification board. Instead of slicing out huge chunks of films to ‘protect the general public’, they’re instead letting us make our own minds up. As the board itself has stated: “Who’s to decide what adults can or can’t watch?” And for the Zombie Flesh Eater fans out there, the movie was finally released fully uncut with an 18 certificate in 2005, as part of the ‘Box of the Banned’ set. Time to settle down for some good splinter action, horror chums.

Chris Barraclough