Source from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/mar/01/what-now-for-british-cinema
The interesting thing about the success of The King's Speech at this year's Academy awards is probably how very un-significant it is for British film generally. Trying to divine its importance for the industry here is like trying to predict tomorrow's weather in Morecambe from a colossal windstorm on the surface of Pluto.
It could very well be that writers and producers with "royal" scripts will get more meetings and the English accent will be found more charming than ever in Los Angeles. British craft and technical experts, always widely respected in any case, will receive a little extra boost. But basically, film producers here will find little change. Just as the British public have always loved Wimbledon without ever being all that interested in tennis, so the British establishment adore Oscar success without particularly wanting or needing to get behind the British film industry.
Yet it focuses the mind. Notoriously, the coalition government pulled the plug on the UK Film Council just as the council was about to unveil its greatest success: The King's Speech. It provided vital funding for this film when other public bodies, such as the BBC, passed on it. Now that the council has been wound up, ceasing to exist in 2012, there are bleak reports that its estimated ￡12m windfall from The King's Speech is to be almost wiped out by the ￡11m cost of dismantling the body itself.
Culture minister Jeremy Hunt insisted that just as much money would be available: it was just that the UK Film Council, with its allegedly excessive executive salaries, would be no more. Even setting aside the irony that the government seemed keener to crack down on UKFC pay than on bonuses for bankers effectively employed by the taxpayer, this decision leaves untouched the question of who has the expertise and experience to pick winners, and encourage the brightest and best in British film at all levels. Could it be that the UK Film Council, for all its flaws, was the body that was beginning to do just that? Well, it is an old battle, though I suspect the people involved in the UKFC may come to be quietly invited back to do the same job under a different banner.
The King's Speech is a bit of an outlier, to use Malcolm Gladwell's term. Period costume drama is something that we do very well, especially on television; its "brand value" has always been culturally underwritten by the perennial popularity of Shakespeare. But you can't build a film industry on heritage pieces. Some films have to be made about the modern world, and about social groups other than the upper and upper-middle classes. However, after The King's Speech, there could be mileage for the people who create spoof movies such as Vampires Suck. How about a tender, sensitive account of Adolf Hitler's painful battle to conquer his stammer in the run up to the first Nuremberg Rally? Surely some out-of-work British classical actors can run up a specialist porn version: The King's Peach – with an enormous pair of buttocks on the DVD cover? Ahem. It's just a thought. Though if anyone does greenlight either of these ideas, I should like an associate producer credit.
As far as British film is concerned, there is one really significance effect from the commercial view, and here I must permit myself a small anecdote. An eightysomething aunt of mine recently made a point of going to see The King's Speech at her local cinema in St Neots, on her own. Part of the staggering UK box-office success of the film is down to the smart way it has hoovered up the grey pound. People who have not been to the cinema in 10 or 20 or even 30 years have been moved to go to see this film they have read about. Older people are generally marginalised or patronised by the movies, so this is an interesting development. It is not a demographic that is going to download pirate copies or even rent DVDs: an old-fashioned visit to the cinema is specifically what they have in mind. And hearing-aid users who find live theatre uncongenial are pleasantly surprised to find that cinemas are not the ratty old fleapits they remember, but rather plush places with crisp and booming Sensurround sound. Going to the pictures may be a habit they now wish to revive, and that'll be down to The King's Speech.
Films that capture this audience will do very well at the box office. No one is suggesting that British producers knock out a series of rosily glowing nostalgia films, sponsored by Werther's Original, but grownup films that are pitched at grownup people . . . well, that would be welcome, and potentially profitable as well. So if The King's Speech reinvigorates a neglected sector of the British movie-going audience, it will, after all, deserve an extra Oscar for stimulating the British film industry.
No comments:
Post a Comment