The Illusion of Depth

Imagine a high-stakes action thriller about a visionary scientist who develops a revolutionary technique that could change the world. Imagine the tension and drama that would inevitably ensue when various vested interests try to suppress that discovery before it turns society upside down. Imagine the paranoia; the conspiracy theories; the high-tension chase sequences!  The explosions; the action scenes! Intrepid scientists running from the authorities, jumping off bridges, hanging out of buildings! Actually, we don't have to imagine any of this, because Hollywood made this exact film, in 1996. More about that on Thursday. Now, imagine the exact same film, but make it British. I have said before that everything you need to know about British society can be learned from watching Passport to Pimlico and The Man in the White Suit . I screened Passport to Pimlico about a year and a half ago, and this Thursday I plan to screen The Man in the White Suit . For those who haven't yet ha

  Norman Rockwell's take on the American jury system... In 1998, the writer Peter Biskind published an exposé of mid-Century Hollywood entitled  Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock 'N Roll Generation Saved Hollywood . His thesis, in a nutshell, was that the collapse of the studio system in the 1950s left an opening for a younger, edgier generation of film-makers to rise to prominence, ushering in what Biskind clearly thinks of as Hollywood's "Golden Age".  Earlier generations of Hollywood film-makers had generally "worked their way up through the ranks" - learning the trade by actually making movies (either in Hollywood or in Europe, before they were forced out by the Nazis) but this new generation (which Biskind calls the "movie brats") were mostly graduates from film schools (Martin Scorsese; John Milius; Francis Ford Coppola) emerging into the film world as fully-formed directing auteurs . (Every year, the film schools turn

Although very few historians know this about me, I spent the first twelve years of my life in a different country.  True, I then spent the next four decades living in Great Britain, but there are still moments when life in the UK feels... odd.  My childhood was spent in a mysterious and magical Kingdom known as Atlanta , which Billy Wilder once described as "Siberia, with mint julips." In fairness, I don't believe I ever personally witnessed a julip, but there was nevertheless a certain degree of culture shock involved when I transitioned to British. There were of course some obvious cultural differences, like the traffic on the wrong side of the road (you generally figure that one out pretty quickly) or the lack of school shootings, but I don't think I will ever get used to certain other aspects of British life; like the extreme difference between Summer and Winter. What kind of a crazy country is it where it gets dark at 2.30 in the afternoon in some months, while t

Our little film series at the Victoria Park Baptist Church has now been exploring Cancel Culture for the last six months, which is, I think you will agree, a lot of Cancel Culture. I originally conceived this series of films because I have been concerned by what appears to be an epidemic of intolerance and "tribalism" taking hold in modern social discourse. What I wanted to show (and what I hope has become apparent from my selection of films) is just how depressingly familiar all of this actually is.  Whether it was the American Congress going after an imagined Communist threat or New England Puritans going after imagined Witchcraft; Turn-of-the-Century reactionaries going after The Cult of the Clitoris (I never get tired of that one) or modern Conservatives going after Satanic Paedophiles, there never seems to be a shortage of historical examples of "othering". A Monty Python sketch famously told us that "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition" but the