Aaaand it’s the ‘90s! Still not history for us, but by the time my cousin Ellen is of blogging age, it will be.
Four films, all of them period dramas, all of them in some way relating to Britain/England during periods of serious colonialism/imperialism, three of them three hours long, and all of them in some way romance films. There is no need for me to emphasise how different all this is from the subsequent decade (even though I sort of just did). For a start, the closest thing we’ve had to an English film since is Slumdog Millionaire. Clearly, after Shakespeare in Love was over the Academy had had its fill of Anglophilia. Judy Dench is, after all, capable of producing excessive Anglophilia all on her lonesome.
Braveheart
In which a motivational speaker fights the English and almost wins.
It’s true; Mel spends the entire film giving inspiring speeches to one person or another. That’s what happens when you turn a historical figure into a through-and-through hero. To return to the subject of Hollywood’s complete contempt for historical accuracy, the film’s “revelation” that Edward III was William Wallace’s son is more like Shakespeare in Love – a cheeky and unprovable “what if?” that only very stupid people would believe to be historical fact, rather like Daleks emptying the Mary Celeste – except that apparently the Princess would have been about two years old when William Wallace was executed. They’re not even trying! You only have to look at the cabbie-like boatmen to see that Shakespeare in Love is in no way attempting to be biographical, whereas that is exactly what Braveheart claims to be. Realism is surely still a criterion by which we judge fictional characters, therefore a historical figure should be a gift to filmmakers and screenwriters: a real, complex, multi-faceted person. But no.
Paramount, 20th Century Fox, 1995. Directed by Mel Gibson. Written by Randall Wallace.
The English Patient
In which, oh no, he’s not English. BAM! Irony.
We have now reached the stage where the way I watched this movie – streaming from the Netflix website – was very much not possible when it was made. Actually, this is the first pre-Netflix BPW (Netflix was founded in 1997, even though it didn’t launch until 1998), which is exciting…possibly just to me but that’s okay. Ah, the days when the Internet was young; when we still talked about it like it was a thing rather than a space/mode of communication/lifestyle. Actually, The English Patient came out the same month that the DVD format was introduced. Maybe the ‘90s are history after all.
I’m really not sure what else to say about this movie. I found it rather bewildering. It seemed to have no structure I could follow, nor clues as to where it was heading; characters seemed to just do things with no motivation or reason. During, it felt like the English movie to end all English movies, but probably actually belongs to Remains of the Day or Room with a View (not that I’ve seen either of these), especially since this film spends no time anywhere near England and only the Cliftons are English, so it must have just been a feeling and a style. I bought the book; I’ll see where that gets me.
Miramax, 1996. Written and directed by Anthony Minghella, from the novel by Michael Ondaatje.
Titanic
In which we see Kate Winslet’s breasts before she enters a life-threatening wet t-shirt contest.
I wish that I hadn’t been hearing “My Heart Will Go On” everywhere since I was 11, because then at many points I would have found the incidental music breathtaking. Instead the feeling was more, “Oh hey, it’s the theme again.”
The first BPW that I hadn’t seen before, because I avoided it like the plague in 1997 when it seemed to be creating mass hysteria. I also feared that if I saw it, that before long I would be weeping into my pink frilly diary and putting a heart instead of a dot above the “i” in my name. Anyway, I’m finally old enough that conventions of masculinity have loosened enough for me to watch this film, and even to tear up a bit. The film didn’t need to be 3 hours, because I really couldn’t care less about Bill Paxton’s treasure hunting, and if I wanted to see long shots of the actual wreck (though it made a good title sequence) I would have watched a documentary on the subject. However, the framing device did allow the ending to have a note of happiness, since we see Rose meet Jack in the great Titanic in the sky, and her granddaughter and Bill Paxton are totally going to get it on.
Paramount, 20th Century Fox, 1997. Written and directed by James Cameron.
Shakespeare in Love
In which a place that superficially appears to be Elizabethan England is instead more like contemporary London infused with Shakespearean in-jokery…9 years later a Doctor Who episode would do the same thing but with more Harry Potter references.
Yeah, what is going on? The revelation that this film won BP at all, let alone the fact that it won over Elizabeth, Life is Beautiful, Saving Private Ryan, and The Thin Red Line, was met with bafflement from my friends (I’m not here to judge, that’s the Academy’s job). After we’d watched it, the film’s endearing nature had got the better of them, and their views had softened a little. As my girlfriend put it, “It must have been a very different world for a comedy romance like this to win Best Picture.”
Miramax, Universal, 1998. Directed by John Madden. Written by Marc Norman, Tom Stoppard.
Episode 4 of our ongoing story can be found in the side column.
