As election fever takes hold and a weary populace is asked to steer the country away from the current political decade, we at The Platform take a look at the nation according to its cinema, with a glance at some of the British films featured at last month’s BFI London Film Festival.

Official Secrets
Dir: Gavin Hood (2019)

We start then with the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war, in the first film I have seen that manages to make the early noughties look retro. It follows the real story of Katharine Gun, the whistleblower who leaked a failed request by the US and UK to spy on UN Security Council delegates to blackmail them into passing a resolution supporting war. Keira Knightley plays the central role in what is both a slick thriller and an impassioned plea for public integrity, as Gun risks her livelihood and freedom against a war based on lies, a point that resonates with our post-truth age. Its espionage drama resembles Watergate saga All the President’s Men, but mixed with the heritage charm of the English countryside as Gun turns renegade amidst the rolling hills of Cheltenham. The pace is slow and the events of the case – the government drops the charges, but goes ahead with the war – are too recent to surprise, but the subplot of how it threatened her Kurdish husband with deportation holds real suspense.

Official Secrets is now showing at UK cinemas.

Greed
Dir: Michael Winterbottom (2019)

The unfairness of systematic injustice is brought up-to-date in this satire that depicts ‘Greedy’ McCreadie, a fictional boss of a series of clothing firms. McCreadie plans a lavish party in a mocked-up amphitheatre on a Greek island to celebrate his 60th birthday. The ancient-world setting hints that the Philip Greens and Mike Ashleys, to whom the character clearly refers, are modern embodiments of the timeless cruelty of imperial ambition. Director Michael Winterbottom always does his best work with actor Steve Coogan, who plays McCreadie, and the film is further enlivened by a vast array of comic talent. But it strains under the weight of its own ambitions, as its 100 minutes tick off every topic from corporate greed, financialisation and Thatcherism, to sweatshop garment workers, migrant labour, the Greek debt crisis, Syrian refugees, reality TV, an Oedipal subplot and a Commons select committee investigation. Its political conclusions about the evil of the 1-percenters may come as no great revelation, but there is a lot of fun to be had along the way.

Greed is scheduled for UK release in February 2020.

Saint Maud
Dir: Rose Glass (2019)

“Nothing worth trying comes easy,” repeats young nurse Maud to herself in this intimate drama from the debut for director Rose Glass that earned star Morfydd Clark a special mention in the festival awards at the BFI. She plays Maud, the carer for louche and terminally ill dancer Amanda (Jennifer Elhe). Strangely attracted by Amanda’s charisma yet repulsed by her lifestyle, Maud increasingly isolates herself within the certainties of religion until she eventually envisages herself as a latter-day martyr. Her belief in her divine mission is at odds both with the fish-and-chips surroundings of her anonymous seaside town and the mortification of the flesh she decides to endure. This film plays out as a psychological horror, with similarities to The Exorcism of Emily Rose, or Midsommar, in that the mundane safety of an everyday modernity is at odds with a biblical world of gruesome suffering powered by the awe of metaphysical forces. The film hints that a guilty past motivates Maud’s conversion, but it is a shame that, unlike Midsommar, it isn’t able to use her deranged ecstasy to undercut our confidence in our own normality. Her irrationality is explained away as one feeble-minded woman’s psychosis (a similar problem to another psychological horror that played at the festival, the US/UK co-production The Lodge) and the film rather misses its opportunity to turn into something more unsettling.

Saint Maud is coming to UK cinemas soon but the release date is yet to be announced.

Muscle
Dir: Gerard Johnson (2019)

This rather blokey film is small in its ambition, shot in a stylish black and white, whose grim toughness plays nicely against the tense hilarity of the central relationship of its male leads. It features unsuccessful call centre salesman Simon, who joins a local gym in an attempt to regain some purpose. While his wife can’t stand his company, Simon finds a new buddy in the hulking shape of ex-army personal trainer Terry . Terry puts Simon on a strict new regime, but quickly appears to have a deeper motive than mere professional interest, as he insinuates himself with unhinged intent into every facet of Simon’s life. Simon is put on a regime that denies him carbs after 6pm, but can accommodate all-night sessions of cocaine and super-strength cider. The film’s concluding twenty minutes indicate an uncertainty about how to conclude things, but the crackling intensity of the muscular absurdity that bonds the two men makes this film well worth seeing.

UK release date is yet to be announced.

So it would seem, from its films at least, that contemporary Britain is a place of unfairness and disappointment. It would also seem to be populated by lonely people whose attempts to escape failure only cause them further harm. Notably, all of the films mentioned above are set on the coast, with the exception of Muscle, whose South Shields is nevertheless on the banks of the Tyne. The water allows an idea of escape beyond the grey constraint of routine, while it also confirms our landlocked entrapment. Wherever the coming decade may take us as a society, as some of our films indicate, we shall not be sailing towards it on a wave of collective optimism.

Featured photo: Keira Knightley as whistleblower Katharine Gun in Official Secrets.