Nostalgia for 1960s Britain
Two recent highly-anticipated films just arrived at your local theater. Both are by acclaimed writers/directors and are a bit of an offspeed pitch from their usual tones and lanes. The first is Edgar Wright's psychological thriller, Last Night in Soho; the second is Kenneth Branagh's heartwarming autobiographical Belfast. And finally, both are deeply British films about a longing for a specific time period and area of the United Kingdom.
Kenneth Branagh's Childhood Belfast
As a filmmaker, Branagh has been focused largely on both Shakespearean adaptations (Henry V; Hamlet; Much Ado about Nothing) and Disney IP projects (Thor; Cinderella; Artemis Fowl). Branagh, himself a trained thespian, retreats behind the camera as director of what is ostensibly his Roma. Alfonso Cuaron won Best Director (and should have taken home Best Picture) at the 2020 Oscars for his personal autobiographical black-and-white film based on a tumultuous time in his country's history—Mexico City in 1970. Something similar is at play in Focus Features' Belfast, a black-and-white drama based on Branagh's personal memories of the tumultuous times in his country's history—Northern Ireland in 1969.
Branagh's own personal connection is Buddy, the innocent and precocious nine-year-old son of Irish Protestants. In Beflast, the Catholics and Protestants were positioned against one another in harsh and violent clashes in this particular time period. The fellow bullying Protestants are threatening Buddy's father, Pa (Jamin Dornan). Even as Ma (wonderfully brought to life by Caitriona Balfe) attempts to hold the family together in a place where everyone knows their name, the family inevitably flees for safety in a more promising environment of Sydney, Australia. For as intense as the violence, animosity, and division is in Belfast, the film is much more rose-colored than expected.
Belfast stumbles because it attempts to have its proverbial cake and eat it too. It wants to be a longing love letter for Branagh's beloved childhood neighborhood and family, both the ones who stayed in Belfast and his Ma and Pa who left. Weaved into the black-and-white photography is splashes of golden color seen through the movie screen at the local Irish cinema. The light shines in the reflecting eyeglasses of Judi Dench, as faces lit by the silver screen shine in laughter and awe. Even as this occurs, there is intense persecution and violence. The filmgoer is left smiling as Belfast operates as a feel-good family dramedy in the vein of something like Minari. However, something rings hallow about its depiction of a nostalgic. The gold off the silver screen does not necessarily make for a Golden Age.
Edgar Wright's Nightmarish Soho
Edgar Wright's usual comedic tales of British male arrested adolescence (see his Cornetto trilogy of Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World's End) is seen only in his clear love for whip pans, kinetic filmmaking, and pop-music inflected soundtracks. This is Wright's first female protagonist and first foray into giallo-flavored psychological horror. The film shares a common fascination with Belfast's wistful longing for a Britain of the 1960s. Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) is a new student in a fashion school in downtown London. She is possessed by a passion for 1960s London and all things Sixties. Her passion soon turns to obsession through visions and nightmares of Sandy (Anya Taylor-Joy), an aspiring musician and entertainer in London's seedy area of Soho. The excitement of being transported to 1960s London quickly turns from sour to terror as the preying and abusive London men bring Eloise's nostalgia crashing back down to reality.
Wright's film is perhaps a personal realization as he has repeatedly gone on record for his love of older music and older films. Each of his interviews is dripping with knowledge and desire for an era that is not present. But Wright knows Eloise must be careful of what she wishes. 1960s London is not a time or place worth longing for.
The Perils of Nostalgia
There are two errors we can make when thinking about the past. The first is rose-colored nostalgia for the Golden Age of a bygone era. This is particularly dangerous for white evangelicals, who often cite the 1950s pre-Sexual Revolution era as the best years. Trump's famous "Make America Great Again" campaign motto in 2016 was relying on this exact nostalgia for the past superior time. Each era is beset with strengths and weaknesses, some for different groups and types of people as opposed to others. To live in the past is to miss the strengths of the present era.
The opposite is what C.S. Lewis calls "chronological snobbery" in his intro to Athanasius' classic book On the Incarnation. This spirit of snobbery assumes everything that is newer is automatically better. This assumes (incorrectly) that the human race is on a horizontal line of continual progress. Each age in the past is thus less enlightened and worse. This is wrong, too. There is something lost with today's newer technology. If we were honest, few of us would want to return to a time before Google and Apple. However, a disconnectedness and rootedness in a brick-and-mortar neighborhood with real humans of Belfast is something worth mourning. However, in order to be balanced, we need the harsh reminder of Soho.
We need to develop what C.S. Lewis refers to as the German word, sehnsucht. Sehnsucht is an "inconsolable longing" that "empahsizes our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakes desire . . . our best havings are wantings." (see Lewis' own biographical work, Surprised by Joy) We should not shove away the desires for a perfect world that nostalgia often makes our memories and childhoods (if we look back fondly on ours, that is). This longing is placed there by God for a reason. There is a land beyond the shores and outside of our memories where our dreams do come true. It isn't in this world and it's not in our past. So look ahead with sehnsucht toward what Jonathan Edwards calls, "a world of love."