The Most Important Film in the World

I’ve just revisited Dirty Pretty Things by Stephen Frears. It’s a 2002 film that, I think, largely failed to take advantage of star Audrey Tautou, fresh out of the 2001 international smash (the Fabuleux Destin de) Amelié (Poulain).

It’s is a strange film in some ways, telling the story of Okwe (Chitwell Ejiofor), a Nigerian doctor on the run and Senay (Tautou) a young (Turkish I think) Muslim girl, hounded by British immigration. Both work in a low/mid-range London hotel, both are illegal immigrants, (Senay actually has a visa but is not allowed to work) and both are struggling in a world where because of their non-status, they have no rights.

Audrey Tautou in Dirty Pretty Things and a stolen fur coat

The plot starts to develop when Okwe finds a human heart blocking the toilet in one of the hotel rooms. From this point, we see his relationship with Senay (whose couch he sleeps on) develop, along with pressure from slimy boss Juan (played very nicely by Sergi López) who knows all about the surplus human organs knocking about and blocking up the hotel and who, discovering Okwe’s medical background, wants him to perform the lucrative black market organ transplants he organises. On top of this sits the burgeoning, though tentatively, love story between Okwe and Senay and Senay’s desperation for a better life that leads her to approach Juan with a view to selling one of her organs (presumably not her heart).

The film is nicely shot by Chris Menges on Fuji stock (both things a good sign), the pace of the whole thing sits quite well and the performances are fine and… It’s all a little flat. It’s far from being a bad film, very far but there is something about it that doesn’t quite work. For me, I feel, it’s neither high budget enough or low budget enough; it doesn’t quite have the “edge”, or the gloss. It’s one of those British films that tries to punch slightly above its weight and despite its plucky intentions, fails. Or if you prefer, doesn’t succeed. No, it’s not a bad film and I’d recommend anyone to see it, but it’s not a great film. But, it IS the most important film in the world.

Now this could be considered a grand claim, a wild claim, a completely insane claim, especially when Dirty Pretty Things isn’t, really, that good. No, it’s no Citizen Kane, no Seven Samurai, no The Godfather, all films that could possibly lay claim to my assertion, along with a whole myriad of other classics. They are, of course, all great films and their greatness is in no particular order; they’re just films I could think of at the time, right here right now. They are great films, and important films in their way, but none of them is THE most important film in the world.

It depends of your definition I suppose… The French have an attitude towards film and it manifests itself for example, in the 1989 EU “Television Without Frontiers” directive which limits the amount of non-European films/broadcasts across Europe and promotes homegrown (and in the case of France, French language) products to the detriment of, let’s face it, Hollywood. Many, including American production companies (and if truth be known, commercial advert/revenue driven European/French broadcasters) would argue that this is a bad thing and that it limits the choice of the consumer (or if you will, perhaps, cineaste). I’d argue along with the French government (and doubtlessly French producers who rely on state funding), that America, Hollywood, is too powerful as a cultural force and that left to its own devices, it will steamroller over any native film industry quicker than a grey squirrel. It is the nature of capitalism to talk about diversity but to aim for monopoly and without assistance, European films simply would not exist.

Not to be confused with Audrey Tautou, this, bizarrely, is a Jawa, called Audrey, from Tatooine. True.

This might not be a bad thing, it’s really not for me to say (of course it would be a bloody bad thing!!!). And your perception of it obviously depends on what sort of films you watch, on what basis and how regularly. I could argue that the average Hollywood blockbuster is the equivalent of hi-fructose corn syrup, addictive, damaging. Or I could argue that, like Karl Marx didn’t quite say, Hollywood films are the crack cocaine of the masses. But I won’t. It’s too emotive and relies on metaphors that to be honest, aren’t really my strong point (steam rollering grey squirrels for example).

But consider this: how many films about illegal immigrants, and their stories, can you name? How many films portray these people as, well, people? You know, human beings? Yeah, illegal immigrants crop up in crime dramas (except of course, Midsomer Murders) and on the news; sometimes as bad guys attached to a horror story of death or fraud and just as often, as tragic victims. But rarely, are these people and their legal counterparts given more than a cursory glance. They are, as the characters in Dirty Pretty Things, expediently ignored, forgotten, denied. They have, no story.

For any culture, for any people or peoples to have no story, is a tragedy. To have no story is to have no presence, to not matter, to have never existed and even worse than to never have existed, is to not exist now.

As far as Hollywood is concerned, there is only one narrative in the Middle East, Iraq, Afghanistan and that is USA! USA! The civilian victims of drone attacks don’t matter, are never seen, never tug at your heartstrings with the swell of the orchestra as an emotional indicator. You can’t empathise with these people because they don’t exist. They have no story. There’s the story of the bomb disposal expert (Hurt Locker), or the hunt for Osama (Zero Dark Thirty: not seen it) and there’s the story of the investigation into a compound bombing in Saudi Arabia, which in terms of humanising a Muslim, in the form of Faris Al Ghazi (played by Ashraf Barom in The Kingdom), proves only that as far as Hollywood is concerned that the only good Arab/Muslim, rather like Injuns, is a dead one. Right up till 1950 and Sydney Poitier playing a doctor in No Way Out, I can’t think of a black American in any film aside from slaves, servants or entertainers. The cultural impact of this, through either the reinforcement of a stereotype or the blinkering of a whole nation/rest of the world to not just Afro-Americans in general but their rights as human beings, cannot be underestimated (see Hallelujah! 1929 or the 1925 Body and Soul starring Paul Robeson; there undoubtedly were African-American films but few and far between).

But if you’re English/British, the ramifications go further, or perhaps closer to home. I’d argue that if Paul Greengrass’s Bloody Sunday (technically a TV movie but premiered at Sundance and won a Golden Bear at Berlin), along with Jimmy McGovern’s Sunday, plus McGovern’s Hillsborough (again, actually a TV movie, directed by Charles McDougal) didn’t exist, then our perception of these events and the people involved in them would be very different. It’s almost as if the “fictionalisation” of the stories, the act of telling the story, somehow makes the events more real; we know the stories themselves but also know, through intuition/suspicion, through the campaigning around them and, through the films, that the stories we had previously been spun, by the press, were lies. I wonder, and bless modern British filmmakers’ M&S socks because they do kind of try to make films that are off kilter, sometimes, and it is so hard to make a buck, but I wonder if anyone could make a film today that has the same impact Cathy Come Home had in 1966. Has the UK become too Americanised in its cinematic language? Have British filmmakers got an edge anymore? Integrity? I wonder, given the current economic situation and the British Government’s approach to the poor along with all the spin (propaganda), how will history, constructed from supposed fact, judge them/us in the absence of the emotional truth of film?

Love on the Dole. The book, not the 1941 film

Because make no mistake, Hollywood would not make Cathy Come Home and it would not make Dirty Pretty Things*. It would not tell the story of these illegal immigrants, with or without Audrey Tautou. It simply couldn’t. It hasn’t got the will, the desire or the vocabulary. I’m not saying that all films should be like this, that it should Rain Stones and never a rainbow: I am no mono-culturist. But I am saying, as roller-coastery fun as it is, Star Trek Into Darkness DOESN’T MATTER. Yes, it might be entertaining, yes it might be loud and have great special effects and all that other hi-fructose stuff and hell, yes, I may even watch it myself because I like Star Trek and Sci-Fi in general and if they ever make Star Trek Zombie Apocalypse (well you never know) then I’ll be straight at the head of the queue! But it doesn’t matter, it is not important. And even if it was, it would never be THE most important film in the world.

That accolade is reserved, by me, in complete subjectivity, for a film that tells the story of a people hidden, and exploited, in plain sight: Dirty Pretty Things.

Or possibly Bread and Roses. Or The Road to Guantanamo. Maybe, In This World. Or the 2006 Ghosts. Or perhaps, I’m really not sure anymore, Dawn of the Dead, 2004? Whatever, pass the nachos…

*As far as I know, Dirty pretty Things was distributed by Buena Vista and has some connection with Miramax, but to the best of my knowledge, it was actually produced by the BBC and Celador.