Discuss the ways in which filmmakers have employed or subverted fantasy in their representations of British characters and communities. Draw upon one or two films of your choice.
The British Cinema has always had ways of depicting communities in film. Whether it’s an organised and patriotic group of people in a 1940’s British war film or a comedically hopeless community in an Ealing comedy, British communities are always represented in some way through film. However, a representation of a British community is dependent upon the genre of film in which it exists. As an example, a community in a British horror film are seen to be weak and terrified of the threat of the film. However, there is one genre of British cinema that is ideal for portraying communities of Britain. British fantasy films have been around since the early to mid-20th century, employing the fantastic to construct/depict British communities and characters. Fantasy is defined as ‘Imagination; the process or the faculty of forming mental representations of things not actually present.’ (Oxford English Dictionary) Fantasy has no boundaries or rules, as it is part of the imagination. Fantasy is used in film to subtly portray societal views or fears without obviously addressing the issue of the film. In A Matter of Life and Death (1946) directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, fantasy is employed to reflect on the war of the previous years. Whereas in a more recent fantasy film such as The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (from now on referred to as TLTWTW) (2005) directed by Andrew Adamson, fantasy is used as an escape for the characters rather than a reflection. Although both films are set during/after World War II, A Matter of Life and Death portrays a patriotic side of war in which soldiers go to heaven and live peacefully (represented through fantasy). However, in TLTWTW, war is portrayed as brutal and unforgiving as the children are seen becoming orphans early in the film, therefore the fantastic is used as an escape from the reality of the war.
A Matter of Life and Death sees the story of a British pilot who cheated death, and must go on trial in heaven to prove that his love for a woman on earth is more important than death. The film is split into two distinctive forms, reality and fantasy. Although the real world in the film is meant to be a representation of post-war Britain, it is far from it and creates its own fantastical image of a post-war Britain. One scene that highlights this is the scene where protagonist Peter (David Niven) meets the doctor. As the town prepares for a performance of a classic Shakespeare play, nothing seems to wrong with any of the people in Britain. Historically Britain was in ruins after the war, depression and rationing were still apparent after it was over. The mise-en-scene of this scene illuminates the positive reality in which the film is creating. Peter has survived a plane crash, yet is completely competent to play chess, engage in witty conversation and still manages to be a suave British gentleman. A review of the film by Chapman shows that audiences were also confused about the representation of a post-war Britain and its communities.
‘The critical and popular reaction to the film itself, however, was equivocal – a mixture of admiration for its technical virtuosity and confusion about its narrative.’ (A Matter of Life and Death and British Film Culture, 33-50) They use the world ‘equivocal’, meaning reactions can be taken in multiple ways, showing a significant confusion among audiences about the films representation of British communities. A Matter of Life and Death can be seen to be a propaganda film for post-war Britain. One key aspect of this message is through the visual representation of the fantasy and reality. Reality is portrayed in spectacular technicolour, which was still a huge technological spectacle in 1946. The use of colour makes characters look healthy and radiant, trees look fruitful and the grass couldn’t look greener. This paints a false image of Britain at this point in time, making it obvious that Powell and Pressburger were trying to make a film that hides the harsh reality of war and instead, employs its own realistic fantasy. However, the fantasy in the film is in black and white, making everything look dull and drab. Heaven is shown in the film as a well-oiled machine, with strict rules and instructions. Which for many people who believe in the idea of heaven, is hard to comprehend as everyone has their own individual image of what heaven could be. Furby and Hines spoke about fantasy and how individuals interpret fantasy in their book on the topic:
We all indulge in fantasy of some kind. As human beings, we are distinguished by our ability to imagine, to dream, to wish for things, and to make-believe scenarios, events and stories that extend far beyond our everyday experience. (Fantasy, p. 1)
The one key phrase that stands out for me personally, is ‘events and stories that extend far beyond our everyday experience’. This explains that fantasy can be employed by filmmakers to tell stories that extract us from reality. Which is exactly what the purpose of the fantasy/reality battle in A Matter of Life and Death is aiming to do. The simple colour differentiation between the two elements explains the films messages in the simplest form. Fantasy is black, white and boring, whereas reality is colourful, vibrant and an ideal place to live as one strong community. Although it paints an unrealistic view of post-war Britain and its communities to entice people to behave that way in the real world, that is the point of the film. To watch it and to forget about the harsh real world.
A Matter of Life and Death is a British fantasy film, so aside from the film subverting fantasy and employing realism, it relies heavily on the fantastic for the plot of the film. Fantasy is at the heart of the film. Characters are constantly questioning their own beliefs and that of the protagonist. The narrative is so dependent on fantasy and imagination that it could not work within any other genre of film. The film constantly shifts between reality and fantasy with two visual indicators. One being the colour transition, the other being the stoppage of time when Conductor 71 (Marius Goring) is present. Conductor 71 is the representative of heaven chosen to shadow Peter until his trial. Whenever he appears, time in the film freezes and it is only Peter who can talk to him. This concept strengthens the idea that fantasy is part of the imagination, that one couldn’t exist without the other. In a chapter on Powell and Pressburger, Moor talks about the balance between reality and fantasy in A Matter of Life and Death;
A Matter of Life and Death’ is a transitional film. Released after the war, it mixes an idealised and happily resolved wartime romance with spectacular shifts between heaven and earth, parading fantasy elements rich in visual inventiveness. (The British Cinema Book, p. 240-246)
A phrase that intrigues me is how Moor writes ‘happily solved wartime romance’, as in my opinion, the relationship between fantasy and war is one of the key elements of the film. World War II was one of, if not the biggest event in British history. How it is remembered is by people is often quite a common split. People who fought the battles on the front lines and back in Britain remember the war as either the boldest time of their lives, or the most brutal times of their lives, a split between those who were patriotic and those who could not forget the horrors of war. A Matter of Life and Death addresses the more patriotic side of the war through fantasy. All the soldiers who fought in the war for Britain get to go to heaven. For example, in heaven British, American, French and Indian soldiers are found collecting their white wings and taking part in court trials. Whereas no German, Russian or Italian soldiers can be seen. The film uses fantasy to subtly put across communal views of post-war Britain to mass audiences. This convinces the people of Britain that war was a good thing, and that all those that were lost got to go to heaven for serving their country. Powell and Pressburger represented the communities of Britain to be strong and united after the war, not weak or scared. Ashby and Higson talk about the age of British war cinema, and how the effects of films such as A Matter of Life and Death bought audiences together through the art of film;
By common consent among film critics and historians, the Second World War is regarded as a ‘golden age’ for British cinema. Not only was it the period when the cinema as a social institution was at its most popular, but it was also a time when British films found greater success with both critics and audiences than ever before (British Cinema, past and Present, p. 193)
The film was made to appeal to audiences at the time it was made, yet is still possess a sense of national pride that can be seen today, generations into the future. Even today, films are being about World War II all over the world. Making a gritty war epic would not have been possible in 1946 Britain for two reasons. One being money, the other being people didn’t want to see the truth, they’d seen it for themselves. They wanted an escape from reality, which is what fantasy is at its core. In my opinion A Matter of Life and Death perfects the balance between reality and fantasy, making it a timeless piece in British cinema history.
Looking at a more recent British fantasy film, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe takes a similar approach to A Matter of Life and Death in terms of employing fantasy. Director Andrew Adamson made TLTWTW in 2005, yet it is set during World War II. The first edition in both The Chronicles of Narnia book and film series, TLTWTW follows children Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy as they are forced to be moved away from the city into the country to escape bombing raids. The opening of the film is like A Matter of Life and Death in that in opens with a battle of planes, however, this is gritty and intense as it shows the children and the family preparing for a bombing raid. Even though the scene is short, it captures the essence of war and shows how briefly and quickly people had to move to survive. The scene subverts fantasy and uses realism to tell the true story, unlike the patriotic mood throughout A Matter of Life and Death. This example in TLTWTW is the most realistic scene in the film as after this section of the film, it all takes place in the fictional world of Narnia. The way Narnia is presented when the children first discover it through the wardrobe is a classic fairy-tale image. Crisp white snow covers everything, the trees and branches that surround are so thick complete solitude is achieved. This fairy-tale image enhances the point that fantasy and imagination are directly linked, as fairy-tales and fantasy stories all come from somebody’s imagination. In a book about the famous book series, the author of The Chronicles of Narnia C.S. Lewis explains how Narnia came entirely from his imagination.
Lewis says that the origin of the Chronicles goes back to mental images. “All my seven Narnian books,” he wrote in an essay, “and my three science fiction books, began with seeing pictures in my head. (The Way into Narnia: A Reader\’s Guide)
The fact that an entire book and film series can be created from one person’s imagination goes to show the power of fantasy and how it is used in cinema to transport people to other worlds and new environments. Although TLTWTW is not as critically acclaimed as A Matter of Life and Death, it bought escapism and the fantastic to millions of people world-wide, and in my opinion it being a British film helps that. British cinema of recent years is only on the rise, although the budgets will never be as big as Hollywood, TLTWTW still managed to captivate audiences through its exploration of the element of fantasy. In the British Journal of Aesthetics, Stock writes about the link between fantasy and desire, explaining how when a desire becomes an element of fantasy, it is down to a personal element that cannot be expressed. The Chronicles of Narnia were birthed from the imagination of C.S. Lewis, the power of a book is that everyone’s imagination is free to run wild, picturing the settings and characters that are described for themselves. However, a film made about the book, is one directors interpretation. It is the exploration of the fantastic through the medium of cinema that captivates audiences. Film interpretations of fantasy novels are becoming increasingly popular in modern cinema due to the vast landscape of possibility provided with a fantasy novel, allowing a director to sculpt their own vision of the story, letting audiences escape from reality through film.
The use of fantasy can also use character type to construct a community. TLTWTW has the structure and layout of a traditional fantasy story. An unexplored world is discovered by unprepared characters and they must step up to the challenge of exploring it. However, it is the characters of importance that they meet on the way that are intriguing. Fantasy stories and fairy-tales have always had some sort of lesson in them, for example in The Boy Who Cried Wolf, the lesson is don’t lie. Similar ideas can be seen in TLTWTW. In one scene, the youngest boy Edmund is tempted with treats by the villain of the film, Jadis The White Witch. The lesson is teaching people to not trust strangers, this is symbolically shown as The Witch stabs Edmund in the climactic battle of the film. Even in modern British cinema, fantasy is used to put across the same messages about characters and communities that started hundreds of years ago, as simple folk tales. Matrix and Greenhill write about how fantasy as a genre of film is still relevant today and has been for a large period of time;
The exclusion of fairy tale film as a category from The Oxford History of World Cinema is even stranger when one considers that the godfather and pioneer of film narrative, Georges Méliès, produced close to thirty films that were superb féeries and numerous directors in Europe and America created well over forty silent fairy tale films at the beginning of the twentieth century (Fairy Tale Films)
All-time greats of fantasy cinema such as Georges Méliès paved the way for fantasy cinema today. Constantly creators such as Méliès would push the boundaries and create spectacles of film that audiences would flock to see. When comparing a Méliès film to TLTWTW, similarities and differences about ideas and messages can be seen. For example, one aspect of fantasy that has been the same since the fairy-tales is gender. Traditionally in a fantasy story, the men are brave and save the day, and the women are forever in trouble. In Méliès’ Le Voyage Dans la Lun all the men are accomplished scientists who get to travel to the moon, whereas the women are simply there to look good and load the rocket. However, in TLTWTW, Peter and Edmund are seen to be fighting against their sisters Susan and Lucy. This is a twist on the classic gender roles in fantasy, which is symbolic of a change of time and attitude in the real world, as fantasy represents the communities and characters of the time it was made. In an article about both the books and films of Narnia, Revisiting Narnia, Caughey addresses the idea that films act as a portal that transports us to other worlds beyond our imagination, much like the wardrobe in Narnia. His idea speaks to not only me but masses of people. Nothing is more immersive and more fulfilling than watching a film in the cinema. As a simple idea sitting in a dark room with strangers seems totally undesirable. I think that’s where Caughey is coming from, that it is what is on the screen that takes us out of reality, our own little window into the fantastic. I believe this is why fantasy films are still and will continue to be made not only in Britain, but all over the world. Because they are an escape, they represent communities and characters symbolically, allowing people to understand the message without being told, as well as being transported to another world beyond comprehension, through the eyes of the director.
In conclusion, both A Matter of Life and Death and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe are both classic British fantasy films. However, their approach to presenting communities and characters within the films is quite different. A Matter of Life and Death presents a patriotic, friendly and happy post-war British community whereas TLTWTW presents a broken and war shattered community that need to escape reality into another world. Petley writes about Professor Charles Barr’s point that explains the need for fantasy in British cinema;
As Charles Barr has pointed out, ‘the preference for a certain kind of realistic surface, for an “everyday” verisimilitude, has been a recurrent factor in English film criticism and has inhibited response to a wider range of films with an allegorical or poetic dimension (All Our Yesterdays: 90 Years of British Cinema p. 98)
The idea of a poetic dimension that Barr writes about expresses a use for fantasy in cinema, to create another dimension so tightly crafted that it can be described as poetic. Although the use of fantasy can have allegorical purposes, I believe that audiences are drawn to fantasy films as the ultimate form of escapism from reality.
Bibliography
Books
Petley, Julian. (1986) The Lost Continent in Charles Barr (ed.) All Our Yesterdays: 90 Years of British Cinema London: BFI, 1986 p. 98
Furby, Jacqueline.and Claire, Hines. (2012) Fantasy London: Routledge print Routledge Film Guidebooks p. 1
Schakel, Peter J. 2005 The Way into Narnia: A Reader\’s Guide Grand Rapids, Eerdmans Pub.
Ashby, Justine. and Andrew. Higson. 2006 British Cinema, past and Present New York: Routledge p. 193
Moor, Andrew, 2009 No Place Like Home: Powell, Pressburger Utopia, in Robert Murphy (ed.) The British Cinema Book, Third Edition, London: BFI p. 240-246
Articles
OED Online. Oxford University Press, December 2016
Matrix, Sidney Eve, and Pauline Greenhill 2010 Fairy Tale Films, edited by Sidney Eve Matrix, and Pauline Greenhill, Utah State University Press, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/aber/detail.action?docID=3442817
Stock, Kathleen. Fantasy, Imagination, and Film, British Journal Of Aesthetics 49.4 (2009): 357-69. http://bjaesthetics.oxfordjournals.org/content/49/4/357.full
Caughey, Shanna. Revisiting Narnia edited by Shanna Caughey, BenBella Books, Inc., 2009 https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/aber/detail.action?docID=909504
Chapman, J. The True Business of the British Movie\’? A Matter of Life and Death and British Film Culture Screen 46.1 (2005): 33-50. http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/content/46/1/33
Films
A Matter of Life and Death (1946) Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger [Film]. United Kingdom: The Archers
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (2005) Directed by Andrew Adamson [Film]. United Kingdom/United States of America: Walt Disney Pictures
Le Voyage Dans la Lun (1902) Directed by Georges Méliès’ [Film]. France: Star Film Company