The National Cinema Of Experience: How Can Film Capture The Momentary Feeling Of A Nation

Crouched in idle stillness within a partially demolished building which frames the city behind, two people share a toffee. By the time the toffee is unwrapped and consumed, a large structure in the distance falls into dust, leaving the two people powerless, only able to look on as the framed city becomes altered and unfamiliar. This moment, which sits in the final ten minutes of Jia Zhangke’s Still Life, a film of meandering wonder, defines the moment of its release and, more importantly, echoes a national feeling.

Amidst a transformative period of urbanisation throughout China rose an accelerated national pace. Through rapid change and movement came a defining feeling of being left behind in a place moving too quickly for its people. Still Life’s collapsing building draws attention to the slow-moving figures before it and the unmoving camera through which it is captured, inviting us to share in the experiences of an entire nation as we are similarly left behind by the frames.

Still Life provides the pinnacle of Jia’s reflections on China’s rapid development. The film demonstrates, through a distinct application of cinema’s parameters, the potential for film to capture and translate a national feeling; deploying slow aesthetics to embody the experience of China’s people in a specific national moment of change.

Hong Kong Separation and The Greek Weird Wave

Jia isn’t alone either. Across the national divide, five years prior, Wong Kar Wai released In the Mood for Love following Hong Kong’s returned sovereignty to mainland China in 1997. Wong’s film muses on a divided relationship, forging a longing for a prohibited connection which practically leaks from the celluloid it is shot on. The film’s reflection on its national moment does not emerge solely from its narrative but is instead weaved into its very material.

Examples of cinema exploring its potential for reflecting the experiences of specific national moments continue into Europe. The significant economic decay of Greece during the crisis of late 2009 lifted the modestly termed ‘Greek Weird Wave’ on its breaking shoulders. Yorgos Lanthimos’ Alps and Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Attenberg each responded with absurdist aesthetics to a period in Greek history characterised by disorientation and disaffection. The experiences formed by these aesthetic choices provide cinematic translation of the nation’s disconnect between people and country and forward similar notes of alienation which is to be felt even by those unfamiliar.

Consistently, cinema has proven itself to be the ideal medium for aesthetic and phenomenological response. In its sensory transcendence and relationship with identification, film possesses the capability to translate complex experiences into subjective objects. In these cases, those complex experiences take the form of national historical moments and the films become historical objects of feeling.

Divided Families

Here we turn our attention to where we might be able to see such movements unfolding in contemporary national cinemas and question exactly how cinema might respond to significant national feelings. Within the escalating turmoil of western civilization particularly, how does cinema find its voice as it desperately gasps for breath?

In Europe, Britain currently sits uncomfortable and shuffling in its chair as it waits to exit the European Union; a chair it is perhaps uncomfortable in because it has waited there in a state of unknowing for over two years. The decision, which presents the political equivalent of a gun firing backwards, has resulted in economic uncertainty, a rise in right-wing ideology, and a national sense of divide and isolation. As time progresses, with further lies exposed and politicians consistently stepping down as if walking backward down an escalator, argument has become the common tongue and a frustration has boiled to a temperature that has shattered the tea pot.

Released on mainstream television on New Year’s Eve, and set to finish at the turn of the year which was supposed to see Britain finally leave the EU, Ben Wheatley’s Happy New Year, Colin Burstead presented what was perhaps Britain’s first cinematic response. A notoriously prolific auteur, Wheatley was always first in line to comment with his typical abrasiveness, capturing the bubbling implosion at the core of British concern through the conceit of a divided family attempting to celebrate the new year.

The film itches with a discomforting divide between its central family. An unwanted guest disrupts the ideal of their celebrations and exposes the deception at the core of their unit to a loud and bickering end. What emerges is a microcosmic dissection of the Brexit feeling, encapsulating the simmering aggression and anxiety which burns the British stiff-upper lip.

A Blissful Ignorance

Yet, the responsive landscape of British cinema appears relatively vacant. As of yet, there is no obvious movements which demonstrate a form in united reaction, no clear patterns which translate this experience. Perhaps they are there somewhere, deep in the subconscious of the British film industry, a voice whispering our worries? Perhaps not.

It may just come down to the Hollywood dominance of the national cinema. British film is thriving but at a loss of its identity – the highest grossing “British” films of 2017 being Beauty and the Beast and Baby Driver, who respectively fail to reflect their birthplace. There is little room to talk about ourselves when it is too loud to think over the blockbuster bellowing from the screen next door.

Mapping national events onto film may be an indulgent and fruitless task anyway. It is possible that in the very act of avoidance the British film industry embodies its opinion. Danny Boyle’s Yesterday press spoke of being a film we ‘need’ right now. In all of its utopian innocence and escapist whim we might find the response we are looking for, the message being the ever repeated keep calm and carry on.

Cinema’s responsiveness and captivation of feeling is undeniable, but so is its potential for leaving the world at the concession. This period of British history will inevitably leave its smear somewhere, whether in the feeling of this era of film or in the blissful ignorance toward mentioning it at all. For now, we can only sit and eat our toffee as we wait for the building to collapse behind us.

Does national cinema reflect the feelings and experiences of a nation? How can film translate the experience of national change? Let us know in the comments below!