Threads

Threads

Director ~ Mick Jackson

Writer ~ Barry Hines

1984, UK

Stars ~ Karen Meagher, Reece Dinsdale, David Brierly

 

Certainly one of the grimmest of watches, and a show that surely terrified everyone that saw it, and sees it. It’s not comfort viewing, but a Nuclear Age warning. There is an inimitable grubbiness and rawness that only British television early 80s/post-70s television can convey. Dazzling effects are beyond the budget, but melting milk bottles signifies that the cosiness and discipline of civilisation is gone in an instant, and the aftermath is full of dead pets, hands, trainers and charred mouths sticking out of rubble. Civilians just dying slowly upstairs and bickering bureaucrats in the bunker. It’s just horrible, relentlessly so. Even births must be accompanied by violently barking dogs or deformed faces. No-hope nuclear fear confirmed with British TV miserabilism.

The message is loud-and-clear. Look at all the experts listed as advisors at the end, their advised facts and figures conveyed by a voiceover familiar from any public information film. And rarely has the faux-documentary aesthetic been so chillingly applied. The familiar television blandness of the opening family soap opera dramatics is wisely placed to compare with where it ends up: a post-apocalyptic world where looters are shot and the new generation survive on scraps of language and empathy. If it goes fully science fiction at the end, it’s still invested in the consequence of nuclear war and the outcome is nothing but unbearable.And in that way, a rebuke and tirade against the politics of the day.

I lived an adolescence under the dominant cultural fear of nuclear war. Pop songs in the charts regularly reminded us of the possibility. Even the fantasy post-apocalypse of ‘Planet of the Apes’, even though made the in the previous decade, seemed to have the burden of prophesy: mankind wants to and will self-destruct. But ‘Threads’ was something else, looking like the budget-compromised TV fare we were familiar with; it’s deliberate soap opera/documentary aesthetic – intertitles with horrible estimates and information on the devastation of civilisation; a chillingly detached narration omnisciently commenting and relating like a grim wildlife programme – brought it closer to home and more recognisable than it had ever been, surely. Written by Barry Hines (‘Kes’), this came like a mash-up of the mockumentary technique of Peter Watkins’ banned ‘The War Game’ and the soapier ‘The Day After’. You were worried before? This is what it looks like.

‘Threads’ was shown in schools to traumatise a generation.  It is the kind of film that quantifies that the medium isn’t just for entertainment, but for putting cultural nightmares on screen. Possibly the ugliest watch, and all the more stunning and unforgettable for that. A unique masterpiece of horror. But you'll probably only want to watch it once.

The Rules of Attraction

 

The Rules of Attraction

Director ~ Roger Avary

Writers ~ Bret Easton Ellis, Roger Avary

2002, USA, Germany

Stars ~ James Van Der Beek, Ian Somerhalder, Shannyn Sossamon

The fractured stream-of-consciousness ensemble nature is perhaps makes this the film to capture the truest sense of Brett Easton Ellis’ style, with the superficiality of the characters made compelling by aesthetic and panache. The venality; the assholeness; the privilege. At the time, Viktor’s hi-speed European trip segment was a blast of something new (and like the credits of ‘Enter the Void’ or ‘Seven’, now assimilated into everyday narrative techniques), but the rewind affectation is utilised with a confidence that says this should be thrown in with the pool with the likes of Nicolas Winding Refn and Gaspar Noé. Certainly, the Reversing Time trick is used with elegance during the opening credits and still raises goosebumps. The TOMANDANDY score and needle-drops, the wandering selfishness and loneliness, the influence of the film’s disaffection and sly nihilism over American High School cinema is probably underestimated. This and ‘The Breakfast Club’ have a lot to answer for. 

 

The cast are having a great time, going against the shallow wholesome grain that made their reputations (the Fred Savage cameo being my favourite), and are all thrilling to watch. It still retains an edginess with its formal play and character narcissism. The nadir and lack of thought comes from its date rape scene that is played with a shock-jock attitude and without any consequences or more than a flippant acknowledgement from the victim. Similarly, the suicide doesn’t have any repercussions. But the apathy is the point. Even littering an empty bottle in the corridor is a tell to the lack of caring or consideration that pervades. And of course, all this is why detractors will hate it. Much of this is the youthful affectation of “cool” and rock’n’roll posturing and one might even argue that there is a hint of growing up, of true self-reflection come the ending. Just about.

A sort of ‘Kids’ for the privileged, but Avery isn’t interested in delivering any tacked-on moral message, just leaving his protagonists baffled by themselves with no one getting what they want.