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.

Blue Jean

Blue Jean

Writer/director – Georgia Oakley

2022, UK

Stars – Rosy McEwen, Kerrie Hayes, Lucy Halliday

 

 

Two things ‘Blue Jean’ made me reflect on, being a teenager of the 80s. Firstly, that it is a universal truth that our teachers were surely more fresh-faced and younger than we thought them at the time.  Secondly: as a teenager, I clearly remember thinking, “They can’t pass Clause 28 into law, surely, because it’s so obviously bigoted. Right?”

 

Set in a nicely recreated '80s - not too glam; not too drab – ‘Blue Jean’ sets a lesbian teacher the task of self-acceptance against the rise of Section 28. Clause 28 being legislation that forbid the “promotion” of gay and lesbian identities in the classroom. Despite soapy elements, this isn’t a tale of characters in search of arguments and cheap drama, but in search of pockets of joy and solidarity against English miserablism. It’s all centred on Rosy McEwen’s wonderful performance as Jean, her vulnerability and clash of feelings and loyalties and overt caution to the fore; yet always there’s the sudden teacher’s steely edge to the voice with the youngsters that lets you know who’s in charge. All this is laid bare and the repression confronted when there’s danger of exposure from one of Jean’s pupils turning up at Jean’s usual lesbian bar.

 

It’s not a film that expects angry defiance, or condemnation of those that found it necessary to be closeted, but to look at someone trying to navigate the compartmentalisation of her life and her self-preserving hypocrisy as needs must. Sarah Cleary writes, “This subject matter demands a more uncompromising approach”, asking for a more combative approach rather than introspective. But there is surely room for a portrayal of someone who is just trying to cope and messing up and conflicted and not quite doing the right thing. Or, as Maryann Johanson writes, “we absolutely should not need marginalized people to be braver or stronger or better than any of the rest of us.”

 

These are themes that are not atrophied in the political past, it’s all very present, and focusing on the history only goes to highlight how far we have both come and have to go. It’s a film that surely strikes with a certain generation that came of age under Margaret Thatcher. Chris Roe’s score gives it an atmosphere of a thriller, evoking Jean’s constant state of dread and fear of impending doom. Otherwise, it mostly shoots for and achieves restraint and texture rather than didacticism, so that when it is sometimes unsubtle in its exposition (thank you, radio) or use of side characters (this is not a man’s space), and especially egregious with Jean’s coming out with a laughing/crying jag as she watches horses run free, the film – and especially McEwan – has gathered a lot of good-will to overcome such flaws. At its best, ‘Blue Jean’ illustrates the subtleties and fears that cause closeted personalities, and offers sympathy.