New Town Utopia

What does it mean to live in a place that was once thriv­ing and pros­per­ous? New Town Utopia, direct­ed by Christo­pher Ian Smith, is a doc­u­men­tary which pos­es this ques­tion by col­lat­ing the accounts of artists who grew up and still live in the pur­pose built ​“new town” of Basil­don, Essex. It takes a close look at the orig­i­nal vision of this urban haven, how it has since failed and left it’s peo­ple with the job of pick­ing up the pieces.

The film com­pris­es of inti­mate rem­i­nisces from res­i­dents of Basil­don. We dis­cov­er that the town was built to be the answer to the near impos­si­ble liv­ing costs of Lon­don, a futur­is­tic utopia with no seg­re­ga­tion and oppor­tu­ni­ty for all. Its mak­ers employed strik­ing archi­tec­tur­al aes­thet­ics so res­i­dents could be proud of and excit­ed by the land­scape. But it didn’t quite work out like that.

The doc­u­men­tary fea­tures actor Jim Broad­bent inton­ing an iron­ic nar­ra­tion as the cam­era flicks through fixed frames and dol­ly cam­era shots of the now des­o­late and cold town. Broadbent’s hope­ful ref­er­ences to this pur­port­ed­ly per­fect liv­ing space direct­ly con­tra­dict the visu­als that are shown.

Smith occa­sion­al­ly inserts clips of old home videos which show hap­py res­i­dents, at a time when Basil­don was its prime. But as the doc­u­men­tary con­tin­ues it reveals the cause of the town’s unrav­el­ing: gov­ern­ment mis­man­age­ment. It’s not all doom and gloom, though, as it becomes clear that from des­o­la­tion springs cre­ativ­i­ty, and this might be the out­let for Basildon’s even­tu­al evolution.

This mea­sured and hushed essay film is pep­pered with impromp­tu spo­ken word per­for­mances direct­ed at the cam­era which adds weight to argu­ment of the neces­si­ty of the arts. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it’s still all a lit­tle too slow mov­ing, and at times takes some effort to remain engaged due to the washed-out colours and a gen­er­al lack of excite­ment. It’s not an entire­ly harsh cri­tique agains Basil­don, as it is about how these places con­tain the poten­tial to one day thrive again.