Does your taste in film betray your posi­tion on Brexit?

It’s one month until the UK votes on the EU ref­er­en­dum and you’ve already made up your mind. But wait, could it be that you’ve been nail­ing your colours to the wrong mast? Your taste in film says a lot about your per­son­al­i­ty, but it may also reveal your true feel­ings on Britain’s deci­sion to leave or remain in the Euro­pean Union. To help clar­i­fy mat­ters, we’ve tak­en the key issues fuelling the debate and pro­vid­ed a clos­er read­ing of the Brex­it themes con­tained with­in some of the nation’s favourite films.

Leave: The Wrong Trousers (1993)

Is the influx of migrants hav­ing a neg­a­tive impact on the cul­tur­al land­scape of Britain? In Aardman’s stop-motion gem from 1993, Gromit is forced out of his home onto the streets. The inter­lop­er, in this case a pen­guin, doesn’t speak the lan­guage, doesn’t work and spends all his time plot­ting ways to steal from the state. He refus­es to embrace British cul­ture and even papers over Gromit’s bone wall­pa­per with a fishy pat­tern. As any Brex­iter will tell you, this is exact­ly the kind of every­day threat being posed by Britain’s leaky borders.

Remain: Casablan­ca (1942)

Or could open bor­ders in Europe be a bless­ing? One of the great­est love sto­ries ever told was framed around a bat­tle to estab­lish the visa-less move­ment of cit­i­zens through­out the con­ti­nent. But what if the Schen­gen Agree­ment had exist­ed in the 1940s? What if those valu­able ​‘Let­ters of Tran­sit’ have been avail­able to every­one in North­ern Africa? Ilsa Lund wouldn’t have had to chose between leav­ing for Lis­bon with her hus­band or stay­ing with Rick Blaine. In fact, she could have hopped on an after­noon flight for a quick ren­dezvous and still arrived back in time for work on Monday.

Leave: Frozen (2013)

Do we real­ly want our inter­nal envi­ron­men­tal poli­cies dic­tat­ed by for­eign enforcers? Dis­ney have cun­ning­ly posed this very ques­tion via two Scan­di­na­vian Princess­es. The first is put into iso­la­tion after her par­ents are killed on a diplo­mat­ic mis­sion abroad. On being released she is seduced by a evil for­eign del­e­gate. All the while the oth­er princess is forced to relin­quish the pow­er of her sov­er­eign nation, avoid­ing her own coro­na­tion by turn­ing the land­scape of her own coun­try to an unin­hab­it­able icy waste­land. Clear­ly the king­dom of Aren­delle is sym­bol­ic of the impact of forced EU cli­mate sanc­tions on mem­ber states.

Remain: Chil­dren of Men (2006)

This may be Project Fear’s most graph­ic ren­der­ing of a Britain left to its own devices. Alfon­so Cuarón’s film is a para­ble about how the envi­ron­ment would be all but lost with­out sta­ble immi­gra­tion and stricter cli­mate reg­u­la­tions. Cuarón includ­ed the char­ac­ter of Kee from the orig­i­nal PD James nov­el while explor­ing the Out of Africa the­o­ry, and she effec­tive­ly per­son­i­fies the demand for glob­al action on cli­mate change.

Leave: The Ital­ian Job (1969)

Do we real­ly need the EU for our econ­o­my to flour­ish? Peter Collinson’s clas­sic heist movie tells of how easy it is to exploit import/​export routes in Europe. And it shows that Britain should nev­er allow itself to be sub­ject to anoth­er nation’s finan­cial whims. Tak­en to its lit­er­al extreme, the ambigu­ous, icon­ic end­ing, where piles of gold bul­lion slide tan­ta­lis­ing­ly in and out of reach, sug­gests that Michael Cain’s pub­lic sup­port of Brex­it is root­ed in his dis­trust of EU trade agreements.

Remain: Hos­tel (2005)

Will Brex­it irrepara­bly dam­age our trade rela­tion­ships with oth­er EU nations and put us right to the back of the queue? Although it seems that Euro­peans are the mon­sters in Eli Roth’s graph­ic tor­ture hor­ror, the film actu­al­ly serves as a handy metaphor for Euro­pean eco­nom­ic inde­pen­dence, warn­ing us off those ruth­less aggres­sors seek­ing to take advan­tage of our good nature.

Leave: Rata­touille (2007)

Is the struc­ture of the Euro­pean Union mak­ing it eas­i­er for ter­ror­ists to plot and car­ry out attacks? Hid­den deep beneath Pixar’s charm­ing tale of a sew­er rat who dreams of becom­ing a top chef is the more sin­is­ter alle­go­ry of a pair of ter­ror­ists cir­cum­vent­ing Euro­pean safe­ty reg­u­la­tions and poi­son­ing French restau­rant cus­tomers. Paris is pre­sent­ed as a haven for unchecked sub­let­ting, a place where gun crime, poor san­i­ta­tion and porous board­ers all con­spire to allow ter­ror­ists easy access to our food.

Remain: Ronin (1998)

Aren’t we bet­ter off fight­ing ter­ror­ism togeth­er? The hero­ic Ronin in this grit­ty crime dra­ma are out­wit­ted first by the Rus­sians and then the IRA. And then the Rus­sians again. While French police rock­et around Paris’ streets shoot­ing at Robert De Niro and Jean Reno, the ter­ror­ists cap­i­talise on the chaos and con­fu­sion. What direc­tor John Franken­heimer is essen­tial­ly say­ing here is that, by remov­ing our­selves from the EU, we risk becom­ing Ronin our­selves – play­ing straight into the hands of those who would look to exploit our isolation.