How cinema is tackling Europe’s austerity crisis | Little White Lies

Long Read

How cin­e­ma is tack­ling Europe’s aus­ter­i­ty crisis

27 Apr 2016

Words by Tom Bond

A man with a beard, wearing a colourful jacket and hat, holding a bright toy gun-like object.
A man with a beard, wearing a colourful jacket and hat, holding a bright toy gun-like object.
Miguel Gomes, Jacques Audi­ard and oth­ers are cap­tur­ing a shift­ing con­ti­nen­tal mood.

Europe is in cri­sis. Ever since the 2008 glob­al finan­cial cri­sis, var­i­ous EU mem­ber states have seen unem­ploy­ment rates soar, and mas­sive debts stemmed by gov­ern­ment-imposed aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures. Yet dur­ing the same peri­od, the film indus­try has flour­ished (at least at the top end of the scale). Tax breaks have enticed major Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­tions like Avengers: Age of Ultron and Guardians of the Galaxy to the UK, lead­ing to the sur­re­al moment where the Chan­cel­lor of the Exche­quer, George Osborne, was per­son­al­ly thanked in the cred­its of Star Wars: The Force Awak­ens. Aside from the media fren­zy sur­round­ing these tent­pole releas­es, how­ev­er, the cin­e­mat­ic response to aus­ter­i­ty across Europe has been far more scathing.

Miguel Gomes’ Ara­bi­an Nights opts to attack aus­ter­i­ty using absur­dism, with fables loose­ly based on the epony­mous book, spic­ing up a poten­tial­ly dry top­ic. The director’s broad approach draws some fas­ci­nat­ing con­clu­sions, link­ing finan­cial aus­ter­i­ty to a lack of sex­u­al appetite and wit­ti­ly sug­gest­ing that any pan-Euro­pean progress on improv­ing our economies gets lost in trans­la­tion. But it’s a sequence in the film’s sec­ond part that is most intriguing.

An evening tri­al begins in an amphithe­atre, with a moth­er and her son accused of sell­ing the con­tents of their rent­ed flat. The case seems straight­for­ward enough, but with the judge poised to deliv­er a sen­tence, a third par­ty takes the stand and com­pli­cates the issue. Like a far­ci­cal legal ver­sion of Spar­ta­cus, the sequence con­tin­ues with vic­tim after vic­tim stand­ing to deliv­er new evi­dence. Some of the per­pe­tra­tors have com­mit­ted their crimes because of greed (or, in a prime exam­ple of the film’s absur­dism, a rogue genie), but most have done so because of poverty.

There’s the moth­er and son forced to sell their belong­ings to clear a debt; the deaf woman who act­ed as a go-between in the sale of some stolen cows because her ex refused to pay child sup­port; and the man who stole her wal­let because he couldn’t afford to eat. Gomes sug­gests that aus­ter­i­ty and unem­ploy­ment don’t just impov­er­ish indi­vid­u­als, but risk cre­at­ing a but­ter­fly effect. When those too poor to pay their way find inad­e­quate sup­port from the state, the only option left for them is crime. Their vic­tims are often equal­ly impov­er­ished, cre­at­ing a sit­u­a­tion where those strug­gling the most are pit­ted against each other.

Two individuals, one embracing the other in a tender moment.

Per­haps France’s clear­est response to Euro­pean aus­ter­i­ty is Mea­sure of a Man, direct­ed by Stéphane Brizé. It tells the sto­ry of Thier­ry, a recent­ly unem­ployed fac­to­ry work­er strug­gling to make ends meet and sup­port his wife and son. Vin­cent Lin­don is aston­ish­ing­ly good in the lead role (he won the César Award and Best Actor prize at Cannes last year). He is an ordi­nary man – hum­ble and kind – who like count­less oth­ers across Europe finds him­self unem­ployed despite his best efforts.

Lindon’s per­for­mance is most pow­er­ful in the series of riv­et­ing dia­logue scenes that punc­tu­ate the film. They form strange, des­per­ate nego­ti­a­tions: between Thier­ry and the gov­ern­ment work­er explain­ing why the train­ing he’s just com­plet­ed won’t actu­al­ly help him get a job; between Thier­ry and the cou­ple look­ing to buy his car­a­van at a cut-throat price; and between Thier­ry and the shoplifters tar­get­ing the super­mar­ket where he even­tu­al­ly finds employ­ment. Here, aus­ter­i­ty is bleak – a crush­ing con­ver­sa­tion where those who have noth­ing left to bar­gain with are forced to accept what­ev­er the oth­er par­ty is will­ing to allow them. It’s a sound metaphor for gov­ern­ment aus­ter­i­ty pol­i­tics across the con­ti­nent, and it’s bru­tal to watch.

The impli­ca­tion of the super­mar­ket scene is that those who sit one rung off the bot­tom are con­di­tioned to kick away those below them. It’s a nar­ra­tive you’ll find repeat­ed across many coun­tries in response to reces­sion, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the UK where recent gov­ern­ments have framed aus­ter­i­ty as a sim­ple work­ers’ vs shirk­ers’ issue. We’re told that if you’re poor and require ben­e­fits, it’s because you’re some­how not work­ing hard enough. Where­as if you’re doing well enough that you don’t depend on the state, you’re a striver.

The con­flict between the poor is even more explic­it­ly drama­tised in anoth­er major recent French release. Jacques Audiard’s Palme d’Or-winner, Dheep­an, stages the bat­tle in an even more politi­cised and racialised set­ting, revolv­ing as it does around a makeshift refugee fam­i­ly from Sri Lan­ka. Dheep­an (Jesuthasan Antonythasan), his wife’ Yali­ni (Kalieaswari Srini­vasan) and his daugh­ter’ Illayaal (Clau­dine Vin­a­sitham­by) are unre­lat­ed, but form a sur­ro­gate fam­i­ly in order to escape the Sri Lankan civ­il war and start a new life in France. The irony is that they end up in a grim coun­cil estate on the out­skirts of Paris, where a dif­fer­ent kind of crim­i­nal vio­lence is common.

Like Thier­ry in Mea­sure of a Man, Dheep­an finds a menial job clean­ing up around the tow­er blocks, bring­ing him into reg­u­lar con­tact with local drug-run­ning gangs. Once again the con­trast between the work­ing poor and the crim­i­nal poor is estab­lished, though this time it’s sug­gest­ed that crime isn’t a harsh neces­si­ty but a risky yet lucra­tive option to escape pover­ty. There’s less ambi­gu­i­ty in Audiard’s vision, less sym­pa­thy for the crim­i­nals, and it is a decid­ed­ly more pulpy prospect. Unlike Brizé, Audi­ard isn’t try­ing to sug­gest that this is a com­mon state of affairs, but instead shows us an extreme ver­sion of what the eco­nom­ic and migrant crises mean for peo­ple in France and Europe at large. The over­rid­ing impres­sion is that Dheep­an and his fam­i­ly are good peo­ple forced into des­per­ate sit­u­a­tions. His vio­lent past and present are not mutu­al­ly exclusive.

Man holding handgun while sitting on couch surrounded by clutter.

These films reflect a gen­er­al feel­ing with­in the left-wing media that aus­ter­i­ty dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly dis­ad­van­tages the poor­est in soci­ety. That no mat­ter how strong­ly gov­ern­ments protest that we’re all in it togeth­er’, it is typ­i­cal­ly ben­e­fits and jobs and local ser­vices for those most in need that are cut first. Cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly, this sen­ti­ment has reached its most vocif­er­ous peak in the UK in the unlike­ly form of Kings­man: The Secret Ser­vice and Grims­by. The vil­lain­ous schemes that dri­ve both films can be blunt­ly summed up as: kill the poor’. In Grims­by, this means a plot to infect the most­ly work­ing class atten­dees (the film­mak­ers’ assump­tion, not mine) of the World Cup Final with a virus, which they will then spread thus reduc­ing over­pop­u­la­tion. In Kings­man, it means a lethal mobile sim card dis­trib­uted to pret­ty much every­one except the rich­est and most pow­er­ful 1% of soci­ety. It couldn’t be any clear­er that these brash, satir­i­cal action-come­dies think this atti­tude reflects what’s hap­pen­ing in Britain today.

It’s also intrigu­ing that both films rely on a James Bond-esque spy to lead the resis­tance. The film­mak­ers are call­ing on the white knight of British cin­e­ma, that most noto­ri­ous and patri­ot­ic of film icons as the sav­iour of the work­ing class. Though he’s an obvi­ous choice of hero to invoke, it’s intrigu­ing to note that the nation­al­ism, sex­ism and racism that has plagued the char­ac­ter over the years might be indica­tive of anoth­er unwel­come trend in con­tem­po­rary British society.

From Gomes’ absurd tri­al, to Brizé and Lindon’s bru­tal real­ism and Matthew Vaughn and Sacha Baron Cohen’s exag­ger­at­ed spy spoofs, the mes­sage on Euro­pean aus­ter­i­ty is clear. When so many films comes along with­in the space of a year, all express­ing a sim­i­lar sen­ti­ment, it’s hard not to feel like they’re reflect­ing a sub­con­scious con­ti­nen­tal mood. These film­mak­ers have made their state­ments. The ques­tion now is: will any­thing change?

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