Es begins in 1932. Two students are lying on a meadow at night at a party in Oxford and get amicably drunk, a young Englishman named Hugh Legat and a young German named Paul von Hartmann. Both will make careers in the film “Munich – In the View of War” (now in cinemas, later on Netflix), one at 10 Downing Street, the other in the Reich Foreign Ministry.
It is an interesting film because it has equal rights, which cannot be said of most Anglo-American war productions; the original is by a Brit (Robert Harris) and directed by a German (Christian Schwochow), the main roles are split evenly (George Mackay and Jeremy Irons on the one hand, Jannis Niewöhner and August Diehl on the other) and have English and German the same rank.
But let’s fade to the year 1937, to another film. In The King’s Speech, British Crown Prince Albert takes lessons from a therapist to overcome his stutter; the speech therapist treated British soldiers with post-traumatic disorders following the First World War. The coronation as George VI, during which Albert doesn’t have to talk much, goes without a hitch.
Flashback to “Munich”: It is now September 1938. Hitler is demanding that Czechoslovakia cede the Sudeten German territories and is threatening an invasion. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain tries to prevent the war following all. And his adviser Hugh Legat decides to reconnect with Paul von Hartmann, who has gone from being a Nazi sympathizer to an anti-Hitler.
We switch to the year 1939 in “The Excavation”. English landowner Edith Pretty hires amateur excavator Basil Brown to survey mounds of earth on her property. Brown finds a ship’s hull, which turns out to be an Anglo-Saxon grave. A leading Cambridge archaeologist has declared the discovery a matter of national importance. Every now and then you see war planes in the air.
Jeremy Irons as British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in “Munich: Edge of War”
Quelle: Frederic Batier / NETFLIX
When the United Kingdom declares war on Germany following its invasion of Poland on September 3, 1939, the king is expected to give a patriotic radio speech, which he – once more “The King’s Speech” – masters flawlessly with the help of his speech therapist. He also assists with all of the monarch’s further war speeches, which are considered an important factor in British perseverance.
A day following the speech, young mathematician Alan Turing reports for duty at Bletchley Park, the Army’s code-breaking center. In “The Imitation Game” you can see the job interview in which he does not exactly endear himself to his superior, who later wants to prevent him from building a cryptanalytic machine that might be used to crack the German Enigma encryption. Turing then turns directly to Winston Churchill.
That Churchill, in turn, is the focus of “The Darkest Hour”. It is May 1940, things are bad for the Allies on the front lines, and Chamberlain is being replaced as Prime Minister by the uncompromising Churchill. He is fighting on several fronts: He has to withstand pressure from his own party for a compromise peace, save the British troops who are surrounded in France – and keep the people’s confidence in victory alive.
In the case of Dunkirk
“Dunkirk” runs parallel in time, on the other side of the canal. Tommy, Alex and Gibson are three of tens of thousands of soldiers who line the beach at Dunkirk hoping to be evacuated to England. The rescue ships are bombed and torpedoed, and it is only when thousands of civilian boats rush across the Channel that most of the soldiers are rescued on home soil.
Catrin Cole, on the other hand, accepts a position in the London Ministry of Information in “The Great Hour”, whose propaganda films are intended to give the nation courage once more; she is responsible for the “female touch”. Her first film will be regarding twin sisters who steal their father’s cutter to cross over to Dunkirk.
Robbie in “Atonement” is also caught in the Dunkirk trap. Shortly before the rescue transport, he succumbed to blood poisoning. His lover Cecilia dies a few months later in a German air raid on London.
In Enigma we are back in Bletchley Park in 1942. The mathematician Tom Jericho has to find a solution to the fact that the German radio messages are suddenly no longer decipherable.
The man with the cigar now has a film all to himself: “Churchill”. In 1944 the Allied landings in Normandy were imminent. But the prime minister hesitates. At the beginning of the film, he looks lost in thought at the sea – which then turns red. The battle leader is plagued by late remorse because of the disaster of the Gallipoli landings he commanded in World War I, in which 100,000 soldiers died. He doesn’t want to send so many young men to their deaths a second time.
Almost the entire history of the Second World War might be told from a British perspective with films made following the turn of the century; there was Allied and the almost endless series of documentaries with the Prime Minister’s name in the title: Churchill’s Secret, Churchill’s Secret Son, Churchill’s Secret Army, Churchill’s Secret Soldiers, Churchill’s Secret Bunkers” – Guido Knopp has already done this with Hitler in the title.
Christopher Nolan began filming Dunkirk, which is regarding bringing home as many compatriots as possible and preventing an invasion, on May 23, 2016. On June 23, 2016, the British voted to leave the EU. At first glance, this is a false connection. Nolan’s idea for the film dates back to the 1990s, with specific preparations going back to 2013.
But one cannot avoid the fact that the majority of the films mentioned, which celebrate the defense of the island, were made in the past five years – following the Brexit decision. Once once more England seals itself off from the disaster that threatens from the continent – this time not from Berlin, but from Brussels – and British cinema celebrates England as a fortress at the time.
Let’s call it the Brexit genre. It’s no longer regarding fighting someone, it’s regarding fighting for something. In “Dunkirk” the enemy is never named, you hardly see him. It’s no longer regarding defeating the Germans once more and once more like in so many films and series up until the 1980s.
“Not a word regarding the war”
Even the famous “Fawlty Towers” episode “The Germans”, in which hotel owner John Cleese constantly admonishes his employees with a view to German guests, “Don’t say a word regarding the war!”, has now been confiscated by the correctness police (but that’s another story ).
No, Brexit films are regarding the self-portrait of a country that, faced with an uncertain future, is reassured by its glorious past, the last glorious phase of the world empire. For this, Sir Winston is brought out of the grave once more and once more, and he is allowed to swear like a beer driver and brag regarding like a child and drink whiskey and smoke cigars. It’s hero worship in its purest form, and all of those quirks are interpreted positively—one of which would already finish off a politician today in a heartbeat.
The disturbing face in the story’s harmonious souvenir photo was always that of Neville Chamberlain. The man who in 1938 threw Czechoslovakia at Hitler for the sake of peace was the appeasement politician who didn’t stop the Nazis in time. “Munich” is now the film that makes Chamberlain a full member of glorious history.
Yes, he negotiated with Hitler; yes, following his return he waved his hand at the Munich Agreement and proclaimed “peace for our time”. But – and this is the film plot added by Robert Harris – he receives Hitler’s opponent von Hartmann in his Munich hotel, who presents him with evidence of Hitler’s war plans. The film justifies Chamberlain before history for giving England an extra year to prepare militarily; some historians, however, consider England’s position in 1938 to be stronger than that of 1939. Jeremy Irons, in any case, is a formidable Chamberlain who stands by his convictions.
A recurring motif in Brexit films is the unity between the elite and the populace. In “The Excavation”, the elegant landowner and the curious farmer bring to light a symbol of English history that creates an identity. The suffering of ordinary soldiers is the focus of “Dunkirk”, the evacuation “Miracle of Dunkirk” was only possible by thousands of civilian boats. The young woman in Her Prime Hour challenges the patriarchal hierarchies of Cambridge boys’ clubs.
In Darkest Hour, Sir Winston rides the subway with the common people without a bodyguard, and his secretary makes sure he uses the victory sign the right way round. In “Churchill” it is the fiancé of his new secretary who tells him that the people would be ready for blood, sweat and tears – with a leader to match.
It is a very short-lived class unity that is immediately abandoned by the establishment following the war; Basil Brown, for example, who brought England Sutton Hoo, disappears from the annals of history, leaving the Cambridge star archaeologists. The Corona parties at 10 Downing Street show how much the ruling class in Great Britain still lives by its own “rules” today; no trace of solidarity with the locked down people.
With a few exceptions that prove the rule, British cinema has always preferred to roam the wide corridors of mansions rather than the narrow staircases of terraced houses. There’s a documentary by Ken Loach called The Spirit of ’45 which is regarding exactly that, the British underclass’s suspicion that following the war things would be the same as before and how they voted Churchill out of office and put the Labor Party in office and how they founded a welfare state.
It was an epochal event that made it possible, and it was another epochal event, Brexit, that is now making it possible to finally scrap it. Christopher Nolan has repeatedly denied that Dunkirk is a Brexit film, and Robert Harris has even been a high-profile opponent of leaving the EU.
But intent and effect have always been two different things. The Churchill of the Brexit films gives speeches regarding England’s responsibility for Europe, as the guardian of freedom, while England evades precisely this responsibility through Brexit. And Britain’s cinema sings its praises.
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