This week Chris Deacy is joined in the studio by Rob Bailey to discuss the films; Out of Sight, The Constant Gardener, Monsters, and How I Live Now.
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00:00 (dramatic music)
00:02 - Hello and welcome to Kent Film Club.
00:16 I'm Chris Deasy and each week I'll be joined
00:18 by a guest from Kent to dive deep into the impact
00:21 certain films have had on their life.
00:23 Each guest will reflect on the films
00:25 which have meant the most to them over the years.
00:27 And every week there will be a Kent Film Trivia
00:30 where we quiz you at home about a film
00:32 that has a connection to the county.
00:34 And now let me introduce you to my guest for this week.
00:38 You may recognise him from KMTV's The Kent Politics Show
00:41 but he is also a journalism lecturer
00:43 and avid video game player.
00:45 He is, of course, Rob Bailey.
00:48 - Thank you for having me.
00:49 - Pleasure, so the boot's on the other foot
00:51 so I'm interviewing you tonight.
00:53 - I've never seen the studio from this side in this way.
00:55 - I know, I know.
00:56 - Well, so, and talking about visual splendour,
01:00 Out of Sight is your first chosen film.
01:03 - My first film, absolutely.
01:04 Well, I was thinking about, I mean,
01:06 all the different kind of things
01:07 that I enjoy about movies
01:09 and I wanted a film that was really just
01:12 an homage to classic film-making
01:15 which is certainly what this is,
01:17 a film that makes constant references
01:18 back to the kind of Rat Pack style
01:20 kind of crime movies of cinema's golden heyday
01:23 and all of that kind of stuff.
01:24 And I love that.
01:25 And this was obviously the precursor
01:26 to the Oceans movies and everything else
01:28 which are just real feel-good movies.
01:30 I love that Sunday afternoon, it's raining,
01:32 I'm gonna put a film like this on.
01:34 But there's a specific reason why this won
01:36 and it's because, to me, the enjoyment of film
01:39 comes an awful lot from music
01:41 and particularly from kind of soundtrack music.
01:45 I absolutely love that.
01:46 I love listening to it.
01:47 When I'm working, I'll put soundtracks on.
01:48 And this was the first major soundtrack
01:51 done by an artist called David Holmes
01:53 whose work may not be familiar to a lot of people
01:56 but it is the sound you think of
01:57 when you think of Oceans 11 type music,
01:59 that jazzy, loungy, sort of black-spoitation
02:02 kind of influence that it's got.
02:04 And something about that music, when I hear that,
02:06 it just puts me in a happy place.
02:08 - And you mentioned Sassadin.
02:09 No, it's funny because I saw this on a Sunday afternoon
02:12 at a multiplex in Cardiff, 1998,
02:15 and it was a few months after Jackie Brown.
02:17 And it was really clever because the screen movies
02:19 had done something perhaps similar earlier
02:21 when you have the self-referentiality.
02:22 Suddenly the characters from one film
02:24 would walk into another.
02:26 But this has a very sassy sort of feel.
02:29 You're right, the music contributes significantly
02:32 to that ambience.
02:33 - Enormously.
02:34 And in fact, there are moments where Steven Soderbergh,
02:37 the director of this, is using the music
02:40 and really leaning into it.
02:41 There's a great scene,
02:42 the first time George Clooney and J. Lo
02:45 really spend time together in a bar
02:47 and they had this wonderful meeting
02:49 where initially they pretend to be different people
02:51 to get around the awkwardness of the fact
02:52 that one is the bank robber and the other is the cop,
02:55 which is always a classic setup, isn't it?
02:57 Think about heat and movies like that.
02:59 But they do that
03:00 and they have this very intimate conversation
03:03 and there are little pauses and little glitches almost
03:06 in the way that it's edited,
03:07 which match the music perfectly.
03:09 And it gets this almost kind of dreamlike video,
03:11 kind of music video kind of feel.
03:13 And it's just something really magical about it.
03:15 I love it.
03:15 - And people often talk about the chemistry
03:17 between Jennifer Lopez, as she was in those days,
03:20 and George Clooney.
03:22 And I think, don't look now from the early '70s
03:25 with Judy Christie and Donald Sutherland,
03:27 was similar of having this sort of sense
03:29 that you really buy into the fact that this,
03:32 you know, that they could be a real couple
03:34 rather than, you know, acting their way through this.
03:36 So why is this one stood out?
03:38 Because you mentioned the Brat Pack,
03:40 you mentioned the Oceans films.
03:41 What makes Out of Sight so distinctive?
03:44 - One of the things you're gonna learn about me
03:45 over the course of this and the four films I've chosen
03:47 is I like films that have a little bit of roughness to them.
03:49 They're not necessarily the perfect film.
03:51 And I think Oceans 11, when he came back
03:54 and Steven Soderbergh worked with George Clooney again,
03:57 he worked with David Holmes again on the music,
04:00 and he kind of brought back something,
04:01 Don Cheadle was in some of those films.
04:03 You know, you've got the cast recurring, like you say,
04:06 but it was more polished.
04:07 This film just feels a little bit rougher.
04:09 And it's funny that you mentioned Jackie Brown
04:11 because obviously this was 1998.
04:13 This is a time where the crime movie
04:15 has been redefined by Quentin Tarantino
04:17 with Reservoir Dogs, with Pulp Fiction, with Jackie Brown.
04:20 And this film has some of the violence in it,
04:23 some of the rough edges in it
04:25 that the Oceans films then didn't.
04:27 And I love other heist movies,
04:29 things like Now You See Me.
04:31 You know, I absolutely love that.
04:32 I love that they're little clockwork puzzles,
04:34 and you just love watching how they're going to unfold,
04:36 and there's something quite beautiful about that.
04:38 But this one just has this little darker edge in it.
04:40 There are a couple of scenes in it.
04:41 I rewatched it very recently so we could talk about it.
04:44 And there's one scene in particular
04:46 where J. Lo, Jennifer Lopez,
04:48 is confronted by a male character,
04:51 and there is a violence in that scene
04:53 which is actually really uncomfortable.
04:55 And you never would have got that
04:56 from the Oceans movies and things.
04:57 And I just think that that edge,
04:59 I don't know, it's something which is there to be polished.
05:02 It's there, it makes you feel
05:03 just slightly uncomfortable watching it now.
05:05 But there's something about that
05:06 which makes me think that there is
05:08 something taking shape in this movie.
05:09 There's a kind of rawness to it
05:12 which you can latch onto in an interesting way.
05:14 - Yeah, and Soderbergh is one of those directors,
05:16 I suppose Tarantino is similar,
05:17 who has often talked about his final film,
05:20 but has always sort of come back.
05:22 But this was sort of a period for him
05:24 because you had Erin Brockovich,
05:26 not long later you had Traffic.
05:28 But those sort of films were very strongly character driven.
05:31 But you mentioned the rough edges,
05:33 but there's something about,
05:34 there's a very smooth veneer as well.
05:35 There's a sense that he's letting them go,
05:37 very jazzy, he's letting them get on with it.
05:40 And that's a very clever thing,
05:41 very distinctive in that sort of late '90s era.
05:43 - It's that half step, isn't it?
05:45 He's taken some of the roughness and the rawness
05:48 of what Tarantino was doing,
05:49 and then he's looked at old movies
05:52 with Frank Sinatra in them,
05:53 and thought how can I mash these things together?
05:56 This film probably not that well known,
05:58 but a lot of people who would be very familiar
05:59 with the Oceans film may have never seen this one.
06:02 And this is that curious chimeric step
06:05 between the way that kind of really raw
06:08 crime movies in the '90s were happening,
06:10 and between that much smoother early 2000s,
06:13 very comforting kind of big budget cinema movies were going.
06:17 And I think that makes it for me
06:19 something I can keep coming back to,
06:20 because I can dig things out of it in that way.
06:23 - Brilliant choice.
06:24 Okay, well it's time now to move on
06:25 to your second chosen film,
06:27 and you've gone for The Constant Gardener.
06:32 - I said about roughness and rawness.
06:33 This is the one film on my list which is,
06:36 I think the most celebrated film on my list.
06:38 This is the one which was getting
06:39 the Oscar recognition and everything else.
06:41 And I'm a journalist, as you know.
06:44 I like films that are about telling the truth.
06:46 And this film, I toyed with lots of the classic journalism.
06:51 Every journalist that comes on here
06:52 is gonna talk about all the president's men,
06:54 or Spotlight, or JFK maybe,
06:58 those kind of big revealing the truth type films.
07:01 But there's something about this movie
07:03 which tears me to pieces when I watch it,
07:05 to be perfectly honest.
07:06 This is a film about pharmaceutical companies in Africa
07:11 using people for trials of medicines off the books,
07:16 not really caring about what happens to those people,
07:19 and that being exposed.
07:21 But it's also an absolutely beautiful love story,
07:23 and a really unconventional love story
07:26 with Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Rice in the lead roles,
07:29 but actually not sharing all that much screen time together.
07:31 And there's something about the rawness
07:35 of the journalistic element of this,
07:37 the investigation that drives this film on,
07:40 which appeals to me as a journalist.
07:42 And that little soppy bit of me
07:44 that can cry at the end of a film
07:46 is very much triggered by the other part of this movie.
07:49 - Yeah, and I remember watching this,
07:50 actually at the Gulbenkian,
07:52 so 2005, 2006, around that period,
07:54 and of course Rachel Rice won an Oscar for this role,
07:57 and based on a very acclaimed novel, as I recall.
08:01 - John Le Carre. - Yeah.
08:02 Now, so you mentioned the journalists a bit,
08:04 and I found that really interesting,
08:06 because do you watch films like this
08:09 in order to aid and abet,
08:12 as a counterpart to your journalism work,
08:15 or do you like the counterpoint?
08:16 Because I loved all those,
08:17 sort of like the Pelican Brief and The Firm,
08:19 and they're in a way completely nonsensical,
08:21 but you watch them because they almost take you
08:23 into a parallel reality,
08:25 and the one that perhaps the journalist in you
08:28 might kind of, in a different reality, like to inhabit.
08:31 - Oh, I think that's absolutely right.
08:32 There's an element of fantasy there, isn't there?
08:34 If you watch a film like All the President's Men,
08:36 for example, I think everybody who's ever gone
08:38 into my profession is thinking,
08:40 oh, I wish I could be Woodward and Bernstein doing that.
08:43 This isn't actually a film about a journalist
08:45 in a conventional sense, but Rachel Rice is an activist.
08:47 She's very passionate, she's putting herself at risk
08:52 to try and uncover the truth of something,
08:54 and there's a really good undercurrent to the story
08:56 about how far she's willing to go to tell the truth,
08:59 and I think that as journalists, we always have to,
09:02 that's a question we're asking ourselves,
09:03 how far would we go to tell the truth?
09:05 I've been a political journalist
09:08 and a general news journalist here in Kent.
09:10 I haven't had to go that far to tell the truth,
09:12 but this is a time where people in my profession
09:15 are putting themselves in danger,
09:17 in Ukraine, in the Middle East, in Russia,
09:19 to find out what's going on in places.
09:21 And there is a little bit of me
09:23 which is very attracted to stories
09:26 about people who are taking those risks,
09:28 who are people who are willing to make
09:30 the ultimate sacrifice in order for the truth to come out,
09:34 which is ultimately what this film is all about.
09:36 And yes, it's an attractive thing, I think,
09:39 for someone with my profession
09:41 to kind of be told those stories
09:43 and to kind of feel like what we're doing is important,
09:45 the risks we're taking are worth it.
09:47 - Yeah, and that sort of notion of journey,
09:49 in fact, you made me think as well of a Ralph Fiennes film
09:51 that came out just a couple of years ago called Forgiven,
09:54 which is a very sort of, the intercultural thing
09:58 that the Brits abroad sort of kind of dynamic
10:01 and how they are both sort of at odds with
10:03 and then immersed in a very different sort of culture.
10:05 And as I recall, because it is nearly 20 years
10:07 since I saw this, does this have a,
10:10 is it Africa this is partly set?
10:12 - It is, yeah, yes, almost entirely.
10:14 There's a little bit that comes back to London,
10:15 but almost entirely in Africa.
10:17 And you've got, some of the reviews of this film
10:19 sort of say it feels a bit uneven at times
10:21 in the way that it's filmed.
10:22 And I think there's an interesting thing going on in it
10:24 in that you have two character point of views
10:27 coming across.
10:28 You've got Rachel Rice's activist grounded bits
10:32 where she's on a path to try and find out what's going on,
10:35 why these African children particularly are dying
10:39 when they're being involved in medical trials
10:41 and all this stuff.
10:42 And there's a lot of camera shake
10:43 and all that kind of stuff
10:44 that was very typical at the time,
10:46 this kind of cinema,
10:47 which was trying to be gritty and realistic.
10:49 And then there were these other scenes,
10:51 which are much more dreamy,
10:52 particularly the love scenes
10:53 between Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Rice.
10:56 Soft focus, this really interesting kind of editing,
10:59 which is very, very dreamlike
11:00 where you get little snatches of laughter and imagery,
11:03 which is his much more romantic
11:05 kind of character coming through.
11:07 And I think there's something about the way this story
11:12 is told really, really kind of fun, quite powerful.
11:14 - Yeah, and have you seen this on the big screen,
11:16 the small screen?
11:17 - Both, I've seen this film many times.
11:19 And I say, this is one of those ones
11:20 where if I'm feeling like I want to watch a film
11:22 that's going to kind of punch me in the gut
11:23 and emotionally, this is the one I'll reach for.
11:25 - Absolutely.
11:26 - Yeah, fantastic.
11:27 Okay, well, that's about all the time we have
11:29 for this first half of the show.
11:31 However, before we go to the break,
11:32 we have a Kent Film Trivia question for you at home.
11:35 Which BAFTA-recognised film utilised the voice
11:40 of a recipient of an honorary doctorate
11:42 from Canterbury Christ Church University?
11:44 Was it A, "Human Traffic," B, "Little Voice,"
11:48 or C, "Mrs. Brown?"
11:51 We'll reveal the answer right after this break.
11:53 Don't go away.
11:55 (dramatic music)
11:57 Hello, and welcome back to Kent Film Club.
12:09 Just before the ad break,
12:10 we asked you at home a Kent Film Trivia question.
12:13 Which BAFTA-recognised film utilised the voice
12:17 of a recipient of an honorary doctorate
12:19 from Canterbury Christ Church University?
12:21 I asked, was it A, "Human Traffic,"
12:24 B, "Little Voice," or C, "Mrs. Brown?"
12:27 And now I can reveal to you that the answer
12:29 was in fact A, "Human Traffic."
12:32 The vocal role was played by Jo Brand,
12:34 who was awarded a second honorary doctorate
12:36 from Canterbury Christ Church University
12:38 for her work in raising awareness of mental health issues
12:41 and challenging the stigma surrounding such illnesses
12:44 in January 2014.
12:47 Did you get the answer right?
12:50 Well, it is time now, Rob, to move on
12:52 to your next chosen film,
12:54 and you've gone for "Monsters."
12:58 - "Monsters," indeed.
12:59 In fact, before I talk about "Monsters,"
13:00 I will just say that the other Kent connection
13:02 with "Human Traffic" is that the musical director of it
13:04 was Pete Tong from Dartford,
13:07 who was the soundtrack to, I'm sure,
13:09 mine and every one of my age groups,
13:11 kind of Friday and Saturday nights,
13:13 back sort of 20-odd years ago.
13:15 So strong Kent connections there.
13:17 But this film, "Monsters,"
13:19 I absolutely love B-movies and monster movies.
13:23 And this one brings both together.
13:26 This is a film, it was Gareth Edwards,
13:29 I think one of his first directorial pieces,
13:32 and put together on a budget of just a few thousand pounds,
13:36 shot on location, using local people
13:39 in the communities where he was shooting
13:40 to fill speaking roles sometimes in the film itself.
13:44 So it's this remarkably lo-fi film
13:46 about two people travelling through a quarantine zone
13:49 where aliens have landed
13:51 and where humans are no longer effectively safe
13:53 from Mexico into America.
13:55 And, yeah, are you familiar?
13:56 I don't know.
13:57 - When I saw it on the screen, I thought "Monsters, Inc."
14:00 No, it's not that one.
14:01 "Monster" with Charlize Theron.
14:02 So I don't think I'm familiar with this one.
14:04 - No, so this is a film which I think,
14:06 I think it might have a niche appeal.
14:08 But if you're interested in big monster movies,
14:11 the kind of, you know, we have a lot of those,
14:14 the kind of Godzilla-type movies or things like that,
14:16 this is much lower key than that.
14:18 But it is that kind of a film.
14:19 And you've got these people who are very vulnerable,
14:22 who are in an interesting situation.
14:24 The lead protagonist is a journalist.
14:26 He's told by his boss that his daughter is in hospital
14:31 in Mexico, that she needs to be brought back
14:33 to the safety of the United States
14:34 because of this alien threat that is going on in Mexico,
14:38 all very allegorical, of course.
14:39 And the journalist in me likes the allegory
14:41 because this is a very timely issue.
14:43 They then have to travel through this zone on foot,
14:46 eventually, to get through to America.
14:48 But this is a film which uses incredibly subtle techniques
14:51 to make this extraordinary atmosphere.
14:53 So as I say, it's very low budget.
14:55 It's shot on location,
14:56 so you're seeing real places in Mexico.
14:58 And the soundtrack for it,
14:59 it's the theme that I'll keep coming back to,
15:01 by an artist called John Hopkins,
15:02 who's an electronic artist.
15:04 He's won awards for his albums,
15:05 but he's done a lot of really interesting soundtrack work.
15:07 We're gonna talk about him twice during this show.
15:10 But there is one particular scene I recommend you find,
15:12 which I think is an absolutely beautiful meshing
15:14 of soundtrack music and visuals,
15:17 which is on a night just before they enter
15:20 this dangerous wasteland that they have to travel through,
15:22 they spend an evening in a Mexican village,
15:24 and they attend a candlelight festival.
15:28 And it's this beautifully shot thing
15:29 of two people just bonding, learning who each other are,
15:32 in all this candlelit kind of splendor of this,
15:35 that little rural village.
15:37 And the music that accompanies it,
15:38 the original piece of soundtrack music,
15:40 is utterly gorgeous.
15:41 And it's one of those things,
15:43 this film is unsettling in a few ways,
15:45 but it's also cozy and comfortable in ways.
15:48 - Is there something, isn't that about those,
15:49 you mentioned Godzilla, those sort of monster movies,
15:51 where they have some relationship
15:54 with something very sort of real-worldy.
15:56 Yeah, and I think that's the hook,
15:57 because you can, I saw something just the other evening,
16:00 literally, called Sting.
16:01 I saw an advance screening of that.
16:02 And it's like the relic from '97.
16:04 It's very good, it's very sort of monster-driven,
16:06 but you kind of feel okay that it sort of works
16:08 very much as a genre thing.
16:10 But this clearly goes beyond that.
16:11 There's clearly something here, not least,
16:13 because it's not shot, not with green screens,
16:15 but actually on location.
16:16 - Absolutely, yes.
16:17 And in fact, there are monster effects,
16:19 which are done later.
16:20 They were all done on the director's laptop by him,
16:23 and I think for a cost of about 20,000 pounds.
16:25 But the effect is beautiful.
16:26 And in a way, that's a callback to classic horror.
16:30 You think about horror before everything was big budget,
16:32 even back to the first Alien film, for example,
16:35 where there was something about
16:37 the kind of sparsity of effects,
16:40 and the groundedness of effects,
16:42 which really is quite powerful and really effective.
16:44 And I love those kind of films.
16:46 And this is just, to me, this is a modern version of that,
16:49 in the same way that Out of Sight is a modern version
16:52 of those classic Rat Pack movies.
16:54 This is, if you liked Alien,
16:56 there's probably something here for you.
16:57 - Yeah, and it made me think of Lake Placid
16:59 and all sorts of, they're sort of very B-movie driven.
17:02 But did you, now, did you go into this thinking,
17:07 you know, it's gonna be great fun,
17:08 or were you sort of wrong-footed
17:09 or were you surprised?
17:11 So when you saw this, did you sort of immediately think,
17:14 right, this completely ups the game for this sort of genre?
17:17 Or was it one of those things that took a long while
17:19 for it to effectively work its magic on you?
17:22 - Well, I think it sat on me for a while.
17:25 I think good films do.
17:27 I think sometimes my first reaction to a film
17:29 isn't going to define my lasting relationship with it.
17:31 I go to movies like this expecting to be Sharknado
17:35 or Anaconda, which I have to say,
17:37 I'm very happy to watch those movies.
17:39 I'm very happy to laugh at a bad B-movie.
17:42 But this isn't that, actually.
17:44 This is an attempt at serious filmmaking.
17:46 It's shonky in interesting ways.
17:48 It's very much low budget when you watch it,
17:51 but it's also quite affecting.
17:52 And there's something about, as you say,
17:54 that on location, the way that music works,
17:57 the way that some of the visual effects work,
17:58 the way that there's a fantasy world
18:01 kind of being built where they travel
18:03 into the quarantine zone.
18:04 It's not just big monsters.
18:06 It's a whole new type of kind of flora and fauna
18:09 that they encounter, these glowing kind of places
18:12 which feel a bit Avatar-ish, maybe,
18:14 if Avatar had been done for five quid, you know.
18:16 And that magic, I just love it.
18:18 I think it's really powerful.
18:19 - Yeah, and is it a small screen or a big screen movie?
18:22 - I think you can do this one on the small screen.
18:24 I think this one, because it's kind of low budget,
18:27 I don't think you need to have that big, powerful thing.
18:30 I think small screen, but have good speakers.
18:32 - Fantastic.
18:33 Okay, well, it is time now, Rob,
18:35 to move on to your final chosen film,
18:37 and you've gone for "How I Live Now."
18:41 I don't know if I've seen this.
18:44 Help me through it.
18:45 - So, this film comes out of the big boom
18:47 in young adult dystopian movies and books.
18:52 You know, over the last 20 years,
18:55 this was 2013, this movie.
18:57 So this is around the same time
18:58 that Harry Potter is still very popular,
19:00 that the Hunger Games films are coming out,
19:03 that you've got things like,
19:04 what was that other big franchise?
19:06 I can't remember the name.
19:07 - "The Lord of the Rings."
19:08 - Yeah, I mean, obviously,
19:09 but yeah, the kind of young action,
19:10 teen protagonist kind of movies,
19:12 which were the "Maze Runner," that kind of stuff.
19:15 But this one, again, lower budget, maybe.
19:18 It's Kevin MacDonald is the director of this one.
19:20 It's got Tom Holland in it
19:22 in one of his first roles as a child.
19:24 And it's telling the story of what happens to children
19:30 when a major conflict, a third world war,
19:33 breaks out in Britain
19:35 with an invasion, effectively, of Britain,
19:39 but through the eyes of children
19:40 who are having to live and survive through that.
19:42 It's much, much bleaker, I'll be honest,
19:45 than any of those other young adult dystopian films
19:47 are, much more real in some respects.
19:49 There are some really harrowing moments in it.
19:51 But what I really love about it
19:53 is it takes me back again to my childhood a little bit.
19:56 I grew up watching "The Famous Five" and "The Secret Seven,"
19:58 and these kind of films,
19:59 which were all about reassuring messages about children.
20:03 There might be a war going on,
20:04 and children might have been moved away
20:06 from their homes to the countryside.
20:08 But once they get there, these are safe places
20:11 where children can indulge in their fantasies
20:12 and be children, and they can have fun,
20:15 and they can have friendships, and all of the rest of it.
20:17 And that was the message that I grew up with,
20:20 that children should be removed
20:22 from the horrors of adult life.
20:24 And this film turns that on its head.
20:27 This film has an American protagonist
20:30 coming over to the UK because her father sent her here,
20:32 at exactly the wrong moment,
20:34 just as the world is going to hell, effectively.
20:37 And at the beginning of the movie,
20:38 soundtracked again by John Hopkins,
20:40 there are some wonderful scenes
20:44 where it's almost "Famous Five."
20:45 They go swimming in a wonderful little rock pool,
20:48 and then they have a picnic, and they burn marshmallows,
20:50 and there's this wonderful couple of bits of music.
20:53 "The Field and the River," they're called on the soundtrack.
20:55 Recommend those to anyone who loves piano soundtrack music.
20:58 Beautiful, beautiful stuff.
21:00 And then just as that scene ends,
21:02 there is a rain of ash, and a slight boom in the distance,
21:06 and you realize that war has come.
21:08 And from that moment onwards,
21:09 these children have no escape from the reality of it.
21:11 They can't be removed from the dangers of the adult world.
21:15 They now have to live with it.
21:16 And I think, doesn't that tell us something
21:18 about the kind of world that we live in now?
21:20 I think, to me as a journalist,
21:22 thinking about how we talk to children
21:24 about what's happening in the world,
21:26 and the degree to which we can't protect them
21:28 from some of the things that are coming,
21:29 whether it's climate change, or whether it's conflict,
21:31 or the talk about national service that's in the news now,
21:34 the talk about potential unrest in Europe in the future,
21:37 that our children are very much going to be affected
21:41 by the things that are happening.
21:42 And I think this story somehow tells us something
21:44 about the fact that we can't protect them anymore,
21:47 we can't shield them anymore,
21:48 and that we're going to have to face up to the fact
21:50 that we need to have a convincing story to tell them.
21:52 - Because often those films that stand out,
21:53 and you think of the classic, like Stephen King,
21:56 adaptation "Stand By Me," are often those films
21:59 which are told through the lens of the child,
22:01 but then decades later, those children are now
22:04 the same age as the parents in the film,
22:06 and you've got that sort of ongoing,
22:08 almost like dialogue between each person.
22:11 And this film, from what you're saying,
22:13 sounds very similar in the way that it gives you
22:16 the sort of sense of 2013,
22:18 what a young person growing up then,
22:20 how she navigates her way through life.
22:22 The Civil War, which is out in the cinemas at the moment,
22:24 does something perhaps fairly similar,
22:26 of a young budding journalist
22:27 who wants to go in the war zone,
22:29 that's where it's happening,
22:30 and there are risks involved,
22:31 but that's what makes her so intrigued.
22:32 So do you think that in 10 years, 20 years time,
22:35 people will be sort of watching this again
22:37 through a different lens, in the light of goodness knows
22:39 what state the world will be in then?
22:40 - I think some, and this is a film that's very much,
22:42 you're looking up on Rotten Tomatoes,
22:44 and it's in the kind of 60s, 70s kind of range.
22:47 It's a film that has been overlooked a little bit, maybe.
22:50 But I think it has become more relevant with time.
22:53 I think that particularly as we talk more about
22:56 the impacts of climate change,
22:57 we think more about what's happening
22:59 to young people in Ukraine
23:00 who are having to live with war around them.
23:02 Those kinds of issues.
23:03 I think this film has something to say about that,
23:06 even though it was made, obviously,
23:08 before those things happened,
23:09 and I think revisiting it now,
23:11 actually is something, it's quite,
23:13 I mean, the bits of this film which are,
23:15 as the film develops, quite bleak, quite horrific at times.
23:18 There are elements of horror here,
23:20 which are at the very extreme end
23:22 of what you would expect to find in a young adult movie.
23:25 Those things, they are real.
23:28 And I think that's an interesting thing
23:30 that we might have to reflect on more.
23:31 Yeah, brilliant.
23:32 Okay, I'm afraid that's all the time we have for today.
23:34 So many thanks to Rob Bailey for joining us
23:37 and being such a brilliant guest.
23:39 And many thanks to you all for tuning in.
23:41 Be sure to come back and join us again
23:43 at the same time next week.
23:45 Until then, that's all from us.
23:47 Goodbye.
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