SPOILERS APLENTY
Barmy wrote:Can someone PLEASE explain how this film is a critique of homeland security.
AGAIN: in the film, (1) every country but Britain is a hopeless f**ked nuclear wasteland and (2) life in homeland securitized Britain is tolerable if you keep your head down.
You do the math.
What would you rather have, Guernica on some rich jerk's living room wall, or no Guernica at all.
The film simply does not work as a political film.
SPOILERS
I think you may not be looking critically enough if you believe that "in the film, (1) every country but Britain is a hopeless f**ked nuclear wasteland". I mean no offense, but let's consider this a bit more. Do we see any nuclear wastelands in the film? Other than that brief bit of
propaganda that Theo and the other train passengers are subjected to in the beginning, very little comment is made about life elsewhere in the world (an off-hand remark about Julian's parents being in NYC "then" is all that sticks in my mind). Sure, we could assume that the refugee "problem" in Britain indicates that life is worse elsewhere, but I think that would be a misstep. Cuaron is asking us to be wary of any sort of political organization, and not to make assumptions or take what we are presented with at face value. The fact that the public portrayal of the current state of world affairs is not revealed to be false or exaggerated does not mean that it isn't either of those things. What we are presented with is an overbearing, quasi-fascist British government struggling to maintain its power over the people, and (probably) resorting to terrorism (and finger-pointing) to do so. If things have gotten so bad for the state that this is deemed a necessary act, how can we possibly take anything they say at face value? Surely terrible things have happened all around the world, as we can see by the "refugee" (i.e., not "immigrant") status of the foreign nationals in the film, but for fuck's sake, if I was in a situation as bad as the only one we are really presented with in the film, Britain's, I would be on the first boat out to
anywhere, and for all I know, that place may be worse off. Likewise, for all we know, the "refugees" may be fleeing (or have fleed, as we're also not presented with a clear timeframe of events) from someplace considerably more favourable than the camps they've been herded into at present.
As for your (2), life where bombs go off in my local coffee shops on a regular basis and foreigners are rounded up into camps doesn't fit my definition of tolerable. Maybe I've led a privileged life, but I don't see why anyone has to put up with that shit.