This week Chris Deacy is joined by Jo Nolan to discuss the films; Inception, An American in Paris, Hidden Figures and Fish Tank.
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00:00 [Music]
00:13 Hello and welcome to Kent Film Club.
00:15 I'm Chris Deasy and each week I'll be joined by a guest from Kent
00:19 to dive deep into the impact certain films have had on their life.
00:23 Each guest will reflect on the films which have meant the most to them over the years.
00:27 And every week there will be a Kent Film Trivia where we quiz you at home
00:31 about a film that has a connection to the county.
00:34 And now let me introduce you to my guest for this week.
00:38 She started out in theatre and later retrained in film production.
00:43 Now she is the Managing Director and Executive Producer at Screen South.
00:48 She is Jo Nolan. Welcome Jo. Great to have you on the programme.
00:52 Thank you Chris.
00:53 And I'm going to find out as we go along what your chosen films are.
00:58 So your first selection is Inception.
01:02 What have you got for this film?
01:04 Oh wow. I am a big Christopher Nolan fan.
01:08 No connection I don't think.
01:11 Although he does look like my cousin but I've never met him.
01:14 But it is just...
01:16 When I was younger I used to have very strange layered dreams
01:21 and there was one point in my life where I was going through quite a stressful time
01:25 and I was having really bad nightmares
01:28 and I learnt a trick that got me out of it where I controlled my dream.
01:33 And that sounds very weird but I did do it and I stopped having the nightmares
01:37 and I thought I didn't really talk to anybody about it because I just thought...
01:40 Anyway I did it and then I saw this film.
01:45 I thought it's not just me.
01:48 And the way that he visualises the world and works collaboratively obviously to do that
01:56 and the visual layering and the psychological layering
02:02 completely in tune and reflecting the drive of the plot
02:05 and the characters, I just think it's exceptional.
02:09 Because you've got these multiple layers haven't you in this?
02:11 Yeah.
02:11 And I really like the angle that you bring to this
02:14 because when I first saw this film I thought it's very complex, multi-layered.
02:20 I almost felt that the film was still carrying on after I'd left.
02:23 It was almost as though...
02:24 It's almost like saying to the audience, "Right, over to you. Which version are we in?"
02:30 But I think that's really insightful that you already found that this film was like a working out
02:36 of what was going on in your subconscious.
02:39 Oh yeah.
02:39 And what was brilliant about it was he had a particular purpose.
02:44 You know, Leonardo DiCaprio.
02:48 Yeah.
02:48 Cop I think his name is.
02:50 Cop or something.
02:51 You know, they had a purpose, the team.
02:53 It was all about getting inside minds to be able to do the job,
02:58 break into the mind rather than the bank.
03:00 And for all sorts of reasons.
03:03 So it took it off in a very different direction.
03:06 But the funny thing was that in my one there was somebody who wanted something that I had
03:11 and I didn't want to give it to them.
03:12 So there was a sense of I need to learn more about them and then I need to get somebody
03:16 in to redraw the world that I'm in so that I move away from it.
03:21 That's how I fixed it.
03:22 So this whole thing about the layers falling away and then quickly rebuilding another one
03:28 and having ways out to do with physicality, the kick.
03:31 And you know, that kind of the word was really intriguing because I think Christopher Nolan
03:40 must have gone through this or, you know, I think he wrote it.
03:43 He did write it, didn't he?
03:44 And I know he worked on it for 10 years.
03:46 So it was obviously something that was really important to him.
03:50 And I just I never met him.
03:53 I just wondered at the starting point was that.
03:55 And I do think that if you've been through a stressful time, you do come up with brilliant
03:59 ideas.
04:00 Because there is that sleight of hand.
04:02 And I think he did it was the prestige was another one where the audience is totally
04:06 wrong footed and you think you know what's coming.
04:09 And of course, right, not even at the end, but well before the end, you know, suddenly
04:14 it's like, you know, have you been paying sufficiently close attention?
04:17 And you need to go watch it at least five more times because at the end it's like,
04:22 yeah, he goes to his children.
04:23 But what choices, sorry, give away anything if you haven't seen it, but what choice has
04:27 been made?
04:28 Is it to stay in a world that he can control or is it to stay in a world and you're not
04:32 quite sure at the end, are you?
04:33 Is it to stay in a world that he's going to be vulnerable in?
04:37 And in the dream world, he might be vulnerable if he can't get out, but he's in control
04:41 or they're in control and they can, you know, they can communicate to an extent.
04:47 But I your comment about when you when the film finishes, you feel like, well, what do
04:52 you it really does stay with you.
04:54 And, you know, you do feel that effect of other buildings, but actually because it's
05:02 so beautifully realized.
05:04 I mean, it's a fantastic piece of and he shot it for IMAX.
05:07 So, you know, it's very technically brilliant and detailed to the nth degree.
05:13 So, you know, you don't he doesn't miss a beat.
05:17 I was just thinking because I saw Tenet, I think probably about five times because it
05:20 was during lockdown and that was one of that.
05:21 That was the film that saved cinema in autumn 2020.
05:25 But that's something very I mean, in a way, it's a gimmick, but it's more than that.
05:29 And I think you've highlighted why that's the case with Christopher Nolan's cinema.
05:32 That it's tapping into something that sort of it's not just why the movies are special,
05:37 but there's something underlying that.
05:38 It's the whole psychology that we that we bring to the film.
05:41 And do you feel that it's almost like a conversation that's going on maybe at a subliminal level
05:46 between the audience and the director?
05:48 That's a very good way of putting it, because he wants to keep you on your toes.
05:52 He doesn't want you to drop your attention for a second.
05:58 And the actors and the the design and the sound design and the music, you know, it's
06:07 so keeping you on that wire that, you know, he is having a conversation with you, but
06:14 he's going to lead it.
06:16 You can't go off in a different direction as much.
06:18 So he's leading it.
06:20 But you are totally kind of pulling, pushing, pulling, pushing.
06:24 That's how I that's really that's my engagement with Inception.
06:27 I wouldn't say it happens with every film he's done.
06:29 This is my favorite.
06:30 Tenant, I had a bit of a because this was so fantastic on every level for me, I was
06:38 a bit more critical maybe of him.
06:40 But what a fantastic choice.
06:43 Oh, thank you.
06:44 I want to go out on a positive note.
06:46 He's a brilliant director.
06:47 He has a brilliant team.
06:49 And this is well worth watching.
06:50 Fantastic.
06:51 Well, thank you, Jo.
06:51 Well, it's time now to move on to your second chosen film.
06:54 Oh, yeah.
06:55 And you've gone now for well, this is a bit of a change of genre for an American in Paris.
07:01 I just love this film.
07:04 It's so uplifting, but deep.
07:07 And I first watched it probably when I was about six or seven.
07:12 And I just thought, I want to be in that world.
07:14 I want to be in Paris, colorful and I want to be an artist and I want to be a dancer
07:19 and I want to dance with Gene Kelly.
07:22 Oh, it's just absolutely beautiful.
07:26 And as I got older, I understood much more about George Gershwin and actually did a whole
07:33 project as part of my GCSEs time on Gershwin.
07:38 And so that was something I watched a lot.
07:41 And the suite, the 20 minute dance suite within it.
07:45 And I mean, I love dance films anyway.
07:48 I love the choreography.
07:51 I'm a big dance fan and films all about choreography as well.
07:56 The way that works.
07:59 So this is just gorgeous.
08:01 And I just think the way the music leads the emotion, the characterization, the visual
08:09 world that they go into, you know, Gene Kelly's kind of desperately trying to figure out what
08:15 he's going to do with his life.
08:16 It's just so emotionally engaging and beautiful.
08:20 And I'm thinking as well, obviously, this was the same decade as Singing in the Rain,
08:26 which is iconic.
08:27 But there is something here and it's the cross-cultural thing because I have seen this, but Leslie
08:31 Caron, of course, is in this.
08:32 And also there's the Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire from the same era, where you've also
08:38 got that sort of sense of the teacher and the pupil and the pupil who's teaching.
08:44 The mentor.
08:44 Is that something that comes through in this film?
08:47 Oh, yeah, yeah, because, you know, he's been courted by the rich madame.
08:51 I can't remember her name now.
08:52 And, you know, she's in love with him.
08:55 He's in love with somebody else.
08:56 There's this triangle with the two artists, the guys and Leslie Caron.
09:01 And there's this woman who can make all their lives amazing.
09:04 And she wants to make Jerry, Gene Kelly's life amazing.
09:09 But he's in love with somebody else.
09:11 But he wants to be, he needs to get out of the garret and he needs to become the, it's
09:15 quite light, you know, in terms of the plot line, but it's quite deep in terms of lots
09:20 of its kind of illustrations of an artistic life.
09:24 What is it about the musical you think that works?
09:27 You mentioned the choreography.
09:28 Yeah.
09:29 But there's something so sublime, isn't there, about this, like being taken out of the everyday.
09:33 The film has the everyday, but it also has almost like within the film, there's another,
09:39 actually it's not that dissimilar from Christopher Nolan because you've got the different layers.
09:43 Yeah, no.
09:43 They go into song, but it's the way that it's integrated and for a film to really work,
09:48 that we can buy into the bit that's meant to represent our everyday.
09:51 But also, of course, when they go into song, we're also able to buy into that formula as
09:55 well.
09:56 Well, Gershwin is just brilliant and everybody will know Rhapsody in Blue, you know.
10:03 And the sequence in here is very reminiscent of that, you know, the 20 minute sequence.
10:11 And I just think that if somebody, you know, Vincent Minelli directed this and, you know,
10:17 he will have been driven by the music.
10:21 Yes, to work with Gene Kelly and his choreography, but I believe that he, I don't know, I haven't
10:26 read anything to say as such, but from a director's point of view, you could just, the worlds are
10:32 built in your mind through the music as well as the text and the music was there first,
10:37 I believe.
10:38 So it's something that I really think that in terms of sound and vision, you know, I
10:44 say films 50/50.
10:45 And this is a particular example of that inspiration through Gershwin's music, Gene Kelly's
10:53 choreography, the visualizations, I'm sorry, I don't know who the designers were and
10:58 Minelli's kind of building up that world and taking on a very intricate, interesting,
11:06 romantic story, but it's quite dark at times.
11:09 And have you ever had the chance to see this on the big screen?
11:12 I did.
11:13 I have seen it on the big screen and it is absolutely beautiful.
11:16 Yeah, I think all of these films, I believe in seeing film on the big screen.
11:23 But yeah, no, it's beautiful.
11:25 It's stunning.
11:26 Yeah, brilliant.
11:27 Fantastic choice again.
11:28 Well, that's about all the time we have for this first half of the show.
11:31 However, before we go to the break, we have a Kent film trivia question for you at home.
11:37 Although made to allude to a Wiltshire setting, which movie was actually filmed in Tunbridge
11:42 Wells?
11:43 Was it A) A View to a Kill, B) The Draftsman's Contract or C) 1984?
11:50 We'll reveal the answer right after this break.
11:53 Don't go away.
11:54 [MUSIC]
12:06 Hello and welcome back to Kent Film Club.
12:09 Just before the ad break, we asked you at home a Kent film trivia question.
12:12 Although made to allude to a Wiltshire setting, which movie was actually filmed in Tunbridge
12:19 Wells?
12:20 Was it A) A View to a Kill, B) The Draftsman's Contract or C) 1984?
12:26 And now I can reveal to you that the answer was in fact B) The Draftsman's Contract.
12:31 Grimbridge Place in Tunbridge Wells was actually used as the house in the film, and one of
12:36 its formal gardens was actually renamed in commemoration of the filming that took place
12:41 there.
12:42 Did you get the answer right?
12:44 Well, it is time now Jo to move on to your next chosen film, and you've gone for, and
12:51 I do like this film, Hidden Figures.
12:53 I saw this in 2017 and was completely blown away.
12:56 It's a fantastic film for so many, many reasons.
13:00 And it's very difficult to pick films, isn't it?
13:04 But it says it all really, these three women.
13:12 For those of you who don't know, it's about the space race and the mathematicians who
13:18 did the work and got the astronauts there and back, safely usually.
13:25 But were treated totally as not only second, third class, I mean dismissed.
13:30 And it's a very interesting portrayal of the reliance of the white male echelons reliant
13:37 on the servants.
13:39 This is kind of that they break through and finally there's a recognition.
13:44 It's a great moment when, you know, but it is even there's a moment where the astronaut
13:49 says, can you just get the girls on this?
13:51 And then there's a moment where Octavia Spencer actually really saves their lives.
13:57 But it's completely hidden, as is a lot of, you know, the black story in terms of cultural
14:02 filmmaking and divide across all areas.
14:06 So to get a fantastic real, I love real tales, you know, I love real stories and facts.
14:12 And I've got my daughter to watch this recently because she was too young to watch it when
14:18 it first came out and she was gobsmacked.
14:20 And I was like, you shouldn't be gobsmacked.
14:22 It's kind of part of what we've gone through.
14:24 But yeah, I'm glad you're gobsmacked.
14:25 Hopefully things are changing.
14:27 Well, that's right, because at the end of the film, I think I'm right in saying that
14:30 you have the three, you know, the actresses here with the women that they're portraying.
14:34 Yeah. And so, you know, you know, it's a real life story.
14:38 But what really works in that is the sense that, you know, they have the determination
14:41 to succeed because it's a story that we don't know about.
14:44 When I saw it, I saw it at the Gulbenkian Cinema in Canterbury and there was a seminar
14:49 afterwards, a discussion about women in science.
14:52 And it just really felt it was just one of those moments when you're thinking not just
14:55 a great film, but how crazy that it's taken all this time for a film like this really
14:59 to break through.
15:00 And, you know, it takes those pioneers in storytelling and filmmaking, the producers
15:06 and the cast and creatives and finances to allow, you know, they've got to back these
15:12 stories because they've got to believe there's an audience.
15:14 And it's so painful.
15:15 That takes so long for these stories to come out.
15:18 And film's a great way to get the stories out.
15:20 It's such a sort of accessible way for people to understand, you know, the history that
15:24 has been kept down quite a lot of the time.
15:26 And it's so important on so many levels, you know, in terms of the director, in terms of
15:32 the cast, in terms of the story it's telling.
15:35 And I've always been into space.
15:38 And, you know, I watched the space moon and watched the landing when I was like really
15:42 tiny.
15:43 I've always been into it.
15:45 And I didn't even ask the question, where are those women?
15:48 So it pulled me up.
15:50 Because if this film had been made, say, in the 1990s, you know, Kevin Costner would have
15:55 been the lead.
15:56 But it wouldn't have been because it couldn't have been the same film.
15:58 But here he's playing a supporting role.
16:00 And it just feels it shows the evolution, I think, of cinema over the last few decades
16:05 in terms of the sort of stories that Hollywood is able to tell.
16:08 And so when you saw this, was that sort of was at that moment, this was a really sort
16:13 of big budget, very popular film.
16:15 Did it kind of feel as you were watching this that something really different was going
16:20 on?
16:20 Was this the film that you kind of thought there are many other films that are going
16:23 to follow in its footsteps?
16:24 Was Moonlight before or after it?
16:25 I can't remember.
16:26 Well, actually the same year.
16:27 So that was around the same period in 2017.
16:29 Oh my God, because that was a distinct poetic film.
16:34 This is on the balance between the two.
16:37 I have seen films over the years way before this where I thought, oh, this will change
16:43 things.
16:44 But this was the big blockbuster in a way, wasn't it?
16:47 But had been, I mean, I don't remember Jackie Brown.
16:51 Very much so.
16:51 Which I love Jackie Brown.
16:53 I've seen that five times at the cinema.
16:56 But, you know, there are fantastic films.
16:59 But I think this was about the confidence of the women as well as, you know, the black
17:05 story.
17:06 The Hidden Figures title says a lot more than the story is about.
17:12 So it kind of draws you in for all sorts of reasons.
17:15 And it does really make you question the stories that you have to see in fact and fiction.
17:19 And I thought that was Nomadland as well, which won the Best Picture Oscar just a few
17:24 years later.
17:25 Again, a different way in terms of ethnicity, in terms of gender.
17:30 And also just that sort of sense here that the way that some of these stories simply
17:35 need to be reframed and you can tell a story and resonate with an audience and it can deviate
17:40 from the traditional template, but it can still work its magic.
17:43 Is that what you found with Hidden Figures?
17:45 Oh, yeah, no, totally.
17:46 And I think, you know, there are certain iconic moments in it where, you know, kind of the
17:54 going to the loo.
17:55 Why is she always so late?
17:56 What's going on?
17:57 And it just goes on and bash it around.
18:00 Well, that may or may not have happened, but that is a moment that, you know, they have
18:05 to take.
18:06 And, you know, there are moments where messages are being sent loud and clear that people
18:11 are doing the right thing.
18:13 And you just wonder, well, did they do the right thing?
18:15 Because it took so long for this to come out.
18:16 So actually not enough was being done.
18:20 But it is good to see, you know, the smashing up of old, you know, that wrong smashing up.
18:28 History being rewritten for sure.
18:30 Well, it's time now to move on to your final Chosen Film, Jo.
18:34 And you've gone for Fishtank.
18:36 Now, this is Lynne Ramsey, isn't it?
18:38 No, no, Andrea Arnold.
18:39 Andrea Arnold.
18:40 OK, but very much in that kind of vein.
18:41 Yeah.
18:42 So I've known Andrea's work since she was doing shorts.
18:46 And this is a very visceral, hard-hitting, raw film, but at the same time beautifully
18:58 realised, poetic, dealing with really hard subjects and in a difficult scenario of complicated
19:09 relationships and people being pulled down.
19:12 And Andrea Arnold's work is very, for me, is very much about finding the beauty and
19:20 the poetry in the hard side of life.
19:23 And this is just a beautiful example of that.
19:26 And watching this as well, because you've got the young girl who, of course, is, and
19:29 you know, there are all sorts of issues around her mother and a new relationship.
19:32 And you're watching it thinking, I hope it doesn't go down that path.
19:36 And it does go down that path.
19:38 And you can really sort of see that this is a tragedy waiting to happen.
19:41 And you know that her life is not going to be the same again.
19:48 But it's a real slice of life.
19:50 And obviously, Ken Loach makes films very much in this kind of vein as well.
19:54 And it's actually very different from the other choices that you've selected so far.
19:57 But this also has that sort of urgency to it.
20:00 I think it's called Fishtank.
20:01 As I recall, in terms of the framing, it's very much in a four by three ratio.
20:04 Yes, that's right.
20:04 And it made me think as I was watching it, that it's like, this is a microcosm, this
20:07 is a fishtank.
20:08 Which is going round in circles and people are watching her and she's got no control.
20:12 You know, and I don't know if that's why she called it Fishtank.
20:15 But you know, she has to get out.
20:17 And if she doesn't, she will go mad or she will become like her mother and, you know,
20:23 become and go.
20:24 She's a dancer.
20:27 And that's so important because it's just like hip hop, you know, every time anything's
20:32 going wrong, it's like, you know, is she going to start dancing again?
20:35 And the whole, her whole drive is to get a dancing job.
20:39 But it's in a, you know, a pimp, you know, club.
20:43 So she's not going to, she walks away from it, thankfully.
20:47 But she's on this journey where she's fighting against everything.
20:50 She's going to be put into sort of, you know, kind of care, if you like.
20:55 Put into a borsal sort of setup where she's done nothing wrong.
20:59 And so she's been pulled by the social services to do this.
21:03 She's been, she's looking at her mother's attractive, you know, new boyfriend and thinking,
21:09 well, I could screw her up as well as get something out of it.
21:12 You know, full of nastiness.
21:13 But at the same time, she's got this root of wanting something better, wanting something
21:18 beautiful.
21:19 And she has, she really is beautiful, engaging scene with a horse that she meets Billy and
21:24 Billy's got this horse.
21:25 And it's very, you know, it's out in the sort of field.
21:27 It's very natural.
21:28 It's beautiful.
21:29 The relationship with her and Billy, who's more of her age, grows and becomes something
21:34 important.
21:35 You know, he pulls back the boyfriend, the mother's boyfriend from, you know, he has
21:42 one seriously bad transgression, but then pulls back and goes back to his original wife
21:48 and family and all the rest of it.
21:49 And she's on this journey to get revenge, which goes terribly wrong at one point.
21:54 But she again pulls back.
21:55 But interesting, the female agency angle.
21:58 So we've had it with, I think to an extent with American in Paris, certainly with Hidden
22:02 Figures and in Fishtank as well.
22:05 But I saw this a few years after it came out.
22:09 I probably saw it actually around the same time as Hidden Figures in 2017.
22:14 Did you feel when you were watching this that this is the sort of film that is going to
22:16 change anything?
22:17 Because I always feel that with, and you see it with Adria Arnold, you see it with Lynn
22:20 Ramsey, you see it with Ken Loach, Mike Lee, I think as well.
22:24 But is there a sense that this is showing a side of life that you don't normally see
22:29 or want to see in the cinema?
22:31 Does it change anything?
22:32 Does it make us think, you know, this is not OK?
22:35 I think it makes us think this is not OK.
22:37 And also young people who can relate to these films, and I know they do, particularly young
22:43 women, whether they're in that situation or not.
22:45 Andrea's a great director for getting under the skin.
22:48 And I speak to young people who say Fishtank is their favourite film because they know
22:57 that she's understood the girl in the film and she understands the pain that she's going
23:01 through and the decisions, good and bad, that are portrayed help her build a final good
23:07 decision when she's ultimately looking for something beautiful to get out and to do something
23:12 with her life and maybe be a dancer.
23:15 And so there's a kind of underpinning the pain and the brutality and the visceral awfulness
23:21 of it is an underlying belief that life can be beautiful and go find your pathway.
23:30 Yeah, totally.
23:31 Thank you so much, Jo.
23:32 Well, I'm afraid that that's all the time we have for today.
23:35 Many thanks to Jo Nolan for joining us 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 at the same time next week.
23:45 Until then, that's all from us.
23:47 Goodbye.