Okay. I was watching the 2010 film ‘Submarine’, and I was trying
to work out when it was supposed to be set. Which I've noticed has become increasingly difficult to do nowadays. I can’t remember the last time there was a new fashion trend
that wasn’t a revival of something else, and it’s more and more common for
people’s interiors to be deliberately kitsch and oldy-worldy.
At first you only see them in a school~ and school doesn’t
change much so I was still pretty clueless. They’re wearing duffel coats though
so I’m either thinking it’s modern and a bit hipster or maybe the 50s. Anyway.
I see them walk past a P reg car- so AHA it must be modern.
I Wikipedia it anyway. So it’s set in 1986 then?
Why put a P reg car in plain view, I don’t even drive and I
know that’s a late 90s registration.
They make so much effort to tint the picture a little sepia
and show the main character using a typewriter and Polaroid camera. Then they
just go and put something on screen that just SCREAMS nineties and it totally
ruins my suspended disbelief.
[P.S I watched ‘One Day’ last month and Sturgess in ‘1997’
drinks out of an Ikea mug I bought LAST YEAR- but to complain about that would
just be pedantic.. right?]
Sometimes I wonder why filmmakers bother to set films which
you wouldn’t class as a period drama in the past… it always seems so much
effort to make them convincing, and often a narrative will work just as well
set in 2011 as if it was set in 1986.
There’s a post on UltraCulture (good blog btw) vis a vis
this attitude in Spielberg’s Super 8.
Are the noughties (we’re not in the noughties any more are
we.. we’re in the teens? Or something… who knows) really that unattractive for
us? People are forever extolling the virtues of the past, whether it be the
60s, 70s, 80s or even the 90s- all are seen as idyllic. My mother told me the
other day that if she had a small child nowadays she would not feel as safe
letting them out as she did with me and my younger siblings from 1992 onwards.
I don’t think it really is more dangerous today. We just
hear about it more.
I don’t want to think that one day I’ll feel almost ashamed
of growing up in the 90s/early 00s. How will I show my future children (lol)
what life is like now when all the photos we take are put through ridiculous
hipstamatic/instagram filters, and all the films I’ve seen recently that aren’t
the most vapid of romantic comedies are set in the past, or even worse.. are
just remakes of pre-existing films; and music is just samples and covers and
rip-offs.
NOTHING IS ORIGINAL ANYMORE
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