Sedition Against the Sixties
5/5
Spoilers
All genres of movie have their cinematic ups and downs, yet each varies as to how easy it is to find success. Comedies, for instance, are often 'fine'. Most can tick enough boxes to become acceptable or for at least someone to find them amusing. Few are truly bad; fewer still are great. Historical epics usually swing towards a higher level of success, possibly due to the amount of effort needed to pull one off. Horror films, though, are often lazily constructed and most, by merely relying on jump scares, are sub-par.
I would hesitate to suggest that thrillers can fall into that latter category too. Frequently, film makers believe that to make a successful thriller they only need a fairly scary criminal, a lot of tension, and an obvious twist. These sort of films, for the audience, turn into variations on the murder mystery format; instead of trying to work out who killed Rev. Crabbes before Barnaby does, you try to work out what lazy twist the director has written in before they reveal it.
Last Night in Soho is a slightly rarer beast, a thriller which makes you forget the tropes of the genre. Sure, it is tense and the scenario is fairly unsettling, but the story is bewitching, drawing you in the movie. When the twist comes, you have forgotten that there could be a twist. Or, at least, I did. That is the mark of an excellent thriller.
In this piece, Edgar Wright has created a concept that appears on the tin to be a psychological drama. Thomasin McKenzie's Ellie is a country-girl who moves to London to study fashion. She also regularly sees her deceased mother in the mirror. Once in London, that spectre is replaced with night time dreams of a previous tenant in her room, a sixties wannabe-performer played by rapidly rising star Anya Taylor-Joy. As Sandie (Taylor-Joy) is driven into prostitution and seemingly murdered, Ellie begins to see ghosts of Sandie's lover and her murderer everywhere. Is she merely having a breakdown?
The answer is surprisingly 'no' and it becomes rapidly apparent in the final sequence that all was not as it seemed in the past either. The ghosts are just that - ghosts pleading with Ellie for help.
Social commentary runs strongly through the film. Men, leering, letching, abusive men are the real villains of the film. As Ellie arrives in London she faces a scene familiar to many women, a middle-aged cabbie hitting on her as he drops her to her halls of residence. A young man in a pub hits on her and her peers with incredulous crudeness. And an old man, played by Terence Stamp, repeatedly gives her unwanted attention. When she goes into Sandie's story, Sandie herself is accosted by an old pervert in a club and then is seemingly rescued by Matt Smith's Jack. Although, obviously, it is his character that leads her to prostitution and the 'death' of the hopeful young Sandie.
The ghosts of the men paying for sex are faceless grey ghouls. Their groping hands, grabbing for Ellie in present, represent objectification. The metaphor is strong, if not subtle. The true height of this line of questioning comes in the denouement. Sandie isn't dead but is in fact Ellie's elderly landlady, portrayed in a final last hurrah by Diana Rigg. And the murder Ellie saw in her dreams was not Jack killing Sandie, but Sandie killing Jack as he threatened her with a knife. She boasts of stabbing him an hundred times and then explains how all of her subsequent customers ended up dead too, hidden in the floorboards.
Whilst the twist works as an actual surprise (kudos to the trailer team for making the 'Sandie Gets Murdered' aspect the centre of the marketing campaign), and the numerous clues self-kickingly placed front and centre throughout the film (a series of period newspapers with only missing men stories, Rigg's comment on the bad smell in the summer etc...), the important aspect here is how the twist is presented. Ellie understands why Sandie killed all of those men, how she was forced by men into a life she didn't want, how 'Sandie' was murdered and 'Alexandra' (the character's original name) was all that was left. She empathises and understand what happened.
The ghouls, now seen as murder victims, are refused help. Ellie wants to save Sandie, not find rest for the ghosts of her clients. For however the story has unfolded, Wright ensures we understand that they are the perpetrators and Sandie is a victim who 'snapped'. Whilst murder is clearly never the solution, the impact of male power over women is destructive. In a strange way, Rigg's portrayal of the elderly murderer shows a certain amount of empowerment.
There is a second message to this film, equally as important as replying to the 'Me Too' movement. Wright has written a fable based on a girl who is in love with the concept of the Swingin' Sixties and gets a chance to see the truth. Her journeys to the past are full of colour and vibrancy; the opening shot sees her walking down a dark alley into the light to be greeted by a giant Thunderball poster and streams of black cabs. But, as we have discussed, the tale unravels in a Grimm-esque manner as the dark underbelly of this decade is shown. The casting of Rigg, Stamp, Rita Tushingham, and Margaret Nolan, all (to a greater or lesser degree) stars of British 60s Cinema, is clever. The former two present a vivid example of the deceptions of time, with a stark difference between their current selves and their past motivations.
Whilst it would be wrong to categorically say that the sixties were insidious to a person's well-being as much as saying they were a glory era of personal liberties, Wright speaks to a more pertinent point. The glorification of the past is a dangerous road to travel. The rose-tinted glasses of cultural memory can focus on the best of a time, such as the outstanding music of the sixties (as highlighted by the stellar soundtrack) or the exciting fashions. But they will always forgot the seedy underbelly. With the sixties themselves, you can see it through things like the romanticisation of the Kray twins or the Great Train Robbery. Various groups love to indulge in 'Blitz Spirit' rhetoric or even celebrate the British Empire as the pinnacle of our national achievements. As Wright shows, though, such an attitude is problematic. The ghosts of crimes past haunt the streets alongside the glamour of Carnaby Street.
Last Night in Soho, 2021
Director: Edgar Wright
Writer: Edgar Wright & Krysty Wilson-Cairns
Composer: Steven Price
Starring: Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Matt Smith, Michael Ajao, Terence Stamp, Diana Rigg, Rita Tushingham, & Margaret Nolan
Currently showing in major cinemas across the U.K.
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