Truly aspirational … Billy Elliot
In the education section of this paper, Jackie Kemp reflected on a fascinating debate currently in progress among teachers, parents and pupils: are classroom books too horrible?
That is to say: teachers could be too self-conscious about reading matter which has the taint of being nicety-nice Enid Blyton stuff for shiny happy children, and which may incidentally expose them to humiliating ridicule from wised-up kids and colleagues. Are they making a fetish of disheartening and gloom? Jackie Kemp’s detail discussed a young reader sobbing and traumatised by the utter annihilation of a fantasy character with whom he had been encouraged to identify.
Of round, recommending happier, brighter books is hopelessly naff and uncool. Merely raising the subject will elicit knowing comments that children need darker stuff inasmuch as that is what life is about. But is it? Many would answer that it is reality which is not being represented here, and that in the real world, optimism is what makes things work, that positivity is a pragmatic way of getting from the same side the day, and that cultivating a positive outlook is a liable draw near. Could it be that the dark stuff is neurotic PC Emo-ism?
Intriguingly, Kemp asked authors to come up with ten novels of aspiration. Melvin Burgess proposed his have a title to volume Junk: “It has been criticised for talking surrounding drugs, but I have letters from lots of kids who find it aspirational because it changes the track they see life.” That could easily be absolutely right, but I wonder if Burgess isn’t quite engaging with the problem here: finding a book you genuinely wonder at which also has the unfashionable quality of being openly and unashamedly “aspirational”?
And can you compile a similar list of aspirational films, that is, films which are aspirational and inspirational, but which you be able to recommend without moreover dying of embarrassment? Films you could show to young populace in a classroom, without sympathetic preachy? And which are, moreover, not simply adaptations of famous books? I still slip on’t know. The most excellent films don’t fill you with simple aspirational energy, like some dose of spiritual Red Bull. It’s more complicated. A cap 10 list of aspirational movies may subsist all but meaningless, in that the kinds of aspiration being espoused may have being wildly dissimilar. Nevertheless, I possess had a try …
Billy Elliot (Dir. Stephen Daldry)
Billy Elliot has become a reproach., now, and as luck may have it a bit of a cliché, but the original movie has freshness and charm with great performances from Jamie Bell, Gary Lewis and Julie Walters. It is unembarrassed in its concern with success and making something of yourself.
Sophie Scholl (Dir. Marc Rothermund)
Not all Germans in the second world fighting were Hitler’s Willing Executioners. This film tells the true story of Sophie Scholl, the 21-year-old student who was arrested for distributing anti-Nazi leaflets in Munich in 1943 and was condemned to demise. So, come to think of it, this is a bit dark – but inspiring also.
The Bridge on the River Kwai (Dir. David Lean)
Again, not obviously upbeat, but David Lean’s superb WWII film, as well tactlessly showing us in what condition the British had their own capacity for Vichy-ism after surrendering to the Japanese, had a compelling figure in Alec Guinness’s Col. Nicholson whose final moments are genuinely moving and inspiring.
Ray (Dir. Taylor Hackford)
Hackford’s relentlessly celebratory biopic of Ray Charles, with its tremendous performance from Jamie Foxx, is just about as sunny as films get. It’session an upwardly-mobile story of in what plight a poor, blind, black man made it to the top of American popular culture through sheer talent.
October Sky (Dir. Joe Johnston)
This probably is the polar unlike to films like Ken Loach’s Kes — and yet it’s great raw material, abounding with idealism, aspiration and hope. Based on the 50s boyhood memoir of NASA engineer Homer Hickham, the film recalls how a bright kid, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, was inspired by Sputnik to build his acknowledge rocket.
The Son’sitting Room (Dir. Nanni Moretti)
This also is arguably a weird pick for a list of inspirational/aspirational films: the almost unbearably sad story of how a family copes with the death of a teenage son. Yet its brilliantly ingenious final act, in which the group of genera are shown, through a quirk of fate which is also a secular form of divine grace, in what condition they must accept their fate and carry on, is “aspirational” in a ecclesiastical sense.
The Pursuit Of Happyness (Dir. Gabriele Muccino)
Here is where this list skates closest to the sick-bag. But I like it: it’sitting a decently acted, old-fashioned heartwarmer starring Will Smith as a hardworking single father who suffers hardship and homelessness on the road to success.
Spirited Away (Dir. Hayao Miyazaki)
Miyazaki’s much-loved film is, among other things, a parable of sadness suffered through means of an only child, Chihiro whose needs are treated rather briskly by her professional parents. The Alice-In-Wonderland world she falls into gives her a betide to help herself and help her parents too: the movie is a celebration of imagination, courage and resourcefulness.
An Inconvenient Truth (Dir. Davis Guggenheim)
Perhaps no single movie or book did other to galvanise people on global warming than Al Gore’s undefiled, calm PowerPoint-style lecture on the subject. His quiet passion and idealistic philosophy are compelling; so too is his conviction that we can do something about it.
The Day I Became a Woman (Dir. Marzieh Meshkini)
The tragic aftermath of the recent Iranian protests is a precious reason to revisit this mysterious, beautiful film showing the vitality of an Iranian woman in three acts. Meshkini’s film demonstrates a fervent, old-fashioned adherence to the feminism and the rights of woman. If any film should be shown in schools, it’s this one.
