Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone<\/a> \u2014 and modern Britain. \u201cThis also feels like a place in the very final days of empire,\u201d the documentarian remarked. \u201cThe same strange nostalgia. The same dark pessimism about democracy. And that feeling the ground is now starting to move quite rapidly under our feet.\u201d<\/p>\nThis, as it turns out, was no passing observation, but an early teaser for his next project. Shifty is an engrossing account of life in Britain at the end of the 20th century. Set during Margaret Thatcher\u2019s premiership, Curtis documents the tensions that emerged between the old establishments and new money, media and technology, misty-eyed imperialist myths and hyper-individualism.<\/p>\n
The five-part series is the filmmaker\u2019s first to centre entirely on domestic matters. Otherwise, it is signature Curtis. The show is crafted from a montage of unseen news reports, political profiles, celebrity interviews, home videos, vox pops, music videos and more. Like TraumaZone, Shifty dispenses with narration in favour of captions that guide us through hours of curated clips. Points about \u201cshadowy\u201d self-serving political systems, the \u201cravenous machine\u201d of finance, and the \u201cshape-shifting fluidity of reality\u201d will seem compelling to his admirers \u2014 and reductive to his critics.<\/p>\n
Key moments, policies and crises are boiled down to cherry-picked extracts or diluted amid a tide of seemingly unrelated tangents. But this is not a history documentary: it is a kaleidoscopic immersion in time and place that captures a turbulent era through epochal turning points and individual perspectives. The end of the 20th century, Curtis observes, was defined by destabilising economic experiments, deindustrialisation, privatisation, mass unemployment and cultural clashes.<\/p>\n
The hypnotising array of scenes and images take us from Downing Street to Sunderland shipyards, the Tate to The Ha\u00e7ienda, tabloid offices to sewers. What\u2019s consistent is the sense of a nation riven by irreconcilable contradictions and differences. The inspired juxtapositions tell a story about Britain: a disco in Belfast cuts to bodies in the street; footage of riots is followed by Thatcher talking about pearls; an aristocratic property owner watches coverage of the miners\u2019 strikes from his country estate.<\/p>\n
Curtis leaves it to us to draw comparisons to the present day. But so much of what we see \u2014 politicians talking tough on migration; water companies failing; protests about policing; concerns over surveillance \u2014 could be in today\u2019s news cycle. <\/p>\n
Shifty is also wickedly funny. Curtis rarely misses a chance to undermine with a deadpan caption or bathetic cut, and he has a great eye for the absurd. An earnest TV interview about a bulldog\u2019s gender identity is one of many delightful clips that balance pessimism about Britain with a genuine fondness for this curious country.<\/p>\n
\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606<\/p>\n
On BBC iPlayer from June 14<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":174924,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[77,3943,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-174923","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114663268346895129","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}