12 November 2015
London
Watching “London” in the Age of Terror
reviewed by Archie Wilson
In 1994 filmmaker, Patrick Keiller, released the first part of his ‘Robinson’ trilogy, London. Filmed over the course of 1992, the film blurred the definitions of documentary and fiction as the unseen Narrator, voiced by Paul Scofield, and his unseen and unheard companion, Robinson, journeyed across the capital, musing and digressing on what they saw. The pair witness various important events in the capital, from John Major’s election and the Lord Mayor’s parade to bomb attacks and Leicester Square’s electricity substation opening. Now the film has reached maturity it can be seen as an artefact of the final moments of the last century, memorialising a city amidst transition.
Last week the boss of MI5 warned that the terror threat in Britain was the highest it had ever been in his 32-year career. At 21 years old we might expect London to be a nostalgic trip to simpler times. Made in the atmosphere of successive Tory governments, economic disparity and tasteless developments, post-Thatcher, post-modern, the film presents a grim view of the day. But if you watch it in 2015, after the election of another Conservative governmen and amid political instability, food banks, homelessness, and even more ugly buildings, 1992 does not seem so bad. There is however, one feature of the film that stands out as shocking to the contemporary audience: the number of IRA bombs that get in the way of the Narrator and Robinson’s journey across the capital. A bomb is discovered on Whitehall, more in public parks, and on busy junctions.
To Google the terrorist attacks of 1992 in London is to read a long list of discovered and exploded bombs and numerous casualties. Today we are supposed to live in fear, to accept armed police on doorsteps and bugs in our phones. The boss of MI5 tells us that six terror attacks have been foiled this year. Shocking figures. The Islamic State marches through the Middle-East and supposedly is setting its sights on us. But, even with all the oil-money and the politico-religious certainties of Islamic morality, they have had a lot less of an impact on the public than the Irish Republicans of the last century.
Terror has changed. Instead of blatant huge bombs designed to cause economic destruction and distress, terrorism has taken a spectral face today, the soft target and spectacular human civilian casualties the mark of success. We trust our government and security leaders telling us that we are at war, that we should be afraid and that surrendering our rights to privacy is necessary. We wait anxiously for the big statement piece that will shatter lives and lead to more security measures. London’s impact and cultural reverence, I think, is in cataloguing the terror of the age of the IRA. A contemporary view cannot help but compare it to our age of the Islamic Fundamentalist.
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London is available to purchase on CD from Amazon and other retailers, or to download from the British Film Institute website
