- 9 months ago
This week Chris Deacy is joined in the studio by Meghan Shaw to discuss the films; Paddington, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Amelie, and The Hours.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Hello and welcome to Kent Film Club. I'm Chris Deesey and each week I'll be joined by a guest
00:17to dive deep into the impact certain films have had on their life. Each guest will reflect on
00:23the films which have meant the most to them over the years and every week there will be a Kent
00:27Film Trivia where we quiz you at home about a film that has a connection to the county.
00:32And now let me introduce you to my guest for this week. If you haven't been able to hear it in her
00:36previous reports she originally hails from Leeds but has recently joined our news team here in Kent
00:42as an on-screen journalist. She is Megan Shaw. Great to have you on the show Megan. To be here.
00:48Now I don't know your films in advance but oh wow what a great start Paddington. Yeah I definitely
00:53say this is my favourite film. Honestly I'm not the best at films like I don't keep up with them
00:59like I'm not very good at going to the cinema so a lot of my favourite films are ones that I've seen
01:03over and over again especially I suppose this like a film that's marketed for children but I love this
01:09film. I saw it in the cinema when it came out so I must have been about 12 or maybe yeah around 12, 13.
01:14It's probably just over a decade now. Yeah and I didn't really think much of it it I wasn't it was
01:19just another film and then I must have rediscovered it when I was maybe 16, 17 and since then I
01:25obviously love Paddington 2 as well and yeah it's my favourite film. Well because I saw Paddington 2
01:31before Paddington 1 and there was so much in it and I know it's the same for this one for the adults
01:36as it is for the children. Yes. And lots of jokes but also a really good story effectively about
01:43identity and immigration and identity and exile even as well and I thought that it really sort of
01:49covered a lot of themes in a way that was really accessible for children. Absolutely like when
01:54you mentioned kind of identity and immigration I definitely see that so obviously Michael Bond
02:00wrote Paddington about displaced children like obviously the Jewish children that kind of relocated
02:07across Europe and also the British children who were evacuees and were sent all over the country
02:12and at the same time when he was writing that there was also an empire wind rush so you really
02:19do I think you really see this culmination of these themes that do come together and obviously
02:23Paddington himself is a refugee and I think what is so important in in the film is that it's it's a
02:30model story like he's welcomed with open arms into multiple different communities across London and a
02:36song that's played throughout the film is London is the place for me which is what Lord Kitchener
02:42song like after he about his experience in London after getting off Empire Windrush and I think you
02:48mentioned those adult themes but I think that they're portrayed so well through because you see it through
02:52the eyes of a child so Paddington does have this kind of like wonderfully optimistic view and he does
02:57see the best in everything and I think the meshing of those of those two sides of the same coin makes it
03:03like you know as you said kind of brilliant for all audiences and there are so many films where you have
03:08like you know teacher pupil relationships but here the children learn from Paddington you know he's an
03:14outsider but he's adopted into this family and he inspires them but it feels very mutual feels very
03:20two-way it feels like a wonderful lesson in inclusivity absolutely I think everyone that
03:26Paddington comes across seems to learn something from him whether that's I forget the character's names
03:32but obviously the father in the story learns to kind of maybe chill out a little bit and the mom
03:38kind of her and Paddington and they're more creative and obviously the children learn to have a lot of fun
03:44with Paddington and all the people that Paddington encounters throughout the story seem to seem to
03:50admire him and aspire to be him even though like he's he's a child he's a young bear and some of the
03:55characters there are Emily Mortimer one of them have also appeared in the remake of Mary Poppins and I was
04:00thinking of how similar they are in the same way as you have somebody who comes in and effectively
04:04says to a family this is how you can do things differently do things better and he acts in that
04:10sense as a really good almost like saviour figure and effectively as you say tells them to maybe let
04:15their hair down a little bit and have a bit of fun absolutely and I think when he's especially within
04:20these kind of when he's in the family you forget that he's a bear because he's treated just like
04:25another another young person and I think you kind of get that stark contrast when you might go outside
04:31and and suddenly he's he's called the bear or there's a scene it's either the first maybe it's
04:36the second one where um the mom's looking for him and she forgets to mention that oh yeah by the way
04:41like he's a bear and and you that kind of that I suppose that kind of other identity about Paddington
04:47that makes him different it's completely eroded when he's when he's with the Brown family
04:51and have you watched this many many times you mentioned you saw it again when you were 16 but
04:56is it the sort of film that you can return to on a regular basis and you get something different
05:00from it each time perhaps definitely I don't honestly I don't like stressful tv like I'm not
05:06a big fan of thrillers or like horror films I just think life is stressful enough like let's make
05:11television nice or film films relaxing so I do think this and I do watch this one quite a lot so it's
05:17such a nice comfort film it's so easy to just put on at the end of the day or while you're doing
05:21something or you know to show friends I know so many km tv journalists who often go for rom-coms
05:27as exactly that is the nice counterpoint to the day job but um any particular scenes in this film
05:32that or characters that really stand out I love that when he first arrives at the the Brown house and
05:38he's like using the toothbrushes in his ears and he's in the bathtub and it it comes down the stairs
05:44and also I think it's it's it's shot really well as well I think it's a beautiful film well it is time
05:50now to move on to your second chosen film and Megan you've gone for the grand Budapest hotel
05:56great choice why have you chosen this um I love this film um I watched this first when I was probably
06:02maybe 14 or 15 I'd never seen a film that looks like this one obviously this is not like a super
06:10indie film um but when I when I watched it for the first time I'd never seen a film shot like that
06:15the the thing the thing I love about this film and all of Wes Anderson's films in general is that
06:21they feel like films where where most kind of film directors kind of the camera's kind of hidden away
06:27or the actors don't look at the camera or this seems just happens to be happening in real life and the
06:32camera just happens to be there I like how Wes Anderson turns on his head and and and this and the film
06:37feels like a storybook it feels like it feels like it was intentionally done that way and it feels like
06:43it's it's fantasy and it's not real and I really like that kind of escapism from a lot of his films
06:48especially this one because a lot of his films as you say they involve characters who seem to be on
06:53the periphery they're characters who seem in some cases quite eccentric or perhaps brings out the
06:59inner child in them and they're very good films as you say it not necessarily giving us a straightforward
07:05linear start middle end but you see you see characters who seem in some ways difficult to
07:13entirely penetrate but you put that you warm to them very quickly almost in spite of the fact
07:18that you don't really understand what their motivations are absolutely there's such a large
07:24cast in in this in this film there it's obviously quite a famous cast and there's a lot of characters
07:29and it's nice it's quite hard to keep track of them all and they're kind of all fighting for that
07:34dominance of main character obviously there is Gustav and and zero but there are so many and and the
07:40plot I suppose if you were to say it back it's fairly straightforward um obviously Gustav is
07:45wrongly accused of of murder and it's about kind of freeing his name but when you watch the film it
07:51feels way so much more complex and and each character seems to have their own kind of unfolding in a way
07:58and it's one of those sort of films where you feel that there some of them are sort of quite
08:03intransigent characters or you often have in Wes Anderson films characters where like fathers and sons or
08:08daughters don't really relate but somehow there's a transformation arc you kind of feel that you never
08:14quite know it's always unexpected how it will happen but somebody learns something from somebody else
08:19definitely yeah you do get that with obviously Gustav and zero and I love about these characters that
08:26they're not completely real like I don't know anyone in my life who is like any of the characters in this film
08:33and I love that about them. Now you've said something I think really important there because sometimes when you watch a film
08:39you can say oh I can relate to that character I've been in that situation but also sometimes it's nice to watch a film
08:44when you think I have no idea where this is going and sometimes maybe for the first half an hour you're thinking
08:51I don't get this at all it's a very strange very idiosyncratic humour but as it develops you suddenly feel
08:57I signed it with Tim Burton's Big Fish by the end I was I was in floods of tears. Absolutely yeah I love
09:02every even the sets this film the colours everything about it is just so like unrealistic but in the best
09:09way like you you feel like you're watching a film you feel like I'm switching off this is not real
09:13like there's not a clown under my bed I'm gonna relax and the soundtrack as well I love the soundtrack.
09:18Yeah as he brings back lots of like 1970s indie movies. Cat Stevens appears in a lot of his films.
09:24You mentioned earlier that you don't really watch films at the cinema but can you remember the first
09:27time you saw this film? Yes I think I was in my bedroom probably on a laptop on a smaller screen
09:32this probably would have been great in the cinema actually I would have loved to be able to see that
09:35in cinema I probably wasn't old enough when it came out to have been able to yeah and I just loved it
09:42I'd seen the trailer first I really wanted to watch it and I think I bought the DVD after as well.
09:47Yeah and have you watched it many times since is it a film that once seen you kind of park it and just
09:53think gosh this has a really big effect on me or do you want to go back and try to unpick it?
09:58I watch this one fairly often I don't know once a year I always thought it was really normal to
10:04watch films over and over again but a lot of people like to have that film and then go on
10:09to the next one but a lot of the films I love I do watch them over and over again a lot of my
10:13favourite films are films that I feel like are quite easy to watch or re-watch like this one I feel
10:18like there's always something new that I kind of discover in there that I didn't see before
10:22well a good film of course is one it's almost like a dialogue isn't it it's between you and
10:25the person that you know you may not have made the film but at different points in your life
10:29you get different things out of it and the way it carries with you throughout that that journey
10:33absolutely yeah and are there now some very as we said very eccentric characters
10:39but anyone that you particularly find that you resonate with resonate with I don't know if there
10:48is anyone in this film I like resonate with or relate with I love zero I like how he really comes
10:54into himself and he asserts himself by the end and I love the relationship he has with Gustav and
10:59is it the sort of film because I found this with Wes Anderson sometimes I don't always gel with his
11:05films but occasionally there'll be a moment when I think oh that was really tender do you find when
11:08you're watching it sometimes you can think I don't know where this is going and I don't really know
11:11what that character is but I want to learn more about them I want to see where this where this
11:16will end up definitely especially because a lot of his characters are quite strange or very insular
11:21or they're quite introvert and they don't they don't seem to be what what they are inside and and you
11:27you kind of have to sit with them the entire film and and watch them become and often by the end
11:32they're completely different to who they were at the beginning well that's about all the time we have for
11:36this first half of the show however before we go to the break we have a kent film trivia question
11:41for you at home in the film the amateur which kent location was used was it a the chatham dockyard
11:48b home farm or was it c brands hatch we'll reveal the answer right after this break don't go away
11:54hello and welcome back to kent film club just before the ad break we asked you at home a kent
12:10film trivia question in the film the amateur which kent location was used was it the chatham dockyard
12:16home farm or brands hatch now I can reveal to you that the answer was in fact b home farm situated in
12:23swale home farm features in the film as charles and sarah heller's house in virginia usa did you
12:30get the answer right well it is time now megan to move on to your next chosen film oh I saw this when
12:35it came out amelie in 2001 I watched this I didn't watch this one when I when it came out I was born in
12:432001 but I watched it I watched this first when I was about 16 or 17 when I went to college I studied
12:50like French for air level and I went to it was very lucky to go to a college the big library and
12:56they had so many French DVDs and I used to like take one like home every week and this was the first
13:02one that I that I watched when I was in college and I absolutely loved it I thought it was it was
13:07unlike anything I'd seen before yeah because and you can explain to everyone watching what happens but
13:14it's very I remember a whimsical film about somebody who's it was like an innocent gliding her way through
13:19life is that right absolutely yeah like it like the colors the the set the outfits like everything
13:26is so like as you said whimsical it's so it's unrealistic though there are quite a lot of I
13:31think criticisms that then the director kind of erased a lot of maybe like the poverty or the
13:36racism of Paris in in creating this film but it but it achieves like a I don't know you feel like
13:43you're almost in a dream while you're watching it I think that's a good way of putting it because
13:46it's almost as though she's a character who may have had some hard times but she's like working
13:51her way through a city as conceived a bit like Wes Anderson in a way as a movie set and and there's
13:57the magic there but she's this eternal optimist and I think she retains that and again like with the
14:03Wes Anderson film the sort of character who you may not necessarily meet in everyday life but you can
14:09be transformed by her example in the film absolutely as you said that it's almost like
14:15this is her Paris like this is her Montmartre that she sort of envisions or she imagines she's
14:21obviously quite an imaginative creative person and I love the eternal optimism of of kind of small
14:28ways to try and improve people's lives or make a man she doesn't like hurt his life a bit worse
14:34yeah what does she tell us everyone tell us what she does in the film because she offers you know
14:40she effectively offers people the chance to sort of kickstart their lives would that be right
14:46absolutely so so one day in her apartment she comes across sort of like a memento box or like a time
14:52capsule of a really young boy who used to live in her apartment in the 50s and I think it's set in
14:58the 90s when she's an adult and so then she goes on this looking around Paris to reunite this box
15:04with with the the man who's now a man in his 50s maybe and but what I love about most is that she
15:10never she never gives these gifts to their face she she's never part of the scene that she she kind
15:16of bestows this upon them and lets them find it and she's always in the background and then she tells
15:21herself if he you know appreciates this then I'll like dedicate the rest of my life to to kind of these
15:28small moments of happiness and making people's lives better and then she does all sorts of
15:32things like her dad wants to go traveling and his wife passed away a long time ago so she steals his
15:41garden gnome and and gives it to a flight attendant friend and and takes pictures of the gnome in
15:47various different places and sends them as postcards and says to her dad it must be a sign you must you
15:52need to go traveling she plays matchmaker she's all these things sort of behind the scenes to try and
15:58I don't know bestow a bit of perhaps whimsy to other people's lives and it's the sort of thing that we go
16:04to the movies for I remember one of the cinema chains doesn't exist anymore uh in 2001 was saying to
16:08people effectively if you recommend this film to other people feels almost like something out of
16:13the film itself then you know you might get a free ticket yourself or something like that so it was
16:18almost like saying to people you know like almost like a pay it forward sense it because this film
16:22is all about good virtues if you celebrate that and tell other people about this then you'll pass on
16:30the good vibes of the film maybe yeah I do think that there is a a strong like a pervasive optimism
16:38throughout throughout the film and and this kind of self-effacingness of Amelie she doesn't she
16:44doesn't seem to want people to say thank you she doesn't seem to want any any glory in the things
16:49she's done and it's almost as if in in the end she's almost rewarded by she gets her own bit of
16:54happiness where um the man that she kind of fallen in love with and and was skirting around and was
17:00giving hints to to lead him to to her she was they were able to be together in the end yeah and you've
17:07also I think struck at the heart of why we love movies because in a way you're watching her and her
17:14example and you're thinking this isn't there's nobody in my life remotely like her but then you
17:19you realize as I did because I haven't seen this film since that time in 2001 but I realize now 24
17:25years later that there's something very beautiful about the idea of that film which I may not actually
17:31at the time have completely picked up on I remember sort of liking it but not knowing how to process it
17:35but based on the conversation we've just had I can imagine I'd return to it and really love it
17:39definitely I think maybe not necessarily for the Wes Anderson characters but I definitely think we all
17:43might have a little bit of Amelie you know especially because she does seem to see the
17:47world with such a childlike wonder and and a naivety as well well it is time now to move on to your
17:52final chosen film and I saw this in 2003 and adored it it's the first time I think it's come up on
18:00Kent Film Club the hours oh really it's the first time wow um again I didn't see this when it came out
18:06um in 2003 I saw this I was probably about 19 I did my degree in literature so I the thing I love
18:13about this this film is that obviously it's based on the book the hours by Michael Cunningham but that
18:19in itself draws its inspiration from Virginia Woolf Mrs Dalloway it's probably her most famous book but
18:24in itself Mrs Dalloway really is kind of a response to like James Joyce's Ulysses and Ulysses is the Roman
18:31name for like Odysseus so you have this really long kind of chain of inspiration and and a story
18:36becoming something else and obviously all art is comprised of other art that came before it but I
18:42think the hours is such a great representation of I would never be able to look at a class a classic
18:47canonical text and think I know how to make that into three different stories and intertwine them I
18:52think that's such a brilliant idea and it's from the director Stephen Dalloway who made Billy Elliot and
18:56in a way a very different film but but astonishingly good as I recall of the fact that it's set
19:01in different eras is that right there's the Julianne Moore timeline that's set in the 1950s
19:05and there's a modern day one involving Meryl Streep and I think I'm right in saying that
19:09Nicole Kidman plays Virginia Woolf herself and they're all interconnected in their different time
19:15zones yeah it's brilliant so you have you have Virginia Woolf is writing Mrs Dalloway which working
19:21title was The Hours that's where that comes from and then you have Julianne Moore's character in
19:26she's a kind of depressed housewife in the 1950s was very unhappy in her life and is reading Mrs Dalloway
19:32and is kind of inspired by various threads and then you have Clarissa who's played by Meryl Streep and
19:38that's the late 90s or the very early 2000s and she's named after Mrs Dalloway and she's throwing a
19:45party and and it starts with her deciding she wants to buy flowers for the party herself which is the first
19:50line of Mrs Dalloway so it's so clever the way that they all kind of blend into each other the way it's
19:54short like for example like Meryl Streep might shut a door and Julianne Moore will open it
19:59where they they blur into each other I think is brilliant it's one of those sort of like almost
20:03like sliding doors moments but not involving the same character but also showing the way that
20:08there are resonances through time a character in what the 1920s or whatever is writing a story
20:1330 years later someone else is reading it and in a way it speaks to her and her own as you say
20:19quite depressed kind of circumstances and then you have a more up-to-date I know there's an underlying
20:24HIV element as well it kind of feels that it's showing the power of literature but the way in
20:30which through time we don't change all that much it's almost as though we have so much in common
20:36and we all intersect with our own past selves as well as the past selves of fictional characters
20:41a bit like what we were saying about the previous films and they can speak to us almost more powerfully
20:47if not you know as powerfully as the people who are around us. Absolutely I think it's really kind of
20:53you know in the common knowledge that Shakespeare is kind of performed year on year and year and it
20:57still holds relevance but I think it's a bit rarer that you you kind of get these maybe novels like
21:03Virginia Woolf's that that is kind of recreated and brought into the present and shown that it's still
21:08relatable in a way and you get these characters that don't know they're connected really until
21:12perhaps maybe the very end and yet they they feel like they should know each other. And it feels like a puzzle
21:17for us and as I remember because obviously I didn't know you were going to pick this but it may be
21:21Philip Glass but there's the music the score all the way through it and it feels so tense
21:25and you feel and so dramatic and it's da da da da da and you feel the way in which they all do
21:30completely intersect but obviously the door opens in one and closes in another but but you never lose
21:36the thread of of what it's saying. Is it a film that you've gone back to and tried because you've
21:40obviously read the the source material and do you get anything different out of the film or different
21:45readings different viewings? This one's I think a little bit different for me than the other three
21:50like the other three they're definitely ones I could throw on any time of day any time of year
21:55I'd have a great time. Something like this I've seen this one the least I've probably seen this one
22:00maybe two or three times. I would like to re-watch it but I think it'd be less it more maybe of like a
22:06focused watch rather than like oh I'm cooking I'm going to put Paddington on in the background.
22:12Understandably because I watched this as I say beginning of 2003 and it got Oscar nominations etc
22:17and and I think I read both the Michael Cunningham source material and I read the original Virginia
22:24Wolfe story but in your case you may have done that the other way around I'm guessing. Yeah yeah I'd read
22:29Virginia Wolfe was like the reason I wanted to go to university so I when I watched this it again it
22:34kind of felt like you have these you know different versions of what seemed like the same person through
22:39different times and and they kind of I don't know met in the middle. Watching that when I was 19 was kind
22:44of a bit like maybe how I felt when I read the book when I was like 60. And how do you think the
22:49adaptation worked because having read both Virginia Wolfe and also having read the the source The Hours
22:55do you think the film has done a really good job of translating that and perhaps doing something
22:59different with it? Yeah I'd say so but I also think especially with adaptations it's important to let
23:05normally it's the film that comes after the book the film be its own its own separate thing and I think
23:09this in particular works incredibly well on screen maybe even better than the text itself because you
23:15really get that fluidity on screen you get that easy glide between different scenes you get to see
23:21the women share that space on screen in in the way that it's a bit harder in the text I think this is
23:26really well suited for the screen. Well I'm afraid that's all the time we have for today but before
23:31we go if you live in Kent and want the chance to share four films of your choice reach out to us at
23:36KMTV and you might be invited in to be my next guest but for now many thanks to Megan Shaw for
23:41joining us and being such a brilliant guest and many thanks to you all for tuning in until then
23:47that's all from us goodbye