An Englishman Abroad is a film based on the true story of a chance meeting of an actress, Coral Browne, with Guy Burgess, one of the famous group of Soviet Union whilst with MI6. Filmed in Glasgow in the early 1980's, the setting is the late 1950's in Moscow where Burgess has fled to following MI6 detection of his treason. Burgess meets Browne in a theatre dressing room and charms her. Later on she is invited to his Moscow flat to measure him for some clothes that he would like ordered from his London tailors. The characterisation of Burgess by Alan Bates has been held in high acclaim. This is the story of a very English Englishman trying to ignore his homesickness for the country he has betrayed while also trying to cope with post Stalinist Russian life and convince himself that it was all worthwhile. Coral Browne stars as herself.
An abundance of trees supplied their shade to the pavements, and there were well-known Western-branded shops and much less recognizable signs everywhere.
As expected there were an awful lot of tourists here (it felt strange seeing such a lot of Foreign tourists, as opposed to just Chinese tourists), and an awful lot of people selling souvenirs and food outside the grounds, but the site itself was large, and hence not crowded.
This splash of fading colour hanging over the river to the west was in sharp contrast to the muted grey-brown building blocks of the city across the river to the north, and the striped arable hillsides to the east.
Furthermore, by attempting to justify the war retrospectively, Bush is guilty of an almost Orwellian level of deception: it reminds me of the bit in 1984 when Big Brother retrospectively changes the targets of the 5 year plans to show that they have been met.
To be a successful artist these days all you have to do is throw together something suitably puerile and attention-seeking (plastinated human bodies, unmade beds, pickled farm animals, etc etc), appear on TV in a semi-coherent, vodka-induced stupor, and say something suitably "profound" about the emotional reaction you hope to induce in your viewers.
Self-criticism is an essential part of politics and when people are unwilling to admit to their own failings you´re in trouble.
Feeds |
Contact