List 5 Quintessential Movies Which Define the Spirit of Your Country

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798686

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Who spent the vast majority of his adult life in the UK....

I considered 2001 and Clockwork Orange for the UK :tongue:
I wanted The English Patient as a UK film - due to the director, etc, but - guess it was backed by an American studio and filmed elsewhere?

Does Harry Potter count as definitive of Englishness, lol?

Billy Elliot, too - forgot that one.
 

earllogjam

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Who spent the vast majority of his adult life in the UK....

I considered 2001 and Clockwork Orange for the UK :tongue:

OK, but HAL was American, born in Illinois- Champaign Urbana.

HAL: I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a... fraid. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the H.A.L. plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January 1992. My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you'd like to hear it I can sing it for you.

I thought Clockwork Orange a bit dark a description for present day mainstream America, though I can see the reality of it just around the corner. The seeds have been definitely planted.

Why are there so many Brits on this thread!
 
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798686

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Chariots of Fire

IMO this is the one film that best defines the spirit of the British Isles.

The Italian Job
Zulu
Dambusters
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Forgot Zulu. :redface:
I'd go for Chariots of Fire and Dambusters too - very British. :)

Oddly, we had school sports days at the track where Chariots was filmed, lol.
 

LaFemme

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Tough one....but this might represent my Canada:

Loyalties
Bye Bye Blues
Joshua, Then and Now
Smoke Signals
My American Cousin
 

MickeyLee

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O Brother Where Art Thou
The Song Catcher
Go Fish
Dazed and Confused
My First Mister

is totally based on my own perception of america
 

earllogjam

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You have too many to choose from.

If I was a doodle dandy, I would have for sure a Leslie Nielsen in there.

Having said that, I didn't include Peter Sellers........

OK, I knew my list would be wrong.

Leslie Nielsen as in Airplane? That's like saying Benny Hill is quintessentially British.

Pink Panther's French, no?
 

D_Tim McGnaw

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urgh, every movie ever made about Ireland sucks ass. They're either beedahokey shite with leprechauns and a thatched cottages and Maureen O'Hara in them or they're misery-porn or they're excessively cutsey bullshit which makes everyone here look like a mindless cunt.

Damn you all for having decent films made about your countries! :(
 

nudeyorker

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urgh, every movie ever made about Ireland sucks ass. They're either beedahokey shite with leprechauns and a thatched cottages and Maureen O'Hara in them or they're misery-porn or they're excessively cutsey bullshit which makes everyone here look like a mindless cunt.

Ummmm I happen to be a great admirer of Miss O'Hara but I digress... Have you seen...
The Celts
Walking Ned Devine
The Quiet Man
Angela's Ashes
My Left Foot
 

D_Tim McGnaw

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The Magdalene Sisters?

Ummmm I happen to be a great admirer of Miss O'Hara but I digress... Have you seen...
The Celts
Walking Ned Devine
The Quiet Man
Angela's Ashes
My Left Foot


I love Maureen O'Hara too, but the movies she starred in about Ireland weren't really all that definative of anything except the universally accepted myths about Ireland.

Angela's Ashes, My Left Foot, and the Magdalene Sister's are all part of that Misery-Porn genre in it's Irish form. While they do tell interesting stories none of them could be said to be quintissentially definative of Ireland, and in my view they've contributed to a lot of misunderstandings about this country around the world. There's no doubt those movies needed to be made, but in the absence of anything to counterbalance them and fill out the picture of Ireland I feel like they distort somewhat.

The Celts I admit to being unfamiliar with...

Waking Ned Devine doesn't cut it IMO, it's just so "Oirish" and cutsey, and it really would have people believe we're all a bunch of bog-trotting eejits.


The Quiet Man is in most respects a great movie, and it's unusual in that it bucks a lot of the clichés, but if I'm honest whenever I watch it I can't help feeling that it could have been set anywhere in Europe that happened to be remote, sparsely populated and culturally traditional. I also feel like it's about how incredible the performances in it are, rather than saying much about Ireland.


The only decent movie I've seen about Ireland that I had few reservations about was The Wind that Shakes the Barley. Again though that's mining a cultural and historic seam which is important and needs to be explored but which I feel has been explored lots already where a vast field of other stories about Ireland remain untold and unexplored to the detriment of people's understanding of what this country is actually like. I used to live in the part of the country The Wind that Shakes the Barley is set in so I can vouch for much of its veracity too.



Perhaps I was exaggerating when I said every movie made about this country sucks ass, but it's not far off true nonetheless. :p
 
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vince

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