“Is it still raining? I hadn’t noticed,” asks Andie MacDowell in Four Weddings and a Funeral. It is regarded as one of the worst lines in modern cinema, but perhaps all this time it was an analogous commentary on the human need to see hope in the dark.
In an interview with Krishnan Guru-Murthy for Channel 4, Richard Curtis, the screenwriter behind Four Weddings, as well as other classic romcoms Notting Hill, Love Actually and Bridget Jones’ Diary, has talked about the need for films that reflect the good in the world. He said that he was suspicious of the “romanticisation of bad things” and that he believes that humans’ desire to do good in the world far outweighs the bad.
That the interview is still being picked up a few weeks later suggests that it is striking a chord. No wonder: it’s a message made for 2018 and its seemingly never-ending impending apocalypse. Brexit and its stockpiling of medicines and food. Climate change boiling the earth. A megalomaniac racist in the White House. Nowadays, cinemagoers have no need for fictitious murder and abuse. Reality is terrifying enough.
The triumphant return of The Great British Bake Off this week, mid-Brexit, in which a multicultural cast bond over shared talents and the worst that can happen is a soggy bottom, is testament to Curtis’s point. The show is not merely about escapism but the importance of programme-making that inspires optimism. It is reminiscent of the “look for the helpers” strategy during terrorist attacks. Such horrors can be so overwhelming that they almost drown out anything else. But whether it is everyday life or fiction, we are better off focusing on the largely good side of humanity.
That is not to say there is no role for darkness. There is truth in the idea that optimism and joy is only meaningful because it contrasts with more difficult times (Love Actually would have been a superior film with less sexist humour and more of Laura Linney’s isolation). But I’ll save a couple of hours for some Curtis cliche. Humanity may feel soaking wet right now, but squint a bit and the sun’s shining.
