In the Name of the British People: Words and Democracy in Three Post-Brexit Films

Abstract

At a time when the British political scene and media environment have been saturated with references to “the people” and “the people’s voice”, films may seem the ideal means to question what it means to “represent” something or someone, and reveal how the term of “people”, while being overused and misused, offers a floating signifier that conjures up all types of projections. This article focuses on three films whose reception has been skewed by the context of Brexit, and more particularly by the issues related to the referendum and the concomitant political instrumentalisation of the notion of “the people’s voice”. My contention is that the three films interrogate the very notion of representation, namely what representing a nation and its “people” means. Instead of claiming they convey the “true” voice of the people, each film dramatises the staging of a battle of words, which is thus construed as the essence of the democratic debate. Even more specifically, each film offers a reflection on the political power of words through its cinematographic tools. In each case, albeit with obvious stylistic differences, both mise en scène and montage give a proper dialectical dimension to the film discourse insofar as the narratives are built on a series of ruptures or contrasts that are orchestrated into an organic whole.