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best of british
a question of identity
Directors Paul Morrison and Ric Cantor talk to Quentin Falk
The contemporary story of a domestically stifled young woman and the tale of a cricket-loving boy at the turn of the sixties would seem, at first glance, to have little in common.
Yes, they are smart, funny, romantic, at times shamelessly ‘feelgood’ and both set in the London ‘burbs. But Suzie Gold and Wondrous Oblivion also more significantly have a mutual bond of Jewish autobiography.
Paul Morrison, the director of Wondrous Oblivion, has long been an acclaimed drama-doc- umentary maker with films on art and the nuclear industry as well as a number of productions with a Jewish theme. These include From Bitter Earth, about drawings and paintings created during World War Two in concentration camps and ghettos, and A Sense Of Belonging, a series about the dilemmas of British Jewish identity.
When he eventually made his feature debut in 1998 it was with Oscar-nominated Solomon & Gaenor which elegantly traced the star-crossed romance between a Jewish boy and a Chapel girl in the Welsh Valleys of 1911.
Wondrous Oblivion follows the fortunes of cricket-mad Jewish youngster David (Sam Smith) whose life – not to mention the lives of his family and South London neighbours – is turned upside down when a Jamaican couple and their children move in next door.
Morrison, who also wrote the script, confesses he wasn’t really a cricket fanatic himself but did grow up in the period depicted: “We didn’t have a West Indian family living next door but I cer- tainly remember when the first West Indian family moved next door to my grandmother in Cricklewood and what a shock that was for her.
“The Jews in this story are caught betwixt and between and have eventually to make a choice as to which side they are on. Good stories come out of conflict and the kind of conflicts I’m interested in are around iden- tity, race and religious belief.
“In fact it’s not so much the Jewishness here as the big 21st Century thing of how do we live together on this planet as nations who can respect one another’s differences.
“One of the exciting things about switching from documen- tary to drama,” he noted, “is let- ting your characters grow and create your stories for you. Obviously my passions and con- cerns are going to come into these stories but the idea was to come away from purely issue- based story-telling.”
For director Ric Cantor, 33, the chance to make his first fea- ture, Suzie Gold, about a subject he knew rather well having grown up in the suburbs of Manchester in what he describes as “a middle class
Jewish ghetto” originally came about rather fortuitously.
“I went for this meeting with producer Rebecca Green who wanted to talk to me about a totally different project, in fact so wildly different that I had to say, ‘thanks but no thanks’. It was a period action movie.
“I told her that I didn’t know anything about the period, and that I didn’t want to do an action movie. I simply wasn’t the right man to tell that story.
“So they asked me what I would be interested in. ‘How about a British Jewish come- dy?’, I suggested. And Rebecca said she actually had something a bit like that, and why didn’t I look at it. It was a really great idea but needed a lot of work on the script. I got my partner Carry Franklin involved and we re-worked all the characters, re-jigged the story and spent about six months re-writing it.”
Cantor had learned the nuts and bolts of filmmaking in a five year stretch, from 1997, working for the BBC. “As far as I was concerned it was the best film school you could go to, and much more practical.
He was an award-winning member of its innovative promos department. “It’s pretty much like doing commercials. It’s a short film slot that has to hit 30 seconds in which you have to get the message across to sell the prod- uct – the ‘product’ in this case
being a TV show, a channel or the brand of channel.”
Cantor admits he was tempted to set Suzie Gold which stars British accent-perfect Summer Phoenix, youngest of the American acting clan, in the title role – in “a smaller community like Manchester, Leeds or even Glasgow. That, I suppose would have more reflected my own upbringing.
“Then again we didn’t want to make just another ‘gritty’ British drama. A lot of British films don’t look very good. That’s why peo- ple don’t tend to respond to them too well and that’s proba- bly why they don’t often do well at the box office.”
Incidentally, less-than-eagle- eyed observers of the films – which will be both released in the UK early next year – will notice they are also linked by the presence in each of co-star Stanley Townsend, as a Jewish father. In reality, the splendid Townsend just happens to be a Dublin Protestant.
Says Cantor: “If I had to say in one word what my film’s about, it would be identity. I also believe that the experience of going to the cinema should be an enchant- ing one. It just seemed that having it set in London was absolutely the right thing for Suzie Gold.”
Photo l-r: Director Paul Morrison; Emily Woof and Sam Smith in Wondrous Oblivion; Summer Phoenix in Suzie Gold; Director Ric Cantor behind the camera
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