They all featured writers

I was often on my own over the holiday weekend (my brother has gone away) and so I watched three films:

Tigerland (2000) on BBC2.
A military film, set in the 1970s in an American training camp. There were no female characters in this film apart from two whores. Colin Farrell basically plays himself (ie someone who pretends to be defiant and uncaring, but is really sensitive and thoughtful). Matthew Davis plays a soldier in the same platoon, a writer aspiring to follow Hemingway and gain war experiences to provide good material for a book. The mood of the film was claustrophobic. The lighting was muted and dark. The characters shouted at each other. One thought: Here are the modern Spartans.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) on Channel 4.
I’ve seen this film several times before – whenever it is on television I try to see it. It fascinates me because of the way in which colour has been manipulated so that all the backgrounds are in shades of grey, black or white, and only the character of Holly Golightly (played by Audrey Hepburn) is in full colour. George Peppard plays a struggling writer wearing grey twill jackets, black suits, grey silk paisley-pattern pyjamas. 1950s America looks wonderful – elegant, liberal, very clean.

Heat and Dust (1983) on video (an old video we’ve had for ages).
Greta Scacci plays the wife of an administrator in 1920s India who scandalises both the British and Indian communities by having an affair with a decadent Indian prince. Inter-cut with this story are scenes of Julie Christie playing a writer thirty years later, who comes to India to research the scandal. Everyone in this film delivers fine performances, but it is the women characters that come across most strongly – Greta Scacci, Julie Christie, Susan Fleetwood as the “burra memsahib” (on the surface sensible and cheerful, in reality a remorseless bully), Madhur Jaffrey as the Nawab’s mother (casting contemptuous and disapproving looks at the British community, seeing everything through a network of spies and informers). The novel on which the film was based won the Booker Prize. The film is a reminder that however privileged and cosseted our lives are, we are often only one short step away from disaster. It also reminds us that in all ages and all cultures married women are the agents of social control.

Later, when I thought about the three films, I realised that they all featured writers.