GK Chesterton is said to have famously observed that when people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing, they believe in anything. It's often quoted in order to dismiss whatever conspiracy theories happen to be in popular circulation at any given time and, while it is undeniably a good line, it doesn't honour the sense of betrayal or hunger for 'the truth' that often underpins the appeal of such stories. This month's column looks at three recent* films which prompted me to think again about the relationship between private beliefs and public events.
I used to work with a man who sincerely believed that the Moon landings never happened, many years before the idea became a fashionable cultural reference. The historical account was just too perfect, too politically convenient, to be the full story, he used to argue.
I wonder what he would have made of Hidden Figures (dir. Theodore Malfi, 2016), a film about three brilliant female black mathematicians who worked on the NASA space programme in the 1960s. The story highlights the ways in which the difficulties of doing what had never been attempted before were compounded by the cultures' assumptions about what an African-American woman's place in society ought to be.
It's not nearly as hard going as it sounds. While the everyday humiliations of such a life are certainly hinted at, they are told with remarkable good humour and dignity, and the film is much more interested in the story of inspirational achievement against the (personal) odds. The anger and shame of the situation only hit home for me after leaving the cinema, when I realised that it had taken 50 years for these women to be given the credit they deserved.
A parallel but very different reappraisal of history in occurs in Jackie (dir. Pablo Larrain, 2016), a film about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The account of her life with President John F. Kennedy is carefully being teased apart by a reporter who wants to know the truth behind her reclusive facade. What really happened at his assassination and how did she feel about it? Slowly, in a series of flashbacks, layer upon layer of visceral experiences unfold, portrayed with absolutely convincing psychological depth by Natalie Portman.
It's a truly intimate account of grief colliding messily with events on the world stage, which steers deliberately clear of all those grassy knoll 'lone gunmen' theories, in favour of the very simple human truth that unprocessed grief and shock make it very difficult to let go of the past and move on. Honorable mention goes to John Hurt in his final performance as a world weary priest helping Jackie to confront the realities of doubt and faith in the face of such traumatic events.
Journalism and the search for the truth are centre stage again in Spotlight (dir. Tom McCarthy, 2015), a dramatisation of how an investigative news team at the Boston Globe pieced together and broke a story about widespread child sexual abuse by catholic priests in Boston at the beginning of the millenium. Although it's a hugely emotive topic, it's told here as a classic newsroom drama in a way that makes it perfectly accessible for a mixed audience.
The real philosophical punch comes towards the end of the film when the editor, played by Michael Keaton, realises that he had already been presented with the evidence of abuse many years earlier by a campaigner, but he had simply not believed them. It's beautifully understated - he doesn't cry, he doesn't get angry - he just wonders aloud how his own preconceptions could have led him so far from the values that he held as sacred as a journalist... and it's left to the audience to join the dots.
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Together, these three films remind me that the essence of the conspiracy theory is the idea of the unacknowledged truth that's staring everyone in the face, of shadows that have been carefully airbrushed - in or out- to present an official version of a story or give credence to a half truth, and of how the 'crank' with courage and vision to defend the unpopular narrative can sometimes become the whistleblower that takes the establishment head on to expose corruption at its heart.
It's a combination of ideas that would surely have delighted GK Chesterton and my former work colleague alike - although I strongly suspect they may have found little else that they could agree on.
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