52 Films Directed By Women Vol 1: 15. THE HOST (Director: Miranda Pennell)
The film has two qualities that bring into question whether
it can be called a film at all. It is only sixty minutes in length and does not
have a single moving image in it. The defined duration of a feature film is, I
dimly recall, around 74 minutes but The
Host is unquestionably not a short. At most, you might uncharitably
describe as an hour-long TV documentary, except that it is a personal testimony
– you can’t just dip into it to get a sense of what happened before. It is not
an art exhibit either – it asks to be seen in its entirety for its nuances to
be properly understood. As for the absence of moving images, films as the
reader will know are projected – in the pre-video style – at 24 frames per
second. They are a collection of still images given the appearance of movement
by the human brain. So Pennell cuts down the waste of the images that make up a
moving whole. Her film is precise, sometimes comically so. It also boasts a
soundtrack that gives us a clear signifier of location – the rattling of teaspoon
and cup to remind us that our narrator is in Saffron Walden which, for my
overseas readers, is a cosy English village and not a catwalk model born to
hippy parents.
The Host begins
with a series of captions: things that the author knows about the Anglo-Iranian
Oil Company. It was founded in 1908. No Iranian was allowed to sit on the
Board. Its activities were kept secret. It was a private company. It changed
its name to British Petroleum in 1953. It was also immensely profitable. Its
existence was threatened by newly elected Iranian Prime Minister Mossadeq who
in 1951 vowed to nationalist it. Mossadeq was subsequently removed by a coup in
1953.
To get a visual sense of the film, imagine a series of aerial black and white photographs of mountain terrain, intercut with a series of markings on a map. We hear the sound of slides passing through a projector. At some points, this is replaced by the whirring of a photocopier. Pennell’s is the only voice that speaks to us – there is occasional ambient street chatter from recordings of a marketplace. Pennell doesn’t do vocal impressions. Her intonation is level, factual and intentionally distanced. She describes how in 2006, both her parents were diagnosed with the same sort of rare leukaemia in 2006, suggesting that they were exposed to the same damaging element that got under their skin and finally erupted. Pennell was drawn into learning more about her parents’ life in Iran. She visits the British Library and is drawn to the book ‘Eastern Odyssey’ (by Christian O'Brien, 9 January 1914 – 17 February 2001). She meets with the widow of its author, who as in turned out, lived in the house where Pennell was born. Her bedroom was described to the new occupants as ‘Miranda’s Room’. The name charmingly stuck.
Pennell’s investigation focuses on the author of ‘Eastern
Odyssey’, who subsequently wrote a book called ‘The Shining Ones’. He imagines
modern humankind was created by the inter-breeding of an alien species – the
Shining Ones of the title – and Cro-Magnon man creating the enlightened species
that exists today. Pennell makes explicit the connection between the Shining
Ones and the British, the intelligent evolved species (not always true in my
experience) who colonised less industrialised countries. The adjective
‘shining’ representing a beacon of hope, something we are drawn towards,
glamorous – a condition we aspire to.
This parallel sums up Pennell’s condemnation of the white
men of the Board – and there is a telling dissolve from a black and white
Anglo-Iranian company Board to a colour photograph decades later. The two are
almost identical - and that includes the body shape of the Board members and
the proportion of those wearing glasses and those without. I should empathise
that Pennell lets the pictures do the talking; she doesn’t use voiceover to
underline the point. That makes her a filmmaker in my book.
Pennell is not without visual wit. I liked shot of a paper
plate and plastic photographed on a photocopier representing modern
civilisation in contrast to the elaborate sculptures of Persian religion;
through montage Pennell replaces the plate with the sculpture. We hear a song
to illustrate street life then rendered through earphones that we see on
display, the curves of earphone wire contrasted with the curves on diagrams
illustrating geological features – landscapes and civilisations reduced to
markings. (Imagine if western civilisation were reduced to the personal
stereo.) Pennell’s images are dense with meaning. Her audio extracts are pretty
explicit. At one point, she reads from a 1953 United Kingdom Foreign Office
file descriptions of Iranians as lazy, emotional, concerned with their
immediate well-being and not the future, indolent. In short, the racist clap
trap used to justify assumed white western superiority. This description also
resonated: it is also the language used to describe women to justify why they
can’t rise to positions of power – why they can’t join the Board.
The Host is a film
that bites, notably in the final image where the (racist) photographer shifts
their gaze from the Middle East to Africa. Tonally, it is soporific. It
resembles an illustrated lecture, one where you can’t raise your hand to ask a
question. It is however everything you would want of a film: passionate,
compelling, deeply felt and serious. We don’t find out how Pennell’s mother and
father are faring with their illness. They are, if you like, the MacGuffin, the
point of departure. The Host is a
film about the abuse of hospitality but in the Buñuelian tradition does not
suggest an answer, only conveys the problem.
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