Ridley Scott, director of Alien, Blade Runner and Gladiator, said in 2018 that aspiring film-makers have “no excuses”, considering the accessibility of technology, for not making their own films. “Go out and make a movie this weekend,” Scott finger-wagged, “or stop moaning.”
For the duration of the coronavirus pandemic, young film-makers have one sizeable excuse: they no longer can “go out”. Coronavirus has clearly taken a huge toll on the film industry, from cinema closures to film festival cancellations. Yet there are some slim rays of light through the storm, one being that many now have plenty of time. Despite the obstacles, early career film-makers are finding ways to create new work without straying outdoors, meanwhile mastering their technique and staving off boredom.
Lots of quarantine film challenges have rocketed into existence while condensed films are also scattered across Twitter. Film-makers are ordering props to be delivered alongside their groceries and crafting stop-motion films. These shorts largely deal with the obligatory themes of dystopia and toilet roll (sometimes an unlikely mix of both); however, as lockdown continues and household tensions climb, film-makers will no doubt refocus their lenses on domestic drama.
There is a precedent, particularly in the UK. From the 1950s to 70s, kitchen sink realism suffused art, theatre and film, contemporaneous with the “angry young men” movement. One of the angriest of young men is Richard Burton’s Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger. The film is adapted from the celebrated play by John Osborne, concerning an anti-hero squeezed into co-habitation with his wife Alison and lodger Cliff in a poky attic flat – a situation that perhaps now feels all too familiar. Jimmy’s fury towards the establishment and class structures manifests in his treatment of those closest to him, leading to the deterioration of his marriage. Partly written from a deckchair on Morecambe pier, Osborne drew on his own separation from Pamela Lane – including Squirrel and Bear, the nicknames they gave each other.
What defines kitchen sink realism is its investigation of social issues: from race and sexual orientation to working conditions and, crucially, housing. As the name of the movement indicates, these films flesh out domestic life and relationships, especially those under strain. Plots are often driven by protagonists attempting to shake off the fetters of their run-of-the-mill lives. Billy Liar is about a young Yorkshire man cooped up with his nagging parents and grandmother, while A Kind of Loving and The Family Way lay bare the repercussions of family interference when young couples cannot afford their own property.
Though there have been many notable films set in cramped quarters – Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, Billy Wilder’s The Apartment, Ben Wheatley’s High Rise, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window spring to mind – few cinematic movements better capture the tensions that brew under one roof as kitchen sink drama. The films deal with topics which remain relatively untouched such as abortion (Karel Reisz’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning) and domestic abuse (Ken Loach’s enthralling debut Poor Cow) – but topics still fiercely relevant today. Kitchen sink drama has even kickstarted social change: two TV films that Loach directed, Up the Junction and Cathy Come Home, influenced the passage of the Abortion Act in 1967 and inspired the founding of homeless charity Crisis.
Only two months ago, Parasite revisited the architecture of class, depicting lower classes forced to live below ground. Forced to film from home, the work that emerges from the pandemic may expose the housing crisis more truthfully than ever before, starting crucial new conversations. As Loach told the Guardian in 2016: “Another world is possible. There is a sense that we really have to change things now.” Kitchen sink realism is a reminder that our experiences of the pandemic will be radically different depending on which roof we are beneath.
