The world of the ‘rock movie’ is a nebulous, uncertain
terrain with few ground rules and even fewer conventions. By the very
nature of its existence, it embraces a culture that thrives on hedonism,
breaking of taboos and (to a certain extent) rebellion (not necessarily
of the teenage kind, one must stress, but at least as an underlying
thematic abstract). Therefore it should come as no surprise to find
lurking under the genre’s umbrella a disparate plethora of films,
which bear little in relation to each other aesthetically or thematically,
and in which pretty much anything goes. Fantasy is never out of the
question: narrative is often told via lyrics and music rather than
dialogue, and, depending on who your target audience is, the plot
doesn’t have to be linear either. That’s not to say that
the makers of such teen epics as Three For All or Side By Side (both
1975) would have queered their pitch by bringing in Bergmanesque character
swooping or sudden jump cuts, thus alienating the platform-soled boppers
who they hoped would queue in droves outside every picture palace
from Arundel to Auchtermuchty, but even in something as blatantly
populist as Ringo Starr’s Born To Boogie (1972) there is a sense
of controlled chaos, dormant insanity and playful anarchy looming
behind the viewfinder from the very first reel.
Not that this was necessarily the case with every film: Richard Loncraine’s
Slade In Flame (1975) aka simply Flame, pursues a deeply British,
downbeat kitchen-sink feel in which everything that can go wrong does,
even if you’re the biggest band in the country, which acts as
the total anathema and antithesis to the schlock superhero glitz of
its US equivalent Kiss Meets The Phantom Of The Park. As the decade
wore on (and the British film industry slowly wound down like an aged
grandfather clock in the face of high taxation laws and American omnipotence)
movies took the ‘harsh reality’ path with increasing frequency:
the advent of ‘punk rock’ in 1976 didn’t just influence
the outlook of music but of ALL media, and the disaster of the first
few years of Thatcherism in the 80s was not lost on anyone in the
UK with an impulse to create, from sitcom writers to arthouse minimalists.
Therefore, it makes sense that the subject of this article, Return
To Waterloo (1985) written, directed by and featuring the music of
the Kinks’ poet supreme Ray Davies (and thus the music of the
actual Kinks themselves) is about as grim, grey, rainy and inherently
English as any rock-based film could possibly be.
Funded partially by Davies himself and partially by the then-still-comparatively
nascent Channel Four, but somehow leaking out of its television schedules
into various sporadic theatrical support slots to American and Italian
horror releases of the mid-80s, the movie occupies (once again) that
strange netherworld betwixt genres which I find so fascinating both
as a fan and a writer, in this case hovering between horror, suspense,
drama and a musical without ever fully committing itself to any one
of them. In that context, it could be seen as (and has been referred
to as) a poor copy of Alan Parker’s The Wall (1982): there are
indeed thematic and constructional similarities between the two, and
on a personal note I find the Floyd film more of a rewarding cinematic
experience (something which may have more than a little to do with
Waterloo’s semi-televisual origins) but conversely I find Davies’
humanity and humility much more engaging than Roger Waters’
oft-lamented descents into narcissism, self-aggrandisement, self-pity
and downright ego-wank, which of course, filtered through the heavy
handed direction of the unsubtle Alan Parker, is ego-wank on the most
bloated, grandiose scale.
Return To Waterloo is, by comparison, low-key and somewhat refreshing,
not least of all because it chooses an actor of some considerable
skill and repertoire (Ken Colley) in its principal role (as opposed
to The Wall’s Bob Geldof, a fine musician and humanitarian activist
but, let’s be honest here, an actor of scant talent) and also
because of its much shorter running time: it lasts almost exactly
60 minutes, the length of a commuter’s journey between the sleepy
dormitory towns of North Surrey and, not surprisingly, London Waterloo
Station. During this time, our attention focuses on the aforementioned
Colley in the role of ‘The Traveller’, one of the many
who do just that twice every day in and out of the metropolis to work.
Of course, this is a Ray Davies storyline we’re talking about
here, so the Londoncentric southernisms of the whole affair is worn
on the film’s sleeve from start to finish, but substitute any
city and its surrounding suburbs and the point is pretty much the
same: anyone who’s ever done a dull yet financially rewarding
job can appreciate the tedium of the daily commute. Only in this case
our commuter is slightly different (or is he? I wonder……)
because he just might possibly be the ‘Surrey Rapist’,
a smartly dressed middle-aged man wanted for a series of violent sex
crimes in the area.
This we glean from half-heard snatches of radio and television dialogue,
sometimes displayed in flashbacks, sometimes heard as station announcements,
and also in conversation between his fellow passengers, including
such familiar faces as Gretchen Franklin (shortly to find her niche
as Ethel Skinner in Eastenders) , but mainly because the photofit
displayed on the newspaper everyone on the train seems to be reading
is quite clearly of Colley’s face. As the story unfolds (with
minimal dialogue and told mainly between visuals and Davies’
eloquent lyrics) we discover that he’s married, went to a decent
school, and like the rows of dancing, pirouetting, besuited businessmen
that surround him daily, climbed, as the song puts it, the ladder
to the ‘pinnacle of success’: Thatcher’s monetarist,
capitalist ethos in excelsis deo. However, all may not be as rosy
as it seems: apart from the small fact that he just might be a vicious
sex criminal, there are also hints that he has at some point molested
his teenage daughter (again, flashbacks of opening doors, naked backs,
turning heads and rather uneasy family photograph sessions tell us
this) prompting her to bugger off to God alone knows where to the
strains of the song ‘Solo’, that his marriage has long
since broken down or at least ceased to be a sexual one and that his
wife, reduced to writing to Claire Rayner (who cameos in the movie
during the song ‘Dear Lonely Hearts’) suspects him, if
not of paedophilia, of at least having an affair. There’s also
an even more bizarre subtext, as discussed between Franklin and her
companion (Betty Romaine, a popular ‘old lady’ face on
British television screens of the 60s, 70s and 80s) in which we surmise
that maybe, like many people faced with the grim economic realities
of the decade, he no longer has a job at all, but still travels to
work every day in his suit and spends the day feeding ducks in the
park and thinking dark thoughts to himself, either out of sheer pride
or a denial-rooted breakdown of reality. This plotline, of course,
was used to great effect by Tom Wilkinson's character Gerald in The
Full Monty (1997): somehow, in the context employed by Davies, it
takes on an altogether more sinister import.
