Brits in Hollywood

They may be American films, but British directors in Hollywood barely make any missteps. This is just a spur-of-the-moment post so I've not done any research, but the three that spring to mind - Danny Boyle, Christopher Nolan and Matthew Vaughn - have made a sequence of fantastic films. Interestingly, each director's oeuvre changes drastically from offering to offering.

Danny Boyle is famously diverse, with credits including grimy British dramas like Shallow Grave and Trainspotting, a reinvention of the zombie in 28 Days Later, a taught sci-fi thriller in Sunshine, Bollywood aping melodrama Slumdog Millionaire, and others. It should be noted that his early films are actually British-funded,

Then we have Christopher Nolan, most famous for his two excellent Batman films, but also notable are last year's spectacular and deceptively un-intelligent Inception, The Prestige, Insomnia, and best of all, Memento. Memento is simply one of the best films released in recent years. Again, all these films are very good, and very diverse, and American backed.

Finally we come to Matthew Vaughn, by far the least known of the three. He's only made four films, but as with the other two, they are all great. Gangster film Layer Cake is his first, and probably worst, film, which was followed by the it-might-be-a-bit-wussy-but-it's-so-great-I-don't-even-care Stardust, then back to the violence with Kick-Ass, before we come to X-Men: First Class, just released, but is by all accounts brilliant. For what it's worth (nothing) this guy is probably my favourite. I haven't actually seen Layer Cake or X-Men yet, but Stardust and Kick-Ass are just so much fun. Pure, unapologetic escapism.

So there it is: our boys head a good chunk of the best American films of the past decade. What does this mean? Can we celebrate these films as if they had been made in Britain? I don't really want to crack open the auteur theory debate - basically I don't know enough about it - but how I see it is this: Nolan and Vaughn wrote and directed - and in Nolan's case, he even produced his most recent three films - all their films. The screen-play and the direction are the two most important creative forces behind films, so while other people undeniably contribute to the picture, it seems to me that these two should indeed be able to take credit for their quality. It is not simply a case of getting a great script and turning it into a film; the entire process was under creative control of Nolan and Vaughn. Indeed, Nolan's worst film, Insomnia, is the only one he didn't write. The case is less clear for Danny Boyle. He is a director, turning scripts into (excellent) films, but doesn't write them. Are Danny Boyle's films really Danny Boyle's films, or is he just one part of the production? Don't look at me for answers.

I would like to propose an idea. We don't really have much of a film industry in this country; maybe a couple of decent fully-British film each year. But maybe, our film industry has secretly moved to America, like some sort of leech. We use their money and their technicians to finance our boys' and girls' ideas. The money may all go to American studios, but it is the creatives' film. This is different to being assimilated into the American system. If the leech was somehow beneficial to the person it would be a great analogy. It is entirely dependent on the host, but still a separate entity.