Something like this happens in research: not just the simple pleasure of finding things out, but the pleasure of finding them unexpectedly. For example, I'd seen the thumbnail for Michael Pearce's 2017 film Beast loads of times while scrolling through Prime looking for something to watch. But it was only through doing research for the last entry that I discovered said film is based loosely on the 'Beast of Jersey' attacks, which are alluded to a couple of times in Secrecy's Jurisdiction. So I watched it.
The first thing to say is that this is no more the 'real story' behind the attacks for which Edward Paisnel was convicted than the hints in my own work. Pearce came to the story more honestly, in a way, than I: he grew up in Jersey and was fascinated by tales of the attacks, while I learned about the case from the bizarre theory the angler and Fortean Ted Holiday puts forth in his book The Goblin Universe: that Paisnel was the reincarnation of Gilles de Rais (!) . Being a local, Pearce understands the insularity of the island's culture, and the class divisions which are even starker and more insidious than on the mainland - one of the beefs the film's Paisnel-analogue, Pascal Renouf (Johnny Flynn), has with the more affluent end of island society is that, as his name suggests, he comes from old-time French stock: 'my ancestors probably owned your land' he jokes to the protagonist, Moll, (Jessie Buckley) and her family.
It also means Pearce knows how to use the landscape to hint at some of the deeper darknesses of Jersey's past. In researching this article I read a lot of reviews of Beast: where these do mention the setting it's usually to praise cinematographer Benjamin Kracun's dreamlike filming of the island's natural landscape. But there are darker things on which Kracun trains his camera, though to pick them up, you have to literally look closer. Such as, for example, the scene where Pascal and Moll meet, after he saves her from being sexually assaulted by a club date who won't take no for an answer. This takes place against the background of a concrete structure, a World War 2 bunker, not that dissimilar from the kind of pillbox forts or defensive emplacements you might find on the mainland...
...except of course that this is Jersey, which was occupied by Germany during the Second World War. The bunker where Moll meets her saviour (who is, now I think about it, blonde, blue-eyed and impeccably connected to his native soil) is a fortification of the Nazi Atlantic Wall, designed and constructed by the Organisation Todt, and built with slave labour.
And here, it's just part of the landscape. Our attention is deliberately undrawn to it - Krancun resists the temptation to pan out and show us an exciting cliffscape complete with observation tower. Nazi fortifications are just a fact of life - like handsy boys or country club dress codes or locals blaming the killing on Portuguese ('Porko') immigrants. But once you know that hidden past, it changes your perspective. This isn't a rural idyll being shattered by outside malevolence. The ugly spirit was already here, twisting the narrative into this shape before its protagonists were even born.
Hidden pasts are a bit of a theme in Beast. Moll is not entirely truthful about a time she assaulted another girl back in school; Pascale turns out to be keeping secrets of his own about a similar youthful crime. Moll's father, who she's tasked with looking after, has dementia. Perhaps this is a nod to the historical amnesia which allows the people of Jersey to go about their everyday lives without being paralysed by moral doubt about whether their ancestors co-operated a little too willingly with the Nazis, or didn't do enough to help the resistance. Or about the tax haven chicanery which makes their island so prosperous today. Or the child abuse scandals.
Oh, did I not mention those?
Yes, just like mainland Britain, Jersey had its own historic child abuse scandal, centring largely on the Haut de la Garenne children's home, where authorities instituted a 'Dickensian' regime to control the children in their charge. It's not hard to find an echo of this in Geraldine James' chilling performance as Moll's mother, a terrifying disciplinarian determined to prevent her daughter returning to her stab-happy ways. But there is a stronger connection than that between the children's homes of Jersey and the 'Beast' attacks: Edward Paisnel's wife, Joan, ran a foster home, La Preference, where on at least one occasion Paisnel - 'Uncle Ted' to the kids - played Santa Claus at Christmas. A less heartwarming story from the time has Paisnel wandering the corridors in the mask he wore to carry out his attacks. Of course the kids who saw him weren't believed when they said what they'd seen.
It's worth pointing out that there is nothing uniquely evil about Jersey - or Sark, where the Barclay Brothers hold sway, or Guernsey, where Prince Andrew prefers to stay at Havilland Hall, the home of his banking chum David Rowland, when on official business. The Channel Islands exist for the benefit of the British establishment: their sketchy legal status makes them a valued node in the web of financial secrecy spun by the City of London; their physical remoteness makes them ideal locations for the elite to enjoy themselves in the way to which they've grown accustomed. On an island, there is nowhere you can really run, and very few places to hide. Unless, of course, you have the power to will the ignorance of others, in which case you can hide in plain sight, or find some guy to take the fall.
Pretty much all of which could also be applied to mainland Britain: it's just that we're a bigger island. We have our own dark pasts, our own historical attacks ceaselessly pored-over for clues by 'enthusiasts', our own complicity with genocide, our own historic child abuse scandals - in the case of the last of these things, the figure who links the mainland and the islands is exactly who you'd think. Their evils are our own, in microcosm.
Their beasts are of our stock.
No comments:
Post a Comment