Abstract: Many movies from 1979 and 1996 convey the same
                 messages. Examples are Kramer v Kramer compared to Mr.
                 Holland's Opus and Alien compared to Independence day.
                 However, their attitudes are contrasting.

                 Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1996 Statesman and Nation Publishing
                 Company Ltd. (UK)

                 There is a strange circularity to mainstream movies: are
                 two decades of cinema-goers watching the same film on
                 continuous loop?

                 There is a current Radio 4 series called Random Edition,
                 in which a computer jostles all the days of the century
                 like lottery balls, before throwing one of them out.
                 Peter Snow then collects a newspaper from that day and
                 discusses it with pundits to offer a historical snapshot.

                 This review exercise is a kind of Non-Random Edition, in
                 which two pre-programmed dates are compared in the hope
                 of establishing historical shift. It can be objected that
                 film release dates are accidents of the artist's
                 birth-date and inspiration process, but if the study of
                 popular culture is to have any point, then the
                 entertainment of a single year ought to reveal cultural
                 currents.

                 Let's begin with what British moviegoers might have
                 watched in 1979 - the year when minority Labour
                 government gave way to a watershed Tory administration -
                 as they sat in their one-screen local Odeon.

                 There was Robert Benton's Kramer v Kramer, with Dustin
                 Hoffman and Meryl Streep fighting for custody of little
                 Justin Henry, although, even more today than then, it
                 seems improbable that either of them would have wanted
                 the revolting little moppet. The piece is infamous for
                 the "French toast scene" in which the dad fixes the kid's
                 breakfast, Hoffman's notorious perfectionism in rehearsal
                 having reportedly led to a bread, egg and milk shortage
                 in New York.

                 But, after that, the mocking stops. The fleapits offered
                 Ridley Scott's Alien; George Miller's Mad Max; Woody
                 Allen's Manhattan; Coppola's Apocalypse Now; Monty
                 Python's Life of Brian; Werner Herzog's Nosferatu. It
                 reads like a vintage selection, but that may be to fall
                 for the Darwinist school of cultural criticism, in which
                 past art always seems superior because only the strongest
                 survives. So let's recall some of the less-applauded or
                 smaller works of the year. There was Polanski's Tess;
                 Altman's Quintet; Chris Petit's Radio On.

                 If categories were assigned to the ten 1979 films listed
                 above - from Kramer v Kramer to Radio On - the genres
                 represented would be: manipulative Hollywood weepie,
                 extraterrestrial fantasy, stylish futuristic dystopia by
                 young director, annual movie from Woody, self-indulgent
                 American history epic by brilliant but tricky director,
                 movie that British cultural establishment wanted to ban,
                 weird piece by cult foreign director, moody Thomas Hardy
                 adaptation, maverick Altman, low-budget British drama.

                 Will a similar range (the question of quality we will
                 come to later) be available in 1997 - the year when
                 minority Tory government may give way to watershed Labour
                 administration - in the ten- and 15-screen multiplexes?
                 Well, let's look at the output for 1996.

                 If we match this year's UK releases to the ten types
                 isolated above, it is possible to come up with: Mr
                 Holland's Opus (as the Kramer v Kramer of these days),
                 Independence Day (Alien), Strange Days (Mad Max), Mighty
                 Aphrodite (Manhattan), Nixon (Apocalypse Now), Crash or
                 Michael Collins or Kids (The Life of Brian), Breaking the
                 Waves (Noferatu), Jude (Tess), Kansas City (Quintet),
                 Brassed Off(Radio On).

                 From this comparison, a leaden year looks comprehensively
                 defeated by a golden age. Few, on a putative edition of
                 Desert Island Films, would choose to be cast away with
                 Mighty Aphrodite rather than Manhattan, Strange Days
                 rather than Mad Max. Indeed, if forced to watch a
                 tear-jerker, even Dustin attempting to cook French toast
                 would be preferable to Richard Dreyfus conducting the
                 first performance of Holland's symphony. Only Michael
                 Winterbottom's Jude would trounce its grandparent,
                 Polanski's Tess.

                 But though the formats of these films are broadly
                 constant across two decades, the attitudes are not. While
                 Kramer v Kramer accepted divorce as a new social reality
                 Mr Holland's Opus showed a man resisting sexual
                 temptation to stay with his wife, a scenario that also
                 featured in this year's A Time to Kill.

                 In the same way, the fact that Alien showed heroic human
                 astronauts at risk from truly terrifying
                 extraterrestrials in space but that Independence Day
                 depicts earth-bound humans under threat from jokey
                 creatures arriving here perhaps reveals something about
                 both the shrunken aspirations of American society and the
                 dominant tone of culture in the two eras. Equally, it's
                 politically revealing that Apocalypse Now's treatment of
                 a shameful episode in US history presented Vietnam as
                 deranged colonial overreach, while Nixon, taking its cue
                 from the modem passion for psychological rehabilitation,
                 manages to make Tricky Dicky nearly a hero.

                 Yet when the lists are analysed more closely, the present
                 begins to seem far less inferior to the past. First,
                 apart from the simple matter of cultural luck - Woody
                 Allen, on top form in our year with Manhattan, had
                 produced the dreary Interiors only 12 months previously -
                 the already mentioned risk of applying Darwinist
                 criticism is well-demonstrated by the case of Escape from
                 LA, 1996's worst movie. While this example can be used to
                 curse the present year, the fact is that cinematic
                 history has simply wiped from its memory such 1979 errors
                 of taste as Spider Man - the Dragon's Challenge.

                 But category comparison is unfair in that it omits genres
                 that were simply impossible or non-existent on the
                 earlier date. In 1979 there was no equivalent to the kind
                 of mainstream-but-offbeat, literate-but-populist American
                 cinema that was represented at least twice this year by
                 David Fincher's Seven and the Coen Brothers' Fargo. And
                 the computer technology that makes Toy Story an artistic
                 landmark in children's cinema was still a gleam in the
                 microchip's eye.

                 In 1979, with the exception of the infrequently seen
                 Poitier and Belafonte, cinema acting was an all-white
                 profession. In 1996 Morgan Freeman, Denzil Washington and
                 Samuel L Jackson are merely the most high-profile figures
                 in a massive catalogue of African-American talent. And
                 while Petit's Radio On (made with German co-production
                 money) was, at the time, a rare moment of invention in a
                 British film industry largely dedicated to feature-length
                 spin-offs from sitcoms, the cinematic wings at Channel 4
                 and (to a lesser extent) the BBC now maintain a supply of
                 original, stylish British films such as Shallow Grave,
                 Secrets and Lies.

                 By these criteria it is possible to argue that the cinema
                 of today is richer, more inclusive, more inventive than
                 when Thatcher came to power and Ronald Reagan began his
                 White House race. This artistic durability is not to the
                 credit of these politicians; culture has somehow survived
                 their apathy and narrowness.

                 But it is alarming to find that, while the Daily Mail
                 only wanted one film banned in 1979 (The Life of Brian),
                 in 1996 it targeted Michael Collins, Kids and Crash. A
                 long period during which Hollywood took ever greater
                 relish in the depiction of violence has been followed by
                 a spell of correction and debate which, in Britain, has
                 been used by some media moralists for a general assault
                 on culture.

                 The 1979 list is clearly stronger in individual
                 near-masterpieces, but it is not entirely fanciful to
                 imagine that, in 2015, a critic might look back at the
                 Darwinist survivors from the current crop of movies and
                 argue, with a list that comprised, say, Fargo, Seven,
                 Secrets and Lies, Dead Man Walking, A Time To Kill,
                 Michael Collins, and Toy Story, that we had it quite
                 good.

                 Mark Lawson writes for the Guardian