Welcome to Dreamland: The realist impulse in Pawel Pawlikowski's Last Resort

Abstract

After first exploring Pawel Pawlikowski's status as an outsider in British cinema through a brief comparison to German director Fatih Akin, I focus on Pawlikowski's film Last Resort (UK, 2000) to assess and problematize its portrayal of refugees. I argue that rather than relying on open didacticism, Pawlikowski's representation of asylum seekers defies the established conventions of the genre, highlighting the fragility of hospitable conventions. Neither portraying them as despairing victims lacking agency nor commending them as virtuous 'heroes' (as if by default), Last Resort does not allow its spectators an easy access to the spectacle of the Others' suffering. Instead, it points to the discrepancy between the projected image of Britain as a welcoming country and the exclusions through which it operates. Moreover, the focus on a Russian woman's narrative provides the opportunity to open up a discussion on how whiteness is negotiated in a European context. Given that a majority of films portrayBritain as a utopian land strongly desired by migrants, Pawlikowski's significant intervention is that he ultimately presents it as a 'counter-utopia', a space from which one wishes to escape. Since Pawlikowski's 'poetic realism' has been aligned with that of Michael Winterbottom's, in the last part of the article I discuss Last Resort in conjunction with Winterbottom's Wonderland (UK, 1999).

Beyond the Nation State: ‘New Europe’ and Discourses of British Identity in Pawel Pawlikowski'sLast Resort(2000)

“…Certainly, the film was released at a time when the debate about refugees became front page news, with Shadow Home Secretary Ann Widdecombe's attacks on the Labour Government for its apparent 'leniency' in dealing with the issue (Anon., 2001). As a result, Last Resort has often been interpreted in relation to the issues of illegal immigration, travel, migration and displacement (Roberts, 2002;Murawska-Muthesius, 2003;Bardan, 2008). However, the specific facts of East/West encounters and the exploration of British identity and its place in contemporary Europe that Last Resort particularly addresses have not previously been tackled.…”

“…Hence, the depictions of Margate in the two films, while carrying intimations of being diagnoses of the condition of the British working class, at the same time become, in the instance of Last Resort, a comment on the place of Great Britain in 'New Europe' and the construction of a British identity, which is defined through the processes of pan-European inclusion and exclusion and intranational sedimentation and an unequal distribution of citizens between the centre and the margin based on economic criteria (cf. Stone, 2007;Bardan, 2008). The second process is well exemplified by Williams' London to Brighton, in which a prostitute Kelly runs to Brighton, where most of her underclass friends have already relocated from metropolitan London, to protect her life.…”

“…(Foley, 2004) Last Resort is thus also an articulation of the director's nomadic discourse, which in its thematic and, above all, aesthetic choices freely travels between European cultures to engage in questions of identity, belonging and the notion of 'home'. Actually, most of the writings on Pawlikowski emphasize the director's own experience of displacement and emigration to account for his remarkable understanding and empathy towards his displaced characters (Roberts, 2002;Murawska-Muthesius, 2003;Bardan, 2008). However, in his concerns Pawlikowski is very similar to another European auteur, Michael Haneke, who does not have an immediate experience of displacement but rather enjoys the 'free movement' to leave his native Austria and make films in France and the USA.…”