Post on 30-May-2018
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09/03/2010 18:03:00
← Media Studies
← Chris Benisek
Z Movies
Z movies came about in the mid -1960s as a description of ‘certain
unequivocally non-A films. It was adopted to separate low-budget
pictures with standards below most B movies and so called C movies.
Most films placed into the category of Z are made for little money and
tend to be on the outsides of the film industry. From this scripts tend to
be bad, errors continuously occur during shooting and non-professional
actors are used. Also the lighting and editing tends to be on a whole poor.
Ken Loaches Hidden Agenda fits into the category of a Z movie.
Highlighted in an article written by Guy Hennebelle in Cineaste, Z Movies
"only use 'politics' as a convenient reference to create the illusion that
they are seriously dealing with a problem"
One main issue surrounding Hidden Agenda is that Ken Loach does not
look into the ‘socio-political’ reasons for why Britain dominated Northern
Ireland.
Instead of this he strafes off in a different direction, creating a narrative
centred on a detective, accompanied with easily identifiable good and bad
guys. ‘Politics serve as a means to that end, but not as an end in and of
itself.’
Hennebelle also stated that Z Movies "revive most of the Hollywood
gimmicks in their glossing over of reality — the recourse to out-of-the-
ordinary heroes who are all put into extraordinary situations, contrivancesof editing, pounding musical scores, and deliberate ideological
fuzziness..."
This is highly apparent in Hidden Agenda. The main hero/detective, finds
himself in a situation which is by definition extraordinary since the films
depend on shocking viewers to maintain their tension. The ideology of the
film is not very clear.
‘Are viewers of Hidden Agenda supposed to sympathize with the members
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of the IRA? Neither film has a coherent ideological perspective. Rather,
both dispense with ideology whenever they can in order to concentrate on
the heroic quest of their middle class, white male protagonist To do
otherwise would alert viewers to the contradictions that rooting for thesefellows entails.’
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Sourced and altered from…http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC38folder/HiddenAgenda-JFK.html
In terms of the Wiki definition though, I personally don’t think that the
film fits entirely into the definition as in certain aspects its quite highquality, take the narrative as an example. This is an extremely complex
tale of events compressed into a short period of time.
Positive outlook
http://www.allmovie.com/work/hidden-agenda-22318/review
This article provided by allmovie.com has nothing but glowing praise for
the film, but like any review it has to pick out slight faults yet overall it
gives large amount of support towards the production, the scripting, the
actors and castings and the situation used for the film.
In between
http://www.timeout.com/film/newyork/reviews/71997/Hidden_Agenda.ht
ml
This article gives a balanced view on loaches productions as it reiterates
two sides to the argument but doesn’t settle to one side. This quote
‘deserves to be seen simply because it takes the debate on Ireland further
than most such docudramas’, outlines this as they are basically getting
across that the film is artistically well done and should be watched to give
the viewer their own opinion.
Negative outlook
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-388256/Why-does-Ken-Loach-
loathe-country-much.html
From the title of the article alone you’re aware that clearly the Daily Mail
are not big fans of Hidden Agenda. ‘Why does Ken Loach loathe his
country so much?’. From this you are clearly made aware that this
newspaper is against the political message the film portrays.