Farage: The Movie

What happens when politics borrows the grammar of film, dogs and dawn light.

Watch this short movie of Nigel Farage.

I think it is designed to soften his image, appeal to Middle England and reach out to a younger demographic using the oldest cinematic tools in the box, sunrises, sunsets and dogs.

I should declare an interest. I am a broken husk of a politician and carry a deep scepticism about film once it starts deploying dawn light, loyal dogs and slow piano chords. This video has played with my head enough that I am compelled to review it for you. Watch it first, if only so you can tell me I am hallucinating.

Farage: The Movie
Review

Political films usually declare themselves within thirty seconds. This one opens with dawn over the Essex coast. Two labradors, one white and one black. The sea, eternal. A piano clears its throat. Somewhere above it all, a drone waits.

Our star is Nigel Farage, who announces he is “on my own with the dogs”. This is broadly accurate if you exclude the camera, the sound kit and the drone.

The opening gag establishes order. “Sit. Good boy.” A pause. Then, with astonishment, “see they do what they’re told”. The dogs sit patiently, as if thinking yes, that is how sitting works. The film relaxes.

Philosophy arrives early. “When you’re by the sea, the weather is everything.” Out here, he says, “you’re not actually the master of your own destiny.” Rain may come at any moment. This is said during a perfectly lit shoot. The sea does not object. The drone hums.

He contrasts this humility with his working week, spent “surrounded by people, you know, do this, decide that”. Out here, “being on my own with the dogs, it’s a joy”. The camera nods. The drone circles. The solitude of a leader.

The coast gets its close up. He has “always loved the coast”. It is, he says, “pretty cool to represent the seaside constituency”. “Miles of sand”.

Family warmth follows. He has fished with “all my family” and his “two sons have really taken to it in a very, very big way”. Fishing happens. Naturally it becomes “a bit competitive”. “Who’s catching the most, who’s catching the biggest fish.” You brace yourself. The invisible hands appear. It was this big.

“The biggest fish I’ve caught in the UK is bluefin tuna.” It weighed “several hundred pounds”. He has “fished in Africa”. He has “fished all over the world”. At this point my brain hot wires and I immediately picture him shooting a giraffe in the African savannah. The dogs remain unimpressed.

Then the film hits concrete.

“All along this coast, these relics from the 1940s are all still here.” Pillboxes. Gun emplacements. “Anti-aircraft and anti-invasion positions.” They are “still in amazing condition”. The concrete looks alert.

He adds, “I collect all sorts of militaria.” A boundary follows. “I can’t collect this. I can’t move this [the concrete pillbox].” Nigel, what kind of militaria? I immediately need to know more. I have an horrific mental image of Nigel at home in his pants and vest, wearing a Kaiser helmet while the labradors wait patiently at his feet for another treat.

He is fascinated not just by “the military aspects of the wars” but by “the civilian engagement and what everybody did”. Everybody, apparently, did something. Something important. Something that does not require explanation. We just know he owns the past.

When he mentions “anti-invasion”, my mind legs it down the beach. I imagine pillboxes recommissioned, Nigel popping up in a firing slit with a dog under each arm, scanning the horizon for dinghies. Is this what the film wants me to see or has my brain hyper focussed on the word “invasion”.

The dogs trot past the defences. They do not bark. They sit when told. I do not think this is a visual metaphor for multicultural Britain.

I then obsess over a practical question the film avoids. Who walks the dogs when Nigel is on cable television in America, or pacing the GB News studio. For a moment I wonder if they came from borrowmydoggy.com.

This is unfair. To be fair to Nigel, the dogs look comfortable in his presence. They sit. They follow. They do not flinch. They accept him without irony and without judging the guy holding the lead. I sense he is lonely.

“If you want a friend in politics, get a dog,” Harry S. Truman is alleged to have said. He didn’t, but the film behaves as if he did. The dogs listen. The dogs stay.

The message arrives on cue. “We’ve actually stopped loving the country we’re part of.” We have lost “that basic sense of patriotic pride”. We should be “putting our own people first”. A disclaimer is slotted in. “It doesn’t mean we don’t like anybody else. The two labradors, one black and one white, glance briefly at each other and continue walking.

Young people appear as a concept. “They’re hungry.” They “want that identity”. They “want that sense of belonging”. None appear on screen.

The ending is pure cinema. The sun drops. The piano swells. The film signs itself.

Across the sunset appears an animated signature in an invisible hand. Nigel F.

Why just Nigel F. Why not Nigel. Why not Nigel Farage. Or just N.F. Where has the rest of the alphabet gone. Was it cut for time. Is the F for Future. For Fish, specifically the one that was this big.

My brain malfunctions. F for Flag. F for Fortress. Nigel Fu… no. Stop it. Absolutely not. That way madness lies. Brain, behave yourself. This is a film review, not a tribunal. I briefly consider Nigel F for Führer. Absolutely not. Cancel immediately. Escort that thought out of the cinema.

The film suggests none of this. It simply places a single letter on the horizon and pans away.

“However bad it looks, things will turn around.”

“They always have in the past.”

“The good days will return.”

Farage: The Movie opens at dawn and closes at dusk. Somewhere between the two, a man goes for a walk, the dogs get exercised and the country has a bright future, again.