Angry Old Men in Post-Crisis European Cinema

Abstract

Abstract The paper explores the representation of ageing white men in 21st-century European art cinema in the socio-cultural context of the series of crises that European societies had to face in the first decades of the new millennium. In Europe ageing is a growing concern, which already influences economic productivity and further endangers the welfare system. Ageing white men, who used to belong to the hegemonic majority of society during their active period, are often disoriented and frustrated by rapid technological development, social changes, shifts in social values or the failures of the welfare system. This paper, through the analysis of Tyrannosaur (Paddy Considine, 2011), I, Daniel Blake (Ken Loach, 2016) and A Man Called Ove (Hannes Holm, 2015), explores the ways these issues are represented in contemporary European cinema. The films of this period often depict the disappearance of an old life-world, together with its old sense of community and its old types of men. Thus, these films tend to be critical of globalized modern societies, and often reveal both the vulnerability and the potential destructiveness of these vanishing masculinities.