Entertainment for the End of an Empire
July 10, 2021 7:48 AM Subscribe
What films and shows dramatize life at the end of an empire? I'm looking for historical fiction kind of things. I am not especially interested in the machinations of the ruling class, leaders clinging to power, etc. I'm more interested in people left holding the bag, families trapped in a bad spot, etc. This could be anything from the fall of Rome, collapse of a country due to World War, chaos after a coup, whatever.
For the purposes of this question, I have positively zero interest in near future dystopian future stories or alternate history stories. I habitually watch that stuff anyway and I don't need a list of things I have likely seen.
I am seeking recs of dramatizations of real events and historical fiction set during real events, but that is all I am interested in at this time.
For the purposes of this question, I have positively zero interest in near future dystopian future stories or alternate history stories. I habitually watch that stuff anyway and I don't need a list of things I have likely seen.
I am seeking recs of dramatizations of real events and historical fiction set during real events, but that is all I am interested in at this time.
Sorry, I just noticed you were looking for films and shows! The Battle of Algiers is an absolutely terrific depiction of the endgame of French colonialism in Algeria.
posted by idlethink at 8:02 AM on July 10, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by idlethink at 8:02 AM on July 10, 2021 [5 favorites]
The Battle of Algiers? [on preview: seconding this]
Under the Earth (Debajo del mundo)? It's not just the end of the empire, but the end is important.
Rome, Open City is even less obviously about the immediate end of empire, but it has similar themes. It certainly depicts the end of civil society in a doomed empire.
I hesitate to mention it, because it includes many things that are racist, ahistorical, and dumb, but Apocalypto fits the description and is worth seeing. Same for Hotel Rwanda.
posted by eotvos at 8:12 AM on July 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
Under the Earth (Debajo del mundo)? It's not just the end of the empire, but the end is important.
Rome, Open City is even less obviously about the immediate end of empire, but it has similar themes. It certainly depicts the end of civil society in a doomed empire.
I hesitate to mention it, because it includes many things that are racist, ahistorical, and dumb, but Apocalypto fits the description and is worth seeing. Same for Hotel Rwanda.
posted by eotvos at 8:12 AM on July 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
Empire of the Sun (sort of a two-for-one bonus: depicts both the fall of colonialism in SE Asia, and, eventually, the defeat of the Japanese empire)
posted by Bron at 8:34 AM on July 10, 2021 [12 favorites]
posted by Bron at 8:34 AM on July 10, 2021 [12 favorites]
As problematic as it is, and the depiction of slavery and positive portrayal of the KKK is truly horrifying, this is the main focus of Gone with the Wind. I really hesitate to mention it, but it does tick your boxes.
posted by FencingGal at 8:37 AM on July 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by FencingGal at 8:37 AM on July 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
The Last September. =September 1921. The gentry hanging on in The Big House during the Irish War of Independence.
posted by BobTheScientist at 8:44 AM on July 10, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by BobTheScientist at 8:44 AM on July 10, 2021 [3 favorites]
Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor from 1987.
posted by Rash at 8:57 AM on July 10, 2021 [7 favorites]
posted by Rash at 8:57 AM on July 10, 2021 [7 favorites]
Maybe a bit tenuous, but I think the whole British genre of “life in a small industrial town on hard times but they find joy” movies counts since the often-unspoken backdrop is the collapse of the British Empire. The Full Monty, Brassed Off, Pride are a few.
posted by lunasol at 8:59 AM on July 10, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by lunasol at 8:59 AM on July 10, 2021 [3 favorites]
A Walk With Love and Death is set during the collapse of feudal society during the Hundred Years War in France.
posted by Jane the Brown at 9:05 AM on July 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Jane the Brown at 9:05 AM on July 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
A Very Long Engagement is about the people of France trying to pick up their lives after WW1.
posted by bleep at 9:08 AM on July 10, 2021
posted by bleep at 9:08 AM on July 10, 2021
Living through to the the end of Austro-Hungarian, and beyond: Sunshine, from 1999. And for the end of the Russian, who can forget David Lean's spectacle from 1965, which was known familiarly in my circle as Doctor Z.
posted by Rash at 9:10 AM on July 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Rash at 9:10 AM on July 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
The Jewel in the Crown depicts the end of British India and Partition from the perspective of upper-middle-class but fairly ordinary Brits. I find it alternately fascinating and infuriating. Features young Charles Dance, before he became typecast as Creeper McCreeperson.
Cracking India (book) and 1947: Earth (its film adaptation) tell the same story from the perspective of a Parsi family living in Lahore.
posted by basalganglia at 9:17 AM on July 10, 2021 [3 favorites]
Cracking India (book) and 1947: Earth (its film adaptation) tell the same story from the perspective of a Parsi family living in Lahore.
posted by basalganglia at 9:17 AM on July 10, 2021 [3 favorites]
Andrzej Wajda: Three War Films
Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy (one of those films was mentioned above, Rome Open City)
Satyajit Ray: The Chess Players
Bela Tarr: Werckmeister Harmonies
posted by perhapses at 9:37 AM on July 10, 2021 [2 favorites]
Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy (one of those films was mentioned above, Rome Open City)
Satyajit Ray: The Chess Players
Bela Tarr: Werckmeister Harmonies
posted by perhapses at 9:37 AM on July 10, 2021 [2 favorites]
Joseph Roth's Radetzky March (end of the Hapsburg Empire) is one of the great works of modern Western literature.
Not a great work of literature, but enjoyable nonetheless, A Gentleman in Moscow deals with a nobleman surviving the Russian Revolution and what comes after.
Indochine is an odd, flawed movie, but beautiful to look at.
Farewell, My Concubine (Chinese revolution) is an unjustly forgotten film, perhaps because the sexual politics aren't particularly legible to the Western eye.
posted by praemunire at 10:01 AM on July 10, 2021 [2 favorites]
Not a great work of literature, but enjoyable nonetheless, A Gentleman in Moscow deals with a nobleman surviving the Russian Revolution and what comes after.
Indochine is an odd, flawed movie, but beautiful to look at.
Farewell, My Concubine (Chinese revolution) is an unjustly forgotten film, perhaps because the sexual politics aren't particularly legible to the Western eye.
posted by praemunire at 10:01 AM on July 10, 2021 [2 favorites]
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie is set during Partition after the end of British Colonial rule in India.
posted by brookeb at 10:16 AM on July 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by brookeb at 10:16 AM on July 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
The movie The Lives of Others follows a Stasi agent and his surveillance targets around the end of the East German dictatorship--though most of the drama is just before the collapse than afterwards, so may not scratch your itch? But it is an excellent movie.
Strongly second the Radetzkymarch recommendation, which is superb.
posted by mark k at 10:27 AM on July 10, 2021 [2 favorites]
Strongly second the Radetzkymarch recommendation, which is superb.
posted by mark k at 10:27 AM on July 10, 2021 [2 favorites]
Maybe not quite what you’re looking for, but perhaps the show The Americans, about the ending of the Cold War?
posted by stellaluna at 10:37 AM on July 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by stellaluna at 10:37 AM on July 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
A Woman in Berlin is a personal account of the capture of Berlin and its occupation by the Soviet army. Trigger warning: many, many incidents of rape.
posted by FencingGal at 10:42 AM on July 10, 2021
posted by FencingGal at 10:42 AM on July 10, 2021
I cannot recommend J.G. Farrell's empire trilogy highly enough. ITV just did an adaptation of the Singapore Grip. All of them are superb; The Siege of Krishnapur is probably my favorite.
posted by Morpeth at 12:08 PM on July 10, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by Morpeth at 12:08 PM on July 10, 2021 [2 favorites]
Not an empire, but maybe on point for you: The Garden of the Finzi Continis is about an upper-crust Jewish family in Ferrara, Italy, in 1938, holding onto their sheltered way of life as the specter of the Holocaust looms.
posted by fingersandtoes at 12:46 PM on July 10, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by fingersandtoes at 12:46 PM on July 10, 2021 [2 favorites]
Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet dramatizes the dying days of the British empire in India, and the coda novel “Staying On” depicts the lives of a British couple who remained in India afterwards. All five books have been turned into TV adaptations, and though I haven’t watched the TV versions, the novels are excellent.
posted by littlegreen at 1:02 PM on July 10, 2021
posted by littlegreen at 1:02 PM on July 10, 2021
If you can find "Heimat" by Edgar Reitz, the series follows stories of ordinary people in rural Germany from the 1920s to the 1980s. The series has a longer story arc, but the middle episodes 6, 7, 8 definitely fit your criteria.
For a different inflection point in 20th Century Germany, "Goodbye, Lenin" is a great watch.
posted by gimonca at 1:38 PM on July 10, 2021 [3 favorites]
For a different inflection point in 20th Century Germany, "Goodbye, Lenin" is a great watch.
posted by gimonca at 1:38 PM on July 10, 2021 [3 favorites]
Not strictly the end of an empire, or possibly not the end of an empire, but The Leopard is a great film and has politics, melancholy, change, resistance to change.
posted by clew at 3:35 PM on July 10, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by clew at 3:35 PM on July 10, 2021 [2 favorites]
Admiral is an enjoyable action biopic about the end of Tsarist Russia, following one of the more prominent White Russian admirals. Lots of people going to balls amid the chaos etc.
posted by Happy Dave at 3:51 PM on July 10, 2021
posted by Happy Dave at 3:51 PM on July 10, 2021
A film of A Woman In Berlin was released in 2009.
posted by Rash at 4:11 PM on July 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Rash at 4:11 PM on July 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
The Golden Lotus (properly 金瓶梅 Jīn Píng Méi) fits the bill, though it won't be evident till just before the end of this rather long book. It's about a wealthy family in China just before the Jurchens conquered their city, and all of north China, in the 1120s. (The novel itself is Ming, circa 1600.)
posted by zompist at 9:36 PM on July 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by zompist at 9:36 PM on July 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
The Siege of Krishnapur by JG Farrell is fantastic
posted by roofus at 4:09 AM on July 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by roofus at 4:09 AM on July 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
You might want to watch Lore : teenage Lore brings her younger brothers and sisters from their home in one end of Germany, where their high ranking Nazi parents have been arrested to their grandparents' home on (IIRC) Sylt. They travel through the no-man's land of the death throes of the Nazi empire.
Pretty amazing stuff.
posted by nothing.especially.clever at 7:12 AM on July 17, 2021
Pretty amazing stuff.
posted by nothing.especially.clever at 7:12 AM on July 17, 2021
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posted by idlethink at 7:59 AM on July 10, 2021 [5 favorites]