Film Review - Gone Too Far

Review

'Gone too far' is a British comedy that first made its way onto screens in 2013 and has been labelled as a 'fish out of water'. It was produced by Bola Agbaje who is an African British citizen who grew up in Peckham which is where the film was set. Some would argue that this is the ideal of way portraying values and representations just like we witnessed in the debate. The film has a 5.5 rating on IMDB which is decent and reasonable seen as this was Bola's first film production which would have a low budget we would assume. The narrative is of a young British male of African origin having to deal with living with his older brother whom has got a visa and is moving from Nigeria to the UK. Instantly, any audience would assume that the older brother (Iku) would look different from your typical mid twenties person which he did and both of the boys were being bullied about this. This perfectly demonstrates identity in the film because when people witness something odd or different from the rest of society (mainstream) they look down upon it. This is the reason why Iku's younger brother, yemi, tried to avoid him throughout the film. Bola Agbaje has said that the purpose of producing this film and writing the narrative the way it was written was because black representation needed to be portrayed from a realistic perspective and because she wanted to show a similar lifestyle to the one she had through the character Yemi.

This house believes that films featuring ethnic minorities should only be produced by those who have the ethnic identity being represented

In the BFI cinema we were asked whether we were for or against the statement. At first I thought this was a straightforward answer but as I was fully understanding what had been said we had to give our answer so I had to proceed with the original decision to choose 'against'. I chose this at first because in today's society we are taught not to judge or be discriminative and allow people to be who they want to be. So when considering film industry, film makers should be allowed to produce a film based on anyone they like. My minute of thinking was basic compared to the debaters as I wasn't able to further my conclusion with reasons like 'there aren't enough ethnic minority film makers in the industry'.  This was a point risen from the side 'against' who believes audiences wouldn't be attracted to watching a film produced by an unknown producer compared to a Hollywood Blockbuster producer. So revenues for film could plummet if this were to occur which is a risk banks wouldn't be willing to take as they would be the ones investing in these films. The side 'against' gave some really strong points which made me believe that realistically it would difficult for film producers of an ethnic minority with minimal experience will be able to produce films. The side 'for' made me realise that a person producing a film about something that is close to them is ideal as they have the experience of a particular situation. If we consider Bola Agbaje, producer of 'Gone Too Far, she made the film in relation with her upbringing. This allowed her to implement the obvious stereotypes of African people and British culture like most people in the UK could. However, its the experience of actually living the life with an African parent that will allow a film producer to make a film emitting realistic representations of African families. So this could be different from a white film producer asking African people in Britain about their upbringing and trying to condense into a film because they may view the responses in an alternative way. Therefore, producing the film with representations that inaccurate or false which would not be good for people's views and values of the ethnic minority as audiences are suggested to be gullible believing everything the media feeds them (effect theory, hypodermic needle model). This is the reason why I changed my decision from siding with 'against' to 'for'. As I believe a more accurate representation would be made of ethnic minorities when the film producer is of the same background compared to someone who tires to understand the group of people.