From ‘Trainspotting’ to the dominance of Hugh Grant: British cinema during the Britpop era
With the news that Oasis are reforming for a series of reunion shows in 2025, many fans are feeling the buzz of Britpop in the air. The Cool Britannia era was soundtracked by the songs of Oasis, Blur, Pulp and other bands labelled as Britpop, whether these musicians liked the term or not. It was a time defined by an unapologetic pride for being British, with Union Jacks a key symbol of the era. Paired with Euro ‘96 and Labour’s win in the 1997 election, British people were finally feeling a sense of celebration and optimism following the treacherous years of Margaret Thatcher’s reign in the ‘80s.
While the music of this time is often discussed—who can ignore the infamous Oasis vs Blur chart battle in 1995?—it is important to consider how the Cool Britannia period shaped the movie industry, too. British cinema had never been the most thriving element of the country’s cultural repertoire, with gritty social realism becoming the prevailing style of filmmaking on the island. Most British filmmakers were forced to work with relatively small budgets, while the numerous popular movies and blockbuster successes came from across the pond.
Yet, changes could be traced through the ‘90s, as more and more British movies were being given budgets that allowed for greater creativity and professionalism. Thus, we can roughly divide the films from this era into two categories – the ones which were optimistic and looked to the future (even if they explored complex themes like working-class lives, poverty, and drug abuse) and the ones that were completely nihilistic and downbeat, still holding onto the trauma of Thatcher’s dismal era of rule. Regardless of which category they fell into, it could be guaranteed that films from the period were well-made and exciting, proving that British film was undergoing the same form of revitalisation as British music.
During this time, Hugh Grant was inescapable. The actor began appearing in various romantic comedies, starring as the British bumbling, charming, floppy-haired hero. To British people, he was incredibly posh; to foreign audiences, he was quintessentially British, single-handedly warping people’s perceptions of what men from the country are actually like. He appeared in Sense and Sensibility, Four Weddings and a Funeral, and Notting Hill, subsequently carrying on this image into the early 2000s with Bridget Jones’s Diary and About A Boy.
With these films, often written by Richard Curtis, Britain was presented through a relatively middle-class lens where all of the men were effortlessly handsome, probably not-too-distantly related to the queen, and said “Gosh!” and “Bloody hell!” a lot. Yet, the reality of the Cool Britannia era was, for many, economic struggle, and the popularity of bands like Oasis and Pulp suggested that people wanted to hear stories about the working class – stories they could relate to.
As Oasis expressed the desire to escape the mundanities of working through reliance on cigarettes and alcohol, Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting encapsulated the reality of being young in an unstable economic climate. Set in Scotland, the film depicts a group of heroin addicts as they navigate life, with the main character, Renton, attempting to get clean, eventually walking away from his pals to start a better life.
The film showed the bleakness of life for many people who had grown up while Thatcher was in power, leaving their career opportunities in tatters; yet, it also possessed some of the positivity of the Cool Britannia era with its hopeful ending. With a Britpop soundtrack featuring artists like Blur, Pulp and Sleeper, Trainspotting defined the era and remains one of the best British films of all time.
Other films that centred around working-class lives included The Full Monty and Brassed-Off, with the former featuring steelworkers and the latter the members of a colliery brass band. The movies, like Trainspotting, blended humour and optimism while exposing the state of the country, which wasn’t all Spice Girls and football celebration.
Mike Leigh’s films remain some of the best of British cinema from the ‘90s, with titles like Naked, Secrets and Lies, and Career Girls emerging from him during the Cool Britannia period. While Naked was laden with nihilism and violence, the other films had moments of both celebration and despair. These films truly captured Britain realistically, exploring themes like poverty, race, motherhood, and friendship.
Themes like these were vital in depicting the landscape of the country at the time. Unfortunately, most filmmakers from this era were white men, leaving the experiences of minority groups, besides the white working class, predominantly pushed to the sidelines.
Sold as a celebration of British culture, the media of the Cool Britannia period wasn’t as diverse as it thought itself to be, but it was still a fascinating movement in the country’s artistic history. British cinema truly evolved during this time, with quintessential British humour bleeding into everything, bigger budgets giving the depictions of everyday life more creativity and sheen, and stories carrying a mixture of pessimism and optimism summing up the country’s political climate.
The era was far from perfect, but many of the films that came out of it were unapologetically fun, thought-provoking, and ambitious.
