It was when the prime minister said, in Italy during the third way conference in November, that Britain was, if no longer a great, certainly a "pivotal nation" that I realised I had been wrong about Notting Hill. It is, if not a great, certainly a pivotal film, and a film ? clef, too.
I had not much liked it at first sitting. Hugh Grant's mannerisms are too unchanging; the teddy bear chaos has been his act for years, and although it may be hard to project consistently and charmingly, it rings too few changes.
But then came the flash: the film was not what it seemed. I had to see it again. Tony Blair's pivotal phrase was used probably not by accident at the same time as the video was released. And so it was with real excitement that I slotted the video into my television and video combo set. Was it what I had suspected?
And how! Notting Hill is the most subtle and extended statement on the British-American relationship-and on Britain's and America's places in the world-ever produced in allegorical form. Made, apparently, for undemanding sentimentalists, it is a film which, once its code is unlocked, reveals a parable. And a key to the code is provided. As hero-bookseller William Thacker goes to meet Hollywood star Anna Scott at the Ritz, he walks past a caf? and a slim, white-haired man walks from right to left of the screen a little in front of him. Just an extra, I thought, first time round. Second time, I looked more closely. The extra was Charles Wheeler, who for decades interpreted the US to Britain and vice versa on BBC television. Here was a pointer. The film was about a relationship far greater than the improbable coupling of bouquiniste with superstar. It was not about a special, but the special relationship.
Anna Scott is a mega-superstar. She is an immense, $15m-a-picture, face-on-every-cover, fill-the-cinemas supernova against whom, as Thacker constantly tells everyone, he is as nothing. Indeed, much of the tedium first time round was the endless way in which Grant signifies obeisance to her status and his lack of it. Second time, it was clear this was an allegorical device: by emphasising Anna's global stardom, the film is saying that Anna-America is the unique superpower, the only state with a global army, universally deployed diplomacy, and omnipresent security services.
But it is an uncivilised power. Anna-America is not at ease with power, is rendered almost mute by it, like a musclebound champion. She is abrupt and capricious, now kissing William full on the lips on a whim, then immediately enjoining his secrecy lest it affect her glorious career; overreacting when nude pictures are published or the media discover her hideway, she is unable to allow her true feelings some room.
William, by contrast, is puny but genuine. With the assurance of a man rooted in history, he knows who he is, knows he loves Anna instantly, is quietly and self-sacrificingly true to her thereafter. He is securely in thrall just as successive leaders of Britain have been in thrall to the megastate.
But-and this is the subtlety of the project-Anna must, bit by bit, be led to recognise his superior character and quiet masterfulness. She thinks she needs no one, certainly no one who is not at her level and, as she discovers with her crumbling relationship with Russia (played by Alec Baldwin, her crude, arrogant Hollywood boyfriend), no one is at her level.
The character of Britain-William (the Conqueror!) is built up layer by layer. It is tolerant of ethnic and sexual diversity (William happily shares his space with Spike, the "masturbating Welshman"). It is gallant, as when he takes on the louts in a restaurant, louts who play the British far left or far right defaming Anna-America. And William's friends and his sister are all in some way disabled: this provides for a display of stoicism and elicits a glimpse of self-knowledge from Anna, who sees she will one day fail in beauty and be lonely, middle-aged-just as the US will one day be a spent superpower.
But not if it joins with British virtues. As the scene shifts from the American-founded Ritz to the British Savoy, the final recognition is achieved that super-status is barren without British virtue; Anna-America can become fecund, grow round in an English park and reproduce. The pivot, between the un-anchored New World and the securely founded Old, is recognised as a necessity. The special relationship is reforged.
And Britain is rebranded. It is no longer Bevin tying the US into Europe through Nato, nor Macmillan offering Greek saws to the Roman Kennedy. It is William and Anna, Tony and Bill, realising that they share so much, that one has the power and the other the wisdom. As Anna-America says to William-Britain: "I'm also just a girl. Standing in front of a boy. Asking him to love her." What depths there are to Hugh Grant!
And, finally, was it by chance, as the "pivotal nation" phrase was used and Notting Hill was in every WH Smith up and down the land, that Downing Street announced Cherie was pregnant? Think about it.
