The Claude Mono Blog

The Film of the Book

Devastating information is relayed in short, cool-headed paragraphs, increasing the charged atmosphere 

British author Ian McEwan’s 1978 debut novel The Cement Garden is just 138 pages long and was published when he was thirty. It is narrated in the deceptively affectless monotone of a 14-year-old boy called Jack. The 1993 film of the novel features the British screen debut of Charlotte Gainsbourg and is a family affair as director Andrew Birkin is Gainsbourg’s uncle and his son Ned plays Charlotte’s youngest brother Tom.

Asked in a 2014 article for the Guardian by Andrew Dickins Where did it come from? McEwan reflected: “It was the late 70s, everyone seemed focused on a sense that we were always at the end of things, that it was all collapsing. London was filthy, semi-functional. The phones didn’t work properly, the tube was a nightmare, but no one complained. It fed into a rather apocalyptic sense of things.”

After taking extreme measures to hide the death of their mother, four orphaned siblings, form a feral nuclear family. Encouraged by the eldest sister, who has been elevated to the role of matriarch, the siblings retreat into an insulated domestic world that, removed from the mores of outsiders, grows increasingly depraved. Secrecy and desire bind them as they regress into various states of infantilism, morbidity, and madness.

McEwan’s evocative detail and perfect British prose lend a genteel decorum to the death and decay that surround the family. Weeds growing through the rockery of an abandoned garden mark the passage of time. Antique pieces of furniture are placed in childlike arrangements for dining or entertaining, rarely in the rooms designed for such purposes. The smell of trash and rotting food, overflowing from a bin in the untended kitchen, mingles with the sweet, sickly human odors that fill the house. Each detail elevates the story from merely bizarre to hauntingly detestable. In fact, by the end of the novel, the minutiae of the environment—rather than the characters’ actions—seem to be driving the story. McEwan, stirring disgust and rapture, builds to an exhilarating conclusion in which the siblings find themselves beyond the point of redemption but completely enthralled by one another. Like Brontë’s Heathcliff, McEwan’s lovers are loathsome, a far cry from the romanticized versions in the 1993 film adaptation. But they’re all the more captivating for it. (Excerpt from a short New Yorker retrospective in 2018 – Elaina Patton)

The score is by Edward Shearmur but the soundtrack also features some songs by artists like the Color and Future Primitive. See the soundtrack listing here

Filming Location and Exteriors

The cinematography in the Cement Garden is great and worthy of a repeat viewing just to focus on that. The use of natural lighting and the exterior shots as well as the transitions.   The Director of Photography was Stephen Blackman.  The joint British/German production was filmed in London with key exterior shooting at Beckton Gasworks, Beckton, London.

Becton Gawworks 1980s

The original Winsor house as located in Beckton and used as the exterior location for the house.

Sinc this photo the Beckton Premier Inn and the ‘Winsor House’ Brewers Fayre have been built on the site of Winsor House

Enjoy the film stills below.

Music videos filmed at the Beckton Gasworks

As well as some of the exterior scenes for Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket a few cool music videos were also filmed at The Gasworks.

Oasis – D’You Know What I Mean? 

The Smiths – The Queen Is Dead (by Derek Jarman)

The Loop – Arc-Lite