What with the recent success of Oppenheimer (2023), biopics seem to be rather in fashion at the moment. This is of course welcome, as the genre is rife with potential. It allows for a fascinating insight into the lives of people who have had such a strong impact upon our culture (be it through sport, politics, academia, or something else.)
However, the genre does not merely furnish us with information about a person’s life. More fundamentally, because of the fact that film is an inherently visual medium, the genre provides a very visceral sense of what it might be like to be another person. It shows us the sort of things they might have gazed at, the places they would have gone, what people would have said to them, and the impact of those moments upon them. These are all rendered for us with very specific attention to detail. A biopic not only provides information about the person it is interested in, but also involves the viewer in the emotional experiences of its subject. This gives it its ability to turn the facts of a person’s life into a narrative with a defined purpose.
…there are few people more interesting or relevant….than [Rory] Stewart.
The task of this article, then, would be to consider who deserves this treatment and has not yet received it. Deciding who deserves the honour of a biopic was something of a difficult task, but I eventually settled upon former Conservative minister, Rory Stewart. There are many obvious justifications for this. He has certainly lived an incredibly interesting life, from his time as a diplomat, to being a Harvard Professor and serving in Cabinet. However, while this breadth of experience may be essential for a biopic, it is not what ultimately interests me about him. If a biopic is ultimately defined by the personal perspectives of its subject, then I would argue that there are few people more interesting or relevant in this regard than Stewart.
Perhaps the most consequential election of the last few decades of British politics was not one determined by the electorate at large, but one decided by a small subset of the population. Conservative MPs chose to select Boris Johnson for the final two candidates, and he was subsequently elected by the Conservative membership. All of this happened despite his myriad of personal defects. Since then, the party has collapsed into demagoguery, and has subsequently given rise to the increasingly far right Reform. What is interesting about Stewart then, is what he symbolically represents. He is emblematic of a more moderate form of conservatism that believed in the rule of law, adhered to some level of social liberalism, at least pretended to care about fiscal prudence, and was fond of British institutions.
[Stewart’s] choice to stand up for those beliefs in 2019 is perhaps one of the most important narratives that exists in 21st century British politics.
In spite of the ideological and practical limitations critics charge conservatism of; Stewart’s iteration of it was better than what we have seen for the last few years. His choice to stand up for those beliefs in 2019 is perhaps one of the most important narratives that exists in 21st century British politics. If we think that a biopic should say something relevant about both its subject and modern society, then a depiction of Rory Stewart’s life seems extremely pertinent. His fight for leadership in 2019 was a battle for the soul of the Conservative party, and his failure to win highlights the moral decadence prevalent in one of our country’s oldest political institutions.
As an addendum, Stewart’s book Politics on The Edge has already provided a rough structure for the narrative, including a dramatic climax that feels as though it was made for film. I can think of no better choice for a biopic.
“London Illegal Wildlife Trade (IWT) Conference 2018” by Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office is licensed under CC BY 2.0.