"I feel connected to the Second World War because my father lost his father in that war. So, through my dad and the effect it had on him of losing his father young, I always felt connected to the war. It goes back years, but it still feels to me as if we're completely living in it"
About this Quote
Inheritance is the quiet engine behind Tom Hooper's claim that we're "completely living in" World War II. He isn't talking about battlefield nostalgia or a director's research itch; he's describing a family wound that never got to close because it was never fully his to begin with. The connective tissue is grief passed down as atmosphere: a father shaped by absence, a child shaped by that shaping. Hooper frames the war less as an event than as a psychological climate, something you breathe in without choosing.
The phrasing does a lot of work. "Connected" sounds almost benign, like a cable or a lineage, until he specifies the mechanism: a loss that happens once but keeps happening through its aftereffects. The subtext is that history doesn't end when treaties are signed; it persists as behavior, temperament, and the stories families repeat (or avoid). When he says it "goes back years", he almost understates the timeline, because the point is that years don't necessarily create distance. They can create sediment.
As a director, Hooper is also quietly defending an artistic obsession. His films often circle institutions, duty, and the emotional costs of public life; this quote sketches the private origin story of that fixation. The provocative final turn - "we're completely living in it" - reads like a warning against complacency: nationalism, propaganda, trauma, and moral compromise aren't period details. They're recurring systems, resurfacing whenever we pretend the past is safely archived.
The phrasing does a lot of work. "Connected" sounds almost benign, like a cable or a lineage, until he specifies the mechanism: a loss that happens once but keeps happening through its aftereffects. The subtext is that history doesn't end when treaties are signed; it persists as behavior, temperament, and the stories families repeat (or avoid). When he says it "goes back years", he almost understates the timeline, because the point is that years don't necessarily create distance. They can create sediment.
As a director, Hooper is also quietly defending an artistic obsession. His films often circle institutions, duty, and the emotional costs of public life; this quote sketches the private origin story of that fixation. The provocative final turn - "we're completely living in it" - reads like a warning against complacency: nationalism, propaganda, trauma, and moral compromise aren't period details. They're recurring systems, resurfacing whenever we pretend the past is safely archived.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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