It’s no wonder Local Hero has stood the test of time – it remains relevant

How can it be 40 years? It’s now exactly that since the release of Local Hero, currently showing in a selection of Scottish cinemas to mark its ruby anniversary. I saw it first time round – well, several times, actually, as I was going through a bit of a dark night of the soul back in 1983 and needed something to distract me and lift my spirits.

It also allowed me to wallow in a certain amount of self-indulgent nostalgia, re my own life, for things as they had supposedly been but, in reality, never were. There’s cod philosophy for you.

Any road up, I loved it, I loved the music and I still possess a battered vinyl (original) album of Mark Knopfler’s sublime, folk-infused score which, along with the most recent (but not exactly contemporary) work of that other whimsical yet sharp-as-a-tack commentator Paolo Nutini, never fails to get me dancing round the kitchen.

That, it should be admitted, is no’ a bonny sicht but it does me a power of good, I can tell you.

As did the film which is a gift that keeps on giving in its ability not only to let us Scots see oorsels as ithers see us but also to recognise and acknowledge our own myths, legends and harsh realities.

OK, it was folksy, it was cosy, it was self-consciously eccentric, it probably played into the hands of the shortbread tin view of Scottish history and culture.

But the genuine sweetness yet decidedly un-saccharine charm of a tale about the drive to make money at the cost of the destruction of nature and a way of life, was peppered with more than a few zingers by way of comment about values, the difference between the romantic view of small communities and the harsh realities of village life, the clashing and mingling of outsiders and locals, the head-butting between tradition and progress.

There was a cliche overturned from the start in the edgy nature of the relationship between the thrusting corporate fixer, Mac, and the small-town operator, Gordon, actually more of a player than his new pal. A man who turned out to have a finger in every pie, including the one made out of the famous injured rabbit that the softhearted oil exec and his puppyish sidekick brought to the local hotel, thinking it would be nursed back to health… not.

And the beach-dwelling philosopher getting one over on the oil baron, making him want to see the shooting stars rather than the soaring profits? A triumph of hope over experience, maybe…

And look at who was in it. Burt Lancaster, Hollywood Golden Age legend and US leading man Peter Riegert were the least of it.

Scottish stars shone from Denis Lawson to John Gordon Sinclair, Fulton Mackay, Jonathan Watson, Alex Norton, a fleeting appearance by legendary comic Rikki Fulton and the great Peter Capaldi, the only actor in the world whose career is gloriously defined by different generations of telephone boxes.

Criticism in subsequent years of the lack of female agency is probably justified but in Jennifer Black and Jenny Seagrove, there were two women’s roles with more than a bit of bite and mischief and mocking humour.

And it’s worth pointing out that the village of Ferness (impersonated by real-life Pennan), far from being a kind of claustrophobic Brigadoon, shut off from the rest of the world, had gone so far as to welcome Russian trawlermen, a minister of African heritage and a sole exponent (rather late in the day, be it said), from the world of Gothic punk rock…

A lot of it is still interestingly relevant today when we remain mired in controversy over the role of commercial enterprise versus climate security, Big Oil against Just Stop Oil, unimaginable profits juxtaposed with unimaginable poverty, growing the economy and destruction of the environment, globalisation and the levelling-up of communities left behind, culture wars next to recognition of basic affinities.

And the lesson that money doesn’t make you happy, as Mac sits in the dark of his US penthouse apartment, calling the Ferness phone box, is undercut, all the way through, with the obvious knowledge that being poor and hard-working isn’t a barrel of laughs either.

There are reasons that Local Hero has survived for 40 years relatively unscathed. It’s funny, joyous, rude, beautiful and a tribute both to the past and present of a nation still not quite able to find and anchor itself in the wider arena but that has a strength and resilience – and an ability to come out with some of the best passive-aggressive insults – that is all its own.

We remain mired in controversy today with Big Oil v Just Stop Oil

CLASH OF VALUES: Denis Lawson, Peter Riegert, Peter Capaldi, Chris Rozycki in the fictional village of Ferness, in reality Pennan.