NFT - ‘This is England’ & Shane Meadows
I popped down to the NFT last Monday for my first visit for a while to catch Shane Meadows latest film, ‘This is England’. It concerns the coming of age of a recently bereaved 12 year old boy on a squalid Nottingham Council Estate. As the film opens, our isolated and bullied hero blossoms as he obtains a surrogate family in the form of a gang of (mostly non-violent) Skinheads.
This is a beautifully observed picture, well paced and engaging - you really feel for the little thug, even when he begins to slip off the rails. The sense of the 1980’s is wonderfully evoked, with the clothes, language, graffiti, haircuts and other little touches such as having ‘Blockbuster’ playing on the TV in the background will have you recalling your own mis-spent youth. It’s also incredibly funny - at least for a UK audience. The quip about the main kid - Thommo - being the spitting image of Keith Chegwin’s son I suspect would be lost on a Kansas audience. The mood turns somber and eventually violent, as you’d expect given the subject matter but has a uplifting coda which as Philip French pointed out in his Observer review is reminiscent of Truffaut’s 400 blows.
Obligatory link to the Guardian Q&A here, which was probably one of the more laugh out loud entertaining events I’ve seen at the NFT. Meadows is quite hilarious, and has some unique stories from his upbringing which you can see he’s invested into his movies. Compare and contrast with the silver spoon Guy Ritchie and his pseudo Scorsese rip-offs - the man doesn’t have a genuine iota of talent. Meadows, on the other hand is clearly following the path forged by the great Alan Clarke, Ken Loach and to a lesser extent Mike Leigh by making films which could only be made in this country, exploring the social and cultural environments of the UK, in the perennial neo-realist, improvised verite style forged by the new British cinema of the late 50’s. Long may they continue.
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