This Is England

Synopsis: In the early 1980s, 12-year-old Shaun is an only child whose father has died fighting in the Falklands war and living in a housing estate. Picked on at school he is befriended by a gang of skinheads led by Woody. Shaun responds to his new friends, adopts the skinhead style and over the school holidays he discovers a new world of comradeship.  Then Combo, a much older skinhead who has recently got out of prison arrives and the gang fractures, Shaun casting his lot with Combo, a decision for which he will pay dearly.

From its opening montage, underscored by the pulsing rhythm of Toots And The Maytals' 54-48 Was My Number, Shane Meadows’ journey into the ugliness that was Thatcher’s Britain is a compelling experience. Drawing on his own experiences growing up in the Midlands during those same years (Shaun Fields/Shane Meadows, get it?), the director unflinchingly depicts the brutal conditions of derelict council estates and the forms of violence it spawns but also, and this is the real strength of his film, brings home the humanity that lies beneath it.

The focal point of the film’s success is the performance by first-timer Thomas Turgoose, discovered at The Space Project, a scheme run for disadvantaged children in Grimsby where the film was shot (it is dedicated to his mother, who died in 2006). The boy does an outstanding job of conveying the loneliness of Shaun, his inability to accept his father’s death in the Falklands War, his elation at finding friendship with Woody’s gang and finally his fear as his newly-found world is shattered. Opposite him, Stephen Graham seethes as the violently racist Combo who provides the worst of all role models for Shaun and whose sociopathic aggression is the force which drives the narrative to what we know must be its inevitable implosion.  In smaller ways but nonetheless commendable are Andrew Shim as Milky and Vicky McClure as Lol, both of whom had been in the director’s earlier A Room For Romeo Brass (1999). Also engaging is Joseph Gilgun as Woody (apparently a reference to Joe Strummer’s penultimate nickname), Shaun’s initial protector, who for Meadows is the face of the skinhead phenomenon as essentially a sub-cultural style in music and dress that grew out of the reggae and ska booms of the 60s and 70s (and that could encompass Boy George’s Culture Club, represented here by the superbly frightful Smell, Shaun’s first girlfriend), as opposed to Combo’s understanding of it as the uniform of xenophobia and isolationism. Such sociological observations are in part what gives this film its depth.

Dramatically, however, one of the film’s shortcomings is that Meadow’s does not manage to balance the contenders for Shaun’s heart and mind. Woody effectively disappears from the boy’s life (to watch a programme on aardvarks! I was unsure if he was joking or not). Equally the role of Shaun’s mum (Jo Hartley), who initially presents as a strongly protective force is underwritten, she, like Woody, simply dropping from view, leaving us solely with Combo as the only active presence in Shaun’s life. One also feels that Combo's final breakdown is rather sudden and too emotional to fit with either the narrative pace or the character.

Such criticisms aside, what remains still carries considerable emotional impact. Working with a substantially non-professional cast and a limited budget, Meadows has crafted a film that resonates with immediacy and authenticity. This Is England is a potent story of innocence lost set against the backdrop of a society in crisis. It is far from comforting viewing but all the better for it.

FYI:  In 2011 Meadows made a BAFTA-winning TV mini-series,This Is England '88, that took up the characters' stories two years on. 

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