Movie Review: This Is England

If This Is England does nothing else, it will guarantee writer/director Shane Meadows a place at the high table of the British auteur, easily equaling the best work of Mike Leigh and Ken Loach. Meadow’s previous work has much to recommend it, Room For Romeo Brass and Dead Man’s Shoes both showing that Meadows was capable of pithy realism, with a dark undertow of fractured morality that made for compelling if slightly flawed cinema. No flaws this time around, for this is a masterful film, unafraid to ask difficult questions, or indeed answer them.

In an impressive debut, Tomas Turgoose plays Shaun, a 12-year-old who, deprived of his father by the Falklands War, gets adopted by the local skinhead gang, and finds a sense of identity and belonging to fill up his hollow existence. The gang, which includes Milky, the pork pie-hatted second generation Jamaican, are skilfully shown building up their camaraderie with their love of reggae (the use of music, as in all Meadows' films, is exceptional), youthful vandalism, and cramped council house partying. Meadows then tosses into this bonhomie a human hand grenade with the pin irreplaceably removed, as Steven Graham’s Combo explodes into their lives as a malevolent malicious right wing racist, a stepping razor who polarises the group and uses empty nationalistic rhetoric to cleave the group in two, though the deluded damaged soul that lurks underneath the swaggering brute is finally exposed as yet another victim of the scourge of bullying and the racism it fosters.

As the opening credits roll, Meadows juxtaposes images of what made Britain so desperate a place to live in the early eighties (the action takes place in 1983): we see a collage of contemporary newsreel showing the urban deprivation, the protests and riots that were commonplace, Greenham Common, the miners strike, the embassy siege, the National Front marches. The flag waving and public joy at the Royal Wedding swiftly cuts to the similar scenes of the victorious soldiers returning from the Falklands to a hero’s welcome, till the final cut settles on a black body bag on the front of a tank, which melts into a photo of Shaun’s dead father in uniform, his life and that of many others the true price of triumph. This forceful opening underlines that it is blind nationalism, the pride derived from victory in the name of a country, regardless of the humanitarian cost or justification, that manufactures communities with an underlying hatred and fear of those who differ, and a misplaced supremacy that provides a breeding ground for the right wing fervour that gives Combo a focus and outlet for his innate hatred.

Article Author: Nigel Simons

Nigel Simons has now found the meaning of ' a small degree' and thus chastened is about to join the wrong end of the uk job queue. From whence he will disport himself in a state of languor while scurrilously commenting upon the hard work produced from the heated brow of others. …

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