Shane Meadows’ film ‘This Is England’ is all about the shift in what it was to be a skin head in the eighties. Originally, I didn’t know this but skin heads came from the working class of Britain who worked, mainly the docks, with black guys, and they’d take them along to their clubs and play them their music and pretty soon the two cultures combined and intertwined. The ideals of the skinhead originated in unity and mutual respect, not in racism or violence. However, in ‘This Is England’ as Meadows shows the pressures of the early eighties start to distort these ideas. I know that the early eighties were hard for a lot of people. The Falkland’s war for one, cause tension much like the current Iraq situation does, a war streamed back into the living rooms of every home showing the death of many of our soldiers for which was a dispute of a lump off land just off Argentina. You had Margret Thatcher in power, seemingly on her last legs till a triumphant war campaign pulled her through the polls. The miner strikes, the 3 day weeks, the riots the poll tax the middle class divide gather pace and distance from the workers of the country. And like any country where there’s unrest, there are always people who take the opportunity to push their own distorted bigotry on those people who are down on their luck and looking for a way out of it all. My mum and dad were both made unemployed during the eighties, and to be honest I don’t think my dad ever recovered from it all. He used to design machines for agriculture things that would separate out different grades of vegetables that would be as big as warehouses, and he did that for twenty years with his dad, and then the 3 day weeks hit and the work wasn’t there anymore cause, people couldn’t afford to buy the machines. My mum lost her job, working at an advertising agency because they needed to cut back on staff, and well, my mum was a woman in the early eighties, she was dispensable. And then I came along, right when they really couldn’t handle having an extra child more. Zoe was being bullied for being a white girl in a predominately Asian school, which was resolved with (I swear this is true, despite sounding like something off the tv) well my dad drove onto the school playground, handbrake turned right in front of the group who were destroying my sister and slammed the guy onto his bonnet and promised that if he continued it was quite possible to be even more mental than he currently was being. To think if you did that now my dad would be in a maximum security category prison with rapists.
But yes, in short the eighties isn’t the image that’s always portrayed in film and television. You always seem to see people in shiny suits, carrying suitcase sized mobiles with slicked back hair. I think ‘This Is England’ shows a much more realistic idea of 80’s Britain. So the plot, a young boy who’s father has died in the Falklands finds solace and acceptance in a group of young skin head boys and girls. They go out, he feels accepted and begins to feel he has a place. The opening segment is interspersed with a blistering soundtrack and shockingly good cinematography, it makes the plane look idyllic. I think I was mostly impressed with this, he managed to make the everyday idiosyncrasies of life seem beautiful and have a grander feel to them, it hit home to me. I love the beauty of the fish and chip shot, the neon light. The underground walkway mosaics, the forgotten factories and brick walls. This tone doesn’t continue for long though as the calm is interrupted by the former gang leader, back from 3 years in prison and with a renewed passion for what’s right and what’s wrong. He’s decided that the immigrants influx into the country is the route of all the country’s problems and that he needs to “fight for it back”. He splits the group in two, half go, and half stay, unfortunately the young lad stays, seeing him as a sort of authoritive father figure almost. Moved by motivational talks by the National Front he soon collects a band of brothers, intent on cleansing his neighbourhood, which is quite shocking and thought provoking theatre. You notice the shots fade into grey as the story dwindles into this post fascism, and the previously peppy soundtrack moves into the deeply sensitive notes of Ludovico Einaudi. A modern day composer, and in my mind an utter genius, it was an extremely nice surprise to hear him, but his music sat extremely well with the story, bleak yet provocative, not content with you slipping away into the moment impassively like so many theatrical scores, it merely highlighted the ideas being put forward. The pre-curser to the ending of the film is extremely shocking, I was shocked, I didn’t see it coming and it was handled in a way that I was just silent afterwards. Combo (the old gang leader) invites Milky, a black gang member back to his, soon he moves onto questioning him, the questions turn into interrogation and soon overwhelmed by his answers and heavily drugged he brutally beats him to death in front of Shaun, before cowering over the body rocking and crying with him in his arms. The power that this scene can’t be palpitated, it’s immense, it’s an utter break down and violence like I’ve never seen on screen, even though you don’t see any of the blows. You see it from Milky’s perspective, and therefore is utterly harrowing as an experience to watch.
So yes, I’d recommend This Is England, it’s bloody ruddy good.
