Keeping it Realist: Shane Meadows’ This is England ’86 is the Best Kind of Gritty

My last couple of posts (on Ping and The American) were rather harsh, so this time instead I am going to write about something that I have fallen in love with – Shane Meadow’s 4-part drama This is England ’86 broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK. This series, which follows a group of friends making the difficult transition from adolescence to adulthood in Thatcherite Britain, is a continuation of the characters first introduced in Meadow’s breakthrough 2006 film This is England. Using the same actors playing the same characters, the series picks up 3 years after the film ended. Whereas in the film the gang of friends were proud skinheads, they have grown up a bit and are less fully devoted to the subculture that defined their youth. Despite these superficial changes, they maintain their fun-loving, strength through adversity attitudes. Furthermore, while the film tended to focus on racial issues (specifically the division between the original style skinheads and racist skinheads), the series really branches out and looks into a range social issues of the mid-1980s.

Only three-quarters of the way through the series Meadows has already explored issues as varied as marriage, love, death, poverty, loss, rape, unemployment, infidelity, domestic violence and child molestation. Yet, the fact that characters deal with these issues simultaneously is believable – not only possible, but fully plausible. The lives of the characters in This is England/This is England ’86 are not full of sunshine and tulips – they are anything but. Their prospects are bleak, their pasts are dark and like the generations that came before them they are searching for ways to cope. Sometimes they do the wrong thing, but surprisingly frequently they try to do the right one. Refreshingly, unlike so much of so-called realist television and film this coping (at least at this point) hasn’t involved drug addiction (because not every single person with a difficult life becomes a drug addict). Most of the time they are able to find solace in each other – in football games, impromptu parties, watching television at the pub – and when they can’t they have the good sense to realize they need to find it in themselves.

This is not pretty television. It isn’t Degrassi or Coronation Street. The problems that these characters face will not be wrapped up by the end of the series. They may never be wrapped up. This is a snapshot more than a narrative – like all things there is a beginning, but there isn’t a clear-cut middle or end. This is real life – loose ends, abrupt changes, driftings apart and coalescences. These characters don’t ask for your sympathy not because they are afraid of vulnerability but because they don’t want it. They are not victims of their circumstances but humans with agency and autonomy. They do not define themselves by the craziness that surrounds them but by their response to it.

What I particularly love about This is England ’86 is that it has been able to really explore the whole core gang of friends, rather than follow a single character, as the film did with Shaun. In fact, as we find out at the beginning of the first installment, Shaun hasn’t been part of the group since the end of the film and it is only as the series develops does he rejoin the fold. But, just as in real life, the fit is never quite as it had been before. Where the film constructs Shaun as a character worthy of sympathy above and beyond the others, the series knocks Shaun right off that pedestal by revealing that his life is really no worse, nor any better, than those of the rest of the gang. Everyone is in the same leaky boat, and they all need to work equally hard to keep it afloat.

I know that Meadows has been attacked by some film critics and individuals who see themselves as cultural connoisseurs for following up his critically acclaimed film on television screens. They imply that he is lowering himself (because in their world television is film’s cheap and broken younger sibling) and polluting the form among other things, though their thinly veiled core complaint is that he is making excellent film material which is accessible to the masses. There is a certain irony in their criticism, and this is part of the reason why I am so supportive of Meadows decision to follow up with Channel 4.

This is England is a film about the populous, the working class. It is a film about those people for whom going to the cinema (even without getting popcorn) is a treat not a routine. It is about the type of people who in the 1980s would have been watching the excellent films being made by and aired on Channel 4 – films like My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears, 1985) and Distant Voices Still Lives (Terence Davies, 1988) which have gone on to become cult classics the world over. In a way, the only logical next step for Meadows was to bring This is England to television, to where its characters would have lived and to where those who identify with them still do. Though I like a good piece of cinema as much as the next former film student, I like a good story more and this is what Meadows is working with here – a story too good not to be told to everyone. I only hope that more filmmakers will follow his footsteps and reinvigorate the substance of filmmaking over coming years, even if it might mean a few minor sacrifices in form.

That I highly recommend watching this series is likely quite obvious by now, but I would also recommend that you watch the film before the series as it really does give you the overview of who everyone is and how they relate to one another (it is also a fantastic film in its own right). Great job Shane Meadows, cast, crew and Channel 4. I can’t wait to see what you have in store for the finale next week.

Film Trailer:

This is England ’86 Promo:

Pedestal Displacement: Corbijn’s The American Falls Short

Anton Corbijn became my favourite photographer the day I first saw his band shots of iconic English post-punk rockers Joy Division. It was 1998 and I was only 9 or 10 at the time. I don’t remember the specific date, but I do remember that once I saw the video for Joy Dvision’s “Atmosphere” about 4 years later when I was 14, it was more than just playing favourites. It was love.

I didn’t fall in love with Anton Corbijn, the man, but I fell in love with his imagery. I fell in love with the way he used shadows and light. I loved that he shot in mostly black and white. I loved the way he places subjects in his frames in a way that drew out not only the best of the humans, but the power of their surroundings. But most of all I loved the way that he seemed to be able to capture ‘cool’. Of course, it was his music photography that my younger self was almost exclusively interested in, with all of its broodiness and confident insecurities.

It took an additional 5 years before Corbijn could legitimately claim the title of my favourite director. It was fall 2007, I was 19 and had just started in my first year of the film program at Carleton University in Ottawa when Control, Corbijn’s first feature film, came to a theatre near me. There was nothing about it I couldn’t love. It was a biopic, and one about another one of my artistic heroes (Joy Division’s late lyricist Ian Curtis) at that. It was shot beautifully and all in black and white. The whole film has the same feel as not just Corbijn’s early music photography, but seems to capture the essence of what Joy Division was. It wasn’t just lauded by me, but by critics the English-speaking world over. It won BAFTAs, there were Oscar rumours and it was making top 10 lists everywhere.

As I walked out of the theatre on that cold fall night, I knew that Anton Corbijn was now my favourite director. That’s right, with just one actual film under his belt, Corbijn surpassed all others in my mind. It was perfect. He was perfect. He was rock photography royalty who shot in black and white, I had to go to the Bytowne* to see his film and, best of all, he was foreign. Anton Corbijn is tailor-made to be a keen first year film student’s response to the oft-asked “Who’s your favourite director?” question and better than many of my other one-time favourite people, Corbijn was able to retain this position for years (if you don’t count a 2 month affair with equally-film student friendly Werner Herzog).

At least that was until I saw Corbijn’s second film, The American, last night. Sorry Mr. Corbijn, but I just don’t think that there is a place for you in my film hero circle anymore.

This isn’t to say that The American is a horrible, or even a poor film. It isn’t. It just simply is not up to snuff. This also isn’t to say that I’ve written off Corbijn completely. I haven’t and I am eagerly anticipating the day he knocks my socks off with his next film so that I can justify that pedestal that I had placed him on for the last 3 years.

The American is a beautifully shot film, but it’s beauty isn’t so great that it is able to overshadow the agonizing (and not in a good way) slowness of the pace of the story. The actors involved (including George Clooney) performed excellently, but the acting could not cancel out the staleness of the plot. I like assassin/spy films as much as the next person (actually probably a whole lot more), but there are only so many scenarios that can, or have been, explored. Unfortunately a tall, gorgeous, mysterious American/British man on the run in Europe, hiding out while on his final mission, just doesn’t do anything for me anymore.

This underwhelming assessment of the film doesn’t even take into consideration the gratuitous nudity. I prefer to think of myself as gymnophobic* rather than a prude, but either way you spin it, I’m not a fan of naked people. It’s not as though I would discount or rate poorly a film just because it has nudity in it, but when I see a film with nakedness, I do like to be warned. I’m sorry, but when the sign outside the theatre gives the film a PG rating and even the ticket only says 14A, I shouldn’t have to be prepared for full frontal female nudity. Leaving aside the fact that full frontal male nudity is an automatic 18A, constituting a pretty significant double standard (something I may discuss more at length in another post), this is pretty peculiar.

Even if there had been warning, the nudity in this film is over-the-top, gratuitous to the point of distracting from what little plot actually existed. I understand that given that there is a romantic plot line between Clooney’s character and a prostitute, and that according to film industry standards, because of this some nudity would be necessary. But, the amount of naked lady that could have been considered necessary is far less than the (what seemed like) at least 10 minutes of boobs and more in the film.

In the end, The American failed not because it was bad but because it simply wasn’t extremely good. It’s unfortunate, but when a director’s first film is amazing, as Control undoubtedly was, this first film becomes the standard by which that director will be judged for the remainder of their career. In this case with a recycled plot, poor pacing and an overall lack of originality, Corbijn fell flat. I really wish it wasn’t so, but all I can do is hope it was just an example of the dreaded sophomore slump.

A final note for Mr. Corbijn: Though I can’t possibly call you my favourite director at this moment, I really am rooting for you. That top spot is open and all yours for the re-taking.

* Bytowne is the name of one of two independent theatres in Ottawa and tends to screen limited release and foreign films. For more information please visit http://www.bytowne.ca/.

* Gymnophobia – An abnormal and persistent fear of nudity, not, as would be suggested by it’s looks, a fear of going to the gym. I like the gym, hate the changing rooms. Simply another one of my totally irrational fears.

Midnight Musings: Art and the Unknown Self

When I have been asked to comment upon the nature of art over the past few years, I have often retreated into a discussion of the ‘artist’. Rather than entering into value judgements or statements of preference (something I feel uncomfortable with when experiencing art), I explain that there is a profound difference between someone who creates art and an artist, but that both contributions are equal and necessary. Those who create art do so because of an innate human desire to express themselves, to share their creativity with the world. Artists on the other hand have a deep personal need to create, desire is left completely out of the equation.

Artists create art because they have no other choice – to not create would mean implosion. The art that results is not a painting, song, story or film but a tangle of thoughts, emotions, dreams, imaginings and things entirely unknown both to those experiencing the finished art and to the artist him or herself. The artist cares little about how the world receives this art because they know that whether it is loved by many or few (or whether it is loved at all) it needs to exist. The artist may or may not feel this need to create consciously – creation could come easily or it could be greatly pained. The key is that while an artist is a vessel for art, someone who creates art is allowed to be an agent.

Though this is how I have explained ‘the artist’ for a few years now, I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve only really begun to fully understand this positioning. I think I may have spent the last two weeks as an artist, or at least how I’ve described an artist. I don’t say this boastfully or in sadness. Rather, it is something said humbly, meekly and with great trepidation as I feel like at this particular point in time it is something I have no control over.

As a child, I never dreamed of becoming an artist (I wanted to be a doctor or a professional athlete). Even now, I have never asked to be an artist. Though I’ve been introduced as a filmmaker or a musician (or sometimes both) I’ve never felt comfortable accepting those titles as anything more than labels of convenience (what else can you call somebody who makes films for a living or music) than truth. Rather becoming an artist feels like something that has been thrust upon me, a beautiful weight. Just as the element of choice is fully divorced from the creation of art by an artist, the element of choice plays no role in the creation of the artist. To be an artist is a tremendous gift, but it is also can be an inescapable burden. I have no idea whether this is a short-term condition or a life sentence. All I do know for sure is that these are decisions that are not up to me.

Over the past two weeks I have had this incredible surge of creative energy that has taken over my every waking moment as well as my dreams. And while I’ve been able to still function at my dayjob (somewhat), I’ve spent my nights writing more than I’ve ever written in my entire life – not just prose but songs, poetry, essays and ramblings as well as something larger, more structured that I think could be the script for my next film. Even more than writing I’ve been thinking, a whirlwind of thoughts coalescing into a giant jumble where every piece that I decipher feels like magic – an image waiting to be committed to film or a melody just waiting to be played.

Given the slump I have had recently in terms of short film ideas, on one level this surge is exhilarating and relieving, but on another deeper level it is a little frightening. It’s a tap that’s impossible to turn off, day or night and while sometimes I strain to plug it, I am mostly running for empty bucket after empty bucket, determined not to let any go to waste. For as suddenly as it emerged it will disappear, with no indication of when, or if, it will return.

I’m not sure to what extent the product of this time will be shared with the wider world. The overflowing stacks of paper, musical notation and storyboards need to be sifted through. I’m not sure if any of it is any good, especially the songs (as my band-mates point out I’m a drummer by training so the quality must be somewhat dubious), but this doesn’t matter to me as much as it once would have. Just the simple fact that whatever all of this energy is – all these thoughts and words and ideas – I am glad that it is being released, being allowed an existence outside of myself. As uncomfortable as it may be at times, I am just grateful to have had this experience at all. To be able to create – to capture the beauty in the simple things and the complex, to glimpse the magic in things that we can see or hear or feel or touch as well as those things that we can not conceive of – is a gift. If this all ends tomorrow and I never have a creative surge like this ever again, at least I know that I have not let this opportunity slip by unclaimed and that is enough to overcome most of my fears.

Harry Brown

Last week I bunked off work early to go see a film, one of the benefits of flex hours. I went to the theatre with no film in mind and picked Harry Brown simply on the basis that I had heard nothing about it. Perhaps because I had heard nothing about it, my expectations were pretty low (especially after seeing Michael Caine in “Is Anybody There?). This film not only easily surpassed my expectations, but also won a place in my top 10 of 2010 list.

I think that ideally those interested in seeing it should do so without gathering any plot information beforehand. Therefore, I won’t reveal any of the plot. However what I will say is that the film strikes a delicate balance between emotion and grit, between an airbrushed reality and a darker one. Michael Caine’s performance was excellent, but the real standout for me was Plan B (the rapper not the quicker fixer-upper) aka Ben Drew. I’ve seen him in a few things before, but this was the first time that he has been able to hold his own. I think that to do so alongside actors of such calibre as Michael Caine and Emily Mortimer is a particular accomplishment. I look forward to seeing more of him on screen in the future.