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.