Film
This Is England
- Director
- Shane Meadows
- Certificate
- 15
- Running Time
- 103 mins
Back in 2007 – and not for the first time – the BBFC got it horribly wrong in slapping an 18 certificate on Shane Meadows’ masterpiece, which went on to spawn a hit TV series. In typical hand-wringing liberal stylee, they decided that children need to be protected from the unmediated racist attitudes expressed by some of the characters. As censorious millennials and our old friends on the hard left would put it, the film certainly “gives a platform” to these ugly views. But it’s not clear how the BBFC imagines such a drama could be made acceptable for viewing by under-18s. Presumably a Guardian reader would need to be present at NF meetings to deliver a point-by-point rebuttal. Only in Bristol can This Is England be seen by its target audience, thanks to enlightened reclassification by the City Council. But it always deserved to be shown and discussed in every classroom in the land.
Opening brilliantly with a nostalgic ‘I Love the 80s’-style montage (space invaders, the Royal Wedding, Rubik’s Cube) which eventually settles on the less savoury side of that most unlovely of decades (Thatch, the Falklands, NF thuggery), Meadows’ autobiographical tale whisks us back to the meticulously recreated summer of 1983 in a region that we rarely see on screen except in the works of Uttoxeter’s Martin Scorsese: a grim coastal town filled with pebbledashed terraces, illiterate graffiti, crappy shopping centres and shitty cafes. Having lost his dad in the Falklands War, vulnerable 12-year-old Shaun (Thomas Turgoose) is adopted by Woody’s (Joe Gilgun) skinhead gang, discovering the joys of parties, DMs, the number one haircut, and snogging a punk girl with Janet Street-Porter vowels who’s delightfully known as Smell (Rosamund Hanson). But the atmosphere changes with the arrival from jail of manipulative and threatening older skinhead Combo (Stephen Graham), whose racist agenda proves especially problematic for black kid Milky (Andrew Shim).
As in his earlier work, Meadows’ sense of place, effortless command of group dynamics, and ability to wring wholly convincing performances from non-professionals, especially young Thomas Turgoose as the troubled kid in search of a surrogate father, pays rich dividends as he explores convincingly and unflinchingly the corrosive lure of far-right politics to disaffected, unemployed, working class youth. Even Combo is undemonised, racism merely providing an opportunity for the expression of his all-consuming rage and jealousy.
It’s back on screen to conclude the Watershed’s epic Of Grudge and Gumption: British Working Class on Film Sunday brunch season.
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