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This Is England (2006)

Director: Shane Meadows

Time Out rating

Average user rating

5 reviews

Synopsis

A lonely 12-year-old boy finds solace and friendship in the company of a gang of skinheads.

Movie review

From Time Out London

‘This is England’ was the title under which Humphrey Jennings’s 10-minute paean to beleaguered but indomitable British pluck, ‘The Heart of Britain’, was presented in the US in 1941. After showing the wreckage of Coventry and life in the shadow of the Blitz, the narration forecast that ‘the Nazis will learn, once and for all, that no one with impunity troubles the heart of Britain’. As the opening montage of Shane Meadows’s new film makes clear, the heart of Britain was troubled in 1983. Cross-cutting between Roland Rat and Maggie Thatcher, rioting and the royal wedding, it’s a nifty scene-setter for a deft, heartfelt local story in which the nation is at a different kind of war, and violent bigotry is not an external threat but literally wraps itself in the flag.

Grieving a father lost in the Falklands, lonely 12-year-old Shaun (Thomas Turgoose) is taken under the wing of a local skinhead gang, which includes the dryly charismatic Woody (Joe Gilgun), appealingly dippy Smell (Rosamund Hanson) and cheerful Milky (Andrew Shim), whose parents are Caribbean. As in any pack, there are pecking orders and face-offs, but the generous-minded ‘spirit of ’69’ prevails – until the older Combo (Stephen Graham) returns from jail exuding the stench of aggressive racism, which can’t quite mask the whiff of something lost, desperate and sad. Soon there is speechifying; vulnerable spots are exploited, lines are drawn and a summer of happy belonging mutates into something darker.

With his Nottingham-centric trilogy (‘Twentyfourseven’, ‘A Room for Romeo Brass’ and ‘Once Upon a Time in the Midlands’) and 2004’s ‘Dead Man’s Shoes’, Meadows has created a body of unmistakably English work, but ‘This Is England’ is the first time nationalism has explicitly underpinned the action. Drawing on the director’s own experiences, the film offers assured insights into the pleasures and wages of tribalism, and the ease with which both the urge to belong and individual insecurities and resentments can be grievously spun into political capital. The St George cross initially seen on a poster of the England squad on Shaun’s bedroom wall becomes a coddling blanket of self-justification, then a badge of self-loathing.

If Shaun’s progress can feel a bit schematic and there’s the odd formal lapse into melodrama, these are outweighed by Meadows’s confident pacing and the superb performances of the young ensemble. Turgoose marvellously captures that awkward stage of early adolescence where a yearning for self-determination can’t quite stretch to independence – he goes to buy bovver boots with his mum – and Graham ensures that Combo is pitiable even at his most vile, while the rest of the gang – many of whom studied together – are relaxed, enjoyable company. The film also pays tribute to the music whose enjoyment initially marked skinheads as early adopters of multiculturalism. Even Combo retains his love of ska – a capacity for transcendence that rhymes with the scenes in Jennings’s film in which a Huddersfield choir sings Handel and Beethoven at the height of hostilities.

Author: Ben Walters 2006-10-25 16:55:15

Time Out London Issue 1914: April 25-May 1 2007

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User reviews of this film

Daz said...

Posted on Apr 08 2009 14:30 It's a great film, of that there's no doubt, but I do have to agree with Srew. If it's gritty it's always set in the north. gangland or business - london. The rest of the country - middle class and probably slightly 'quirky.' But it IS a great film, for all that.

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Jack and Sam Know All said...

Posted on Feb 12 2008 03:55 Interesting what Srew said or whatever your name is.
British Grit has been the drive of British film for decades but not the only one as you pointed out.
But working class films evoke so much more emotion than soppy British shit like 4 Weddings or Love Actually. I write quite alot of scripts for fun and cover other issues. This Is England focuses on the political grounds of the 1980's and does so very well. stop complaining about films that have'nt been made yet or don't cover certian issues you want covered. Independant films do so much more than mainstream anyhow and distributors have little interest in films that won't make money or attract audiences.
Rant Over. Good Film.......go see.

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srew said...

Posted on Nov 25 2007 03:27 Humphrey Jennings also made films and wrote books on a great variety of topics. Yet British films are always either about northern youth/music/drugs/violenace/working class real life or endearing/quirky/middle class sitcom (usually in London), so this is just another to add to the cliché pile. No doubt there will be hundreds more dreary copycat films to follow for the next decade.

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Technoguy said...

Posted on Oct 26 2007 12:46 A good film covering an inflammable period and subject. The opening montage alone is worth the price of entry, also the use of soul and ska music in some scenarios. Shane Meadows has covered contoversial material before eg Dead Man's Shoes, which was a brilliant but grim film. Again he is able to look into the tribalism and nationalism that expressed itself in the skinhead movement. the earlier integrated, multicultural phase and a later more extremist National Front offshoot, both shown by young Shaun's influence by Woody and later Combo. We can feel which side the director is on without him saying so. The young Shaun and the female characters are well acted. The only cricism is the film ends somewhat irresolutely.

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tommy bell said...

Posted on Jul 20 2007 20:42 it looks brilliant i cant wait till i see it

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