This Is England

I really enjoyed this realist film, set in 1983, depicting the life of a down-trodden twelve year-old boy who becomes involved in a Nationalist campaign to reclaim England for the English. I could not believe it was made as recently as 2006. Somehow I had got the notion that this was an older classic made not too long after the time that it was set so my surprise was great indeed on discovering it was a recent retrospect on this period of history. This proves one thing; it has captured that time very successfully without the filmmaking distracting or hindering the story in any way. The same was true of the performances. Not once did I think, “Great acting”. These people were as real as the setting and I’m convinced this could not have been achieved without this director who actually lived through similar experiences and is such a mover of British realism; Shane Meadows.

Thankfully British realist films are another genre, again because of the low-budget, that we here in Britain are actually quite good at. I’d be worried if we weren’t! However, realism is a limited platform in that the most it can ever hope to do is realistically depict a specific society and then highlight the flaws in that situation, and also the positives. I can find this frustrating because in my opinion films, like any good art or literature, should be presenting truths and then suggesting solutions to the problems and ultimately offering hope. If they do not then what is the point? What are they adding to the world? What are they saying? Why even watch them? Social realist films can get away without doing this because they are often simply displaying truth and saying, “That’s how it was”. I got a slight sense of this in This Is England regarding its theme of racism which is a big issue to tackle and very relevant; so it was brave of Meadows. The topic was being served, tasted and chewed but it never went deep enough to enable us to relate it to ourselves just now; or indeed to enable humanity in whatever time or place to swallow and digest some meaningful message of hope.

Its strengths were in how real and familiar it looked and, more importantly, felt. There is a real power to the scrutiny of the real world on the big screen. This Is England led us through humour, sorrow, excitement and anxiety; a real kaleidoscope of emotions. I would definitely like to make a social realist film, though it would have to be about a world that I knew very well indeed… let’s think… the Academy? Who knows!!