Joe Wright, Atonement

I've lost the precise reason why I was interested in seing this - although I need to note that I have not now nor have I ever seen The English Patient but I think we're in the same ballpark. I really wanted to see This is England on a big screen, rather than on a dodgy DVD and given the bus ride to UoK it seemed simple to get there early to ensure a ticket which it turned out wasn't in short supply. We'll leave to one side the curse of the return ticket which is not transferable between two companies. I saw it in the general vicinity of peake, brisingamen wisely hiding in the library because of the gruesome bits.

It's based on an Ian McEwan book which has been out for ages although I've not read this one, but even so, ( here be spoilers )

Shane Meadows, This is England

There was a point when Shane Meadows was going to be the next big thing in British cinema – and his 24-7 was certainly a very effecting story of working class life set around a boxing club which reminded us that Bob Hoskins can actually act. But the black and white movie didn’t put bums on seats and the rest of Meadows’s Nottingham trilogy - A Room for Romeo Brass and Once Upon a Time in the Midlands didn’t impinge of me in the same way. I gather the use of a bigger cast (Robert Carlyle, Rhys Ifans, Ricky Tomlinson and so forth) meant creative compromises that drove him away from features. Then his mate Paddy Considine (the journalist in The Bourne Ultimatum) persuaded him to make the revenge movie Dead Man’s Shoes, which certainly suggested a return to form, although I liked the previous two when I caught up with the DVDs.

This is England sees a return to the hype, its title piggybacking on an old Humphrey Jennings documentary from the Second World War. Of course, this is the semi-autobiographical account of young Shaun who is twelve in 1983 and who falls in with a group of punks. Critics love semi-autobiographical. I’m sure Mark Bloody Lawson sat there asking, “Is this bit true?”. It’s meant to be Nottingham and specifically St Anns – although I think Meadows was more connected to (nearby) Sneinton – but there is a nearby stretch of beach (apparently Grimsby – which also featured in Atonement - despite money from Screen Yorkshire which presumably subsidised it).

An opening montage shows us Roland Rat, Thatcher, Charles and Di, the Falklands (Shaun’s father died in the campaign) and it does risk falling into a nostalgia for the past that I think Atonement courted in its Merchant Ivory does Dunkirk kind of way. But then I’m about Meadows’s age and spent time in that area up to the age of 12. It feels all very real – emphasised by a sense of documentary film making (Meadows uses a lot of improvisation).

First Shaun falls among a group of skinheads who look after him and induct him into their gang, but then this gang is split by the return of the imprisoned Combo, who pushes a National Front agenda. Watching this, I became aware how uncomfortable I’ve felt over the last few years with the re-emergence of ths St George’s flag during football tournaments. I think I have this Pavlovian association of it with racists – although I see the point of people like Billy Bragg who want to reclaim Englishness from such scum. I found it very uncomfortable to watch, and the climax – which depends upon a sort of cultural double-mindedness which embraces and rejects the multi-cultural – is certainly so.

Thomas Turgoose’s performance as Shaun is astounding, I don’t think he puts a foot wrong throughout. He looks like he’s living the life. The gang do well, and Frank Harper as the NF candidate has a nasty cameo. I think the weak link is the mother character who has little to do – switching in one scene from telling them off for Shaun’s shaven head and then leaving the kid with them. I’m not sure Meadows can yet do rounded female characters.

Any way, enjoy isn’t the right word, obviously, but one of the films of the year for me. I must send off for the box sets of shorts that’s available.