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This is England Like Meadows’ previous work on A Room For Romeo Brass, This is England is a touching coming of age story, wrapped up in something altogether more sinister. Newcomer Thomas Turgoose plays Shaun, a fatherless eleven year old boy growing up in a typical suburban town in the Midlands at the beginning of the eighties. Shane Meadows clearly has a knack for perfectly capturing times and places, so it’s remarkable that this is his first ‘period’ film. I’ve never seen a more convincing picture painted of the England I grew up in than here—from the giant fried-egg jelly sweets, to the haircuts, to the NF graffiti daubed on the walls of corner shops and public toilets. Make no mistake: This is England is not a sentimental portrait of halcyon days gone by, but neither is it a gloomy picture of life in a depressed country.
The production clearly shows a great affection for the period, the music, the clothes, the now almost shocking way that kids wore their allegiances on their sleeves—Skins, Casuals, New Romantics, Punks, Mods—and there’s clearly an even greater affection for Turgoose: a ‘troubled’ kid expelled from school and diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder, who captured the crew’s attention by demanding payment for his auditions. The attitude and sheer front of Turgoose shines through in Shaun, who began life as a nearly autobiographical portrait of Meadows, but who the director partially rewrote around his young protegé. That’s some compliment to the youngster.
The brilliance of ‘Tommo’s performance is not conditional on him being an unknown or having personal problems, it’s quite simply the best and most natural performance by a child actor I’ve ever seen.
The first act of the film deals with establishing young Shaun as a bit of a loner, with few friends to speak of and more front than Scarborough. A chance meeting with Woody (Joseph Gilgun) and his skins in an underpass after a particularly troubled school day leads to Shaun finally finding somewhere to plant his flag and gain some friends and allies. All is well and good until an old acquaintance of Woodys turns up one evening and changes everything. Combo (Stephen Graham) is angry. Angry at the lot he’s been dealt in life, angry at the government and angry that ‘his’ country and ‘his’ identity is being taken from him by immigrants and foreigners.
Combo’s effect on the group of friends is to split them into the people who are in it for a laugh, and those who are in it for acceptance and because they’ve lost their way. Shaun’s search for a father figure draws him in to Combo’s world of the National Front, and before you know it, the sweet cheeky kid has turned into a sweet cheeky kid making mistakes and misjudgments at every turn. Meadows’ willingness to confront issues from his past without excuses and sentimentalism should be commended, and earn him the plaudits he so richly deserves. At no point is any character portrayed as simple and one-dimensional, and even though you know things are going to get nasty, you can’t help but hold out hope for all the characters.
A special mention must be made for Stephen Graham, whose performance is absolutely astonishing. Actors are often heard saying it’s easy to play ‘bad guys’, but outside of comic-book stories, ‘bad guys’ are incredibly difficult to play convincingly without lapsing into caricature, and Graham’s Combo is an utterly convincing portrayal of a fragile, defensive and scared man unwilling to give up on the only thing that gives him a sense of purpose. If Graham isn’t recognised for what should be a career defining performance, then something is deeply wrong with the film world.
The questions raised and issues confronted by Meadows in this film are as relevant today as they would have been in 1983. Is it possible to witness a kid calling a shopkeeper a ‘paki bastard’ and not think of him as a senseless, mindless, nasty piece-of-work? Can good people do bad things and remain essentially good? Can people fundamentally change?
This is England is a masterpiece, a complex yet paradoxically simple character study about growing up and learning not about right and wrong, but about motivations and personal strength. It’s the story of a lost, strong and fiercely determined boy looking for safety and meaning in life, then finding it in all the wrong places. Shane Meadows’ place should now be cemented as the best, most daring and most original British film-maker working today, and I really couldn’t recommend it enough.
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