This is England Shane Meadows UK 2006
English national identity can be summarised by the clash between those who prefer to use the Union Jack flag as opposed to the St George Cross. The Union Jack represents the United Kingdom; the St George’s Cross represents England alone. I use this as a lead into Shane Meadow’s latest This is England because the film is all about English nationalism in the 1980s, and the St George’s Cross is used a lot as opposed to the flag of the union, the Union Jack.
The dilemma is that I can only remember the St George’s Cross being widely used since the 1990s UK resurgence of popular interest in football. I can’t assert that groups like the National Front didn’t use the St George’s Cross back in the 1980s but I’m sceptical they did especially in light of the major use of the Union Jack at events like the Royal Wedding and the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. This possible clash of past and present representations of England marks cracks in Meadow’s otherwise superb semi-autobiographical film.
Sure enough the plot is predicable but Meadow’s tells it with such warmth and characterisation that jibes against it are almost irrelevant. It’s 1983 and eleven year old Sean (Thomas Turgoose) who lives alone with his mother has just moved to a new neighbourhood in the English midlands after the death of his father in the Falklands. With his old flares and mop-top haircut he becomes an object of ridicule at school but is befriended by Woody and his gang of skinheads. Despite the negative image of skinheads these guys are really a good bunch, who look after him. Unfortunately the negative image of skinheads arrives one night in the form of Combo (Stephen Graham), Woody’s old friend who has just been released from prison. A straight-out racist Combo splits the group of friends with his views leading those who follow him to increasing levels of extremism and violence.
It all starts off steeped in 1980s nostalgia with the appropriate period trappings (costume, pop music and snippets of Roland Rat and Blockbusters) and has Sean transform into a mini-skinhead in the company of Woody and the others stomping around with his new friends after getting his head shaved in a similar sort of way to Quadrophenia (where they look back at the 1960s from the 1980s, a similar 20 year gap to This is England). Sean even finds time to go out with the much older and considerably dappy Smell, a New Romantic who lives in a conspicuously more middle class house than all her friends.
However fun they may be having though dressing up as skinheads carry some hefty negatives that swiftly catch up with Sean souring the good natured nostalgia with something nasty. Needless to say the bad things are also present from the 1980s, notably The Falklands War which took Sean’s father and is then used by Combo to guilt him towards nationalistic sympathies and acts.
Thomas Turgoose as Sean holds the film together charmingly as the fundamentally decent kid caught up in events. His Sean means well but owing to circumstances can’t quite understand why he has lost his dad. The real clincher though is Stephen Graham as the racist agitator Combo. It would have been facile to write the character off as yet another two-tone bigot but Meadow’s and Graham give Combo soul. Aside from all the senseless thuggery Combo is capable of eloquent speech making (his line speech in the flat) and later still he is given a fragile side with his unrequited feelings for Lol (Woody’s girlfriend played by Vicky McClure) who rejects him outright. Even the final bout of violence that the film leads up to Combo empathises with Milk (the group’s black member) over a joint. His subsequent attack is fuelled by jealously of Milk’s strong family life as much as it is by racism and it isn’t just restricted to Milk – some of the others get hit too.
Just as the use of flags creates problems so does the depiction of racism and the response to it. All the coloured characters are mostly blameless and tolerant themselves which isn’t necessarily a problem in isolation. However when Combo first arrives on the scene (an unforgettably awkward party gatecrash) and tells a racist prison story some of Woody’s gang are overly-uncomfortable to an over-hyped extent by Meadows. He scans around the uncomfortable faces at the party picking out their unease. Meadows avoids the big pitfall by making Sean stick with Combo but all the other characters who don’t stick with Combo initially have their offence severely overplayed. The focus is Sean’s arc so Meadows generally gets away with it but the feeling, alongside the use of the flags, is that perhaps modern post-millennial sensibilities are being forced into the period setting. People have always fought racism but the contrast jars diminishing an otherwise excellent film with the feeling that’s its some lame lesson in racism.
In contrast to other more recent period set British comedy nostalgic films (East is East, Billy Elliot etc) This is England actually uses its more serious themes fully putting Shane Meadows in a very different place altogether to the stock works of Film Four or PolyGram. The drama and comedy don’t play out to the backdrop of some 1980s social issue, they are much more integrated preserving audience accessibility through the regular chumminess of Meadow’s characters. There may be problems with perspective but perhaps the nearness of the subject matter to Meadows himself has caused this. Regardless, it’s the best Meadows film in a while.
