Recent trends in British Social Realism: the films of Shane Meadows

                  In this essay I propose to examine the films of contemporary filmmaker Shane Meadows in relation to recent trends in British Social Realism. I will initially outline the lineage of contemporary post 'Brit-Grit' films that Meadows' works are a part of, tracing them back to their traditional British social realist roots and thus placing the films within their historical context. Additionally, I will address the difficulties in classifying contemporary British realist films. Although it is easy to 'run together differing forms of film-making practice' in the case of traditional and contemporary social realist modes of film-making and to 'identify this as a relatively unbroken tradition' (Hill 2000: 249), it is not only their continuities, but discontinuities which need to be examined. As Samantha Lay comments, 'there are a number of issues and questions, changes and developments that need to be addressed… in relation to British social realism. First and foremost it might be fruitful to re-consider the term 'British social realism'' (Lay 2002: 120). 'British Cinema has indeed had an enduring relationship with social realism… [it] has been a major mode of expression in British screen culture that continues to this day' (Lay 2002: 2) but 'whilst certain well-established conventions have been maintained, some have been transformed and transmuted. In addition, the hybridity in form and style, and the shifts in terms of themes, issues and representations, pose new questions for British social realism' (Lay 2002: 99).

                  I will attempt to tackle some of these questions by addressing the ways in which Meadows' works are representative of the 'shifts' that Lay describes, examining primarily how he moves away from public and direct political engagement, towards a more private and personal one. Unlike middle-class British New Wave directors such as Tony Richardson and John Schlesinger and renowned social realist film-makers Ken Loach and Mike Leigh who 'could only respond to a moment they helped construct but did not live' (Lay 2002:112), ‘Meadows comes from the community whose stories he is telling’ (Macnab 1998).

              Lay cites Gary Oldman's Nil by Mouth (1997), a 'semi-autobiographical tale of a working class family' as an example of a contemporary social realist work. She asserts that this is 'new and refreshing' (Lay 2002: 112), having been made by an insider, 'someone who has actually come from not only the background, but the actual locations used in the film' (Lay 2002: 112). I posit that Shane Meadows, like Oldman, also produces work which is 'new and refreshing' due to his status as a native insider. In looking at Meadows' A Room For Romeo Brass (1999), Somers Town (2008) and This Is England (2006), I intend to explore how his personal connection with the characters and environments he depicts informs his directorial style and approach, resulting in captivating, and realistic insights into the lives of his complex, disturbing, but ultimately endearing (underclass) characters.

Transmutations and Transformations: From New Wave Cinema to Contemporary Social Realism

                  From the twentieth century onwards there has been a long-standing tradition of social realist film-making in British Cinema. Deriving 'from a variety of cultural and political assumptions about the workings of society and the role within society that cinema should play' (Hill 2000: 250), early forms of British social realism (namely the Free Cinema of the 1950s, and the subsequent British New Wave cycle of the 1960s) were born out of a 'fascination with traditional working class culture and the ambition to represent what is contemporary about contemporary Britain' (Lacey 1995:167).

                  Counterposed to mainstream Hollywood cinema with its claims to having what Higson describes as a 'surface realism, an iconography which authentically reproduces the visual and aural surfaces of the 'British way of life' and a 'moral realism... involv[ing] a moral commitment to a particular set of social problems and solutions, a particular social formation' (Higson 1996: 136) (two attributes which are inevitably tied), British social realist cinema was heavily influenced by the documentary movement of the 1930s and 1940s. Key figure of this movement, John Grierson, set up documentary film units whose productions were aimed at educating audiences about social and political issues. As Higson comments, 'the moral force of [the] regime of representation' in British social realism 'is really a reworking of the sociological, propagandist strand in the documentary movement of the 1930s (Higson, 1986; and 1995: 176ff.) with its rhetoric of social responsibility, of education and instruction' (Higson 1996: 137).

                  For social realist filmmakers with an ideology aligned to that behind the documentary mode, 'film should not merely reflect the surface realities of everyday life, but should penetrate that surface to reveal human truths’ (Lay 2002: 62). The concern for a documentary-style 'moral realism', however, brings about a 'resistance to the more self-consciously aesthetic strand in the movement' (Higson 1996: 137). Representing 'human truths' on screen is more problematic for the social realist film (with its fictional narrative) than for the documentary; cinematic 'claims for realism are invariably multivalent' (Higson 1996: 135) due to the tension between fictional narratives and the real. It is this tension which initially 'left a residual sense of the aesthetic, the stylistic, as a problem in British film culture' (Higson 1996: 137).  Higson notes the conflict between ''documentary realism' and 'romantic atmosphere'; between social problem and pleasurable spectacle'' (Higson 1996: 134) but aptly comments on how, 'within the Griersonian discourses of the 1930s' there was also, in fact, an underlying poetic aestheticism, 'involv[ing] a more perfect conjunction of surface realism and moral realism, a conjunction which in fact transcends ordinariness, which makes the ordinary strange, beautiful - poetic' (Higson 1996: 137).

                  This point serves to remind us that there has always been an ongoing dialectic between the realist and more poetic discourses in play within the social realist mode, and that the term 'social realism' itself is one which has a fluid, rather than fixed meaning, with its modes and cycles overlapping and interlinking. Although 'on the surface, British cinema and art cinema appear incompatible' (Forrest 2009: 191), New Wave (and post New Wave) filmmaking practices are, in fact, very much aligned to art cinema approaches.

The social realist mode, and British New Wave cinema in particular, is renowned for its 'long and meditative treatments of urban space' (Forrest 2009). Professing themselves to be realist, the representation of space and place is of foremost significance, fulfilling the function of putting the narrative in its historical perspective and authenticating the fictional world. According to Higson, 'the significance of the film is not so much its story as the reality of its events. This emphasis on place in - or against - the narrative historicizes the narrative' (Higson 1996: 140).Whilst the emotional interactions between characters are at the core of Meadows' films, the representation of place and space works to accentuate the inner emotional states of the individuals. However, although his stance as a regional film-maker (he shoots on location in industrial towns, council estates and working-class areas, generally employing local actors) renders the importance of place within his films, his settings have not so much historicising roles as psychologising ones. Higson remarks how the 'relationship of landscape and character is in effect psychological: it is not just that the character is in the landscape, but that the landscape becomes part of the character' (Higson 1996: 144). In this way, place becomes 'a signifier of character, a metaphor for the state of mind of the protagonists' (Higson 1996: 134). Shane Meadows' work is illustrative of this, epitomising the hybridity of form and style in social realist filmmaking, and the synthesis between social realist and arthouse practices; as Forrest points out, 'just as in the New Wave, Meadows interrupts the apparent realist texture of his film with a stylistic flourish that demands interpretation on a more poetic level' (Forrest 2009: 196/7). 

                  This more poetic visual treatment of space is evident in Somers Town, Meadows' first production to be set outside the Midlands. Having been approached by advertising company Mother to conceive a short film to mark the new Eurostar service from Kings Cross St Pancras in London, Meadows was initially wary about attaching himself to a corporately-funded project. However, after reading the script written by Paul Fraser, and having been granted free reign to make the film without corporate interference, he agreed to take the project on. Whilst this move was met with cynicism, the premise for the film criticised as being glorified promotional material for Eurostar, Sandhu points out how ‘the film isn’t tattooed with logos. Its dialogue is plug-free [and] it's a far cry from Hollywood product placement’ (Sandhu 2008). Whilst its location in its geographical namesake renders its physical difference from Meadows’ previous films and historicises it to some degree, Somers Town’s environment bears surprising resemblance to the former. As Emma Sutton notes, ‘regionalism and locality are recurring themes in Meadows' oeuvre, yet that space is never clearly identified’: for example, ‘we assume This is England is set in Nottingham as it has been filmed there, yet there are two points in the film where the protagonist is by the sea’ (Sutton 2010). The lack of distinctly defined spaces and frequent use of empty, isolated environments is a Meadowsian trait, creating a sense of spatial and temporal detachment which is evident even in Somers Town. Despite Somers Town’s inner London location, it is cut off from the surrounding areas of the city by train stations. An area which, until recently (it is now undergoing reconstruction) was run-down and saturated with council estates, it largely resisted gentrification and its sense of removal from the city is invoked by Meadows’ on-screen presentation of the area. Shot on 16mm in black and white (apart from the final sequence where it switches to grainy Super 8 colour footage), the washed out palette and vérité style camerawork, underscored by a mellow soundtrack provided by long-term musical collaborator Gavin Clark, infuses the film with a sense of timelessness. According to Sandhu, the black and white cinematography 'recalls the Polish New Wave in the Sixties, and is alive to the cold beauty of this manufactured landscape whose changes mirror those of the characters who are moving from adolescence to adulthood, from small cities to huge metropolis, isolation to guarded companionship' (Sandhu 2008).

                  As a whole, then, British social realism (which Meadows' films are ascended from) can be seen as ‘contesting, re-drawing, and redefining the issues, representation and treatment of contemporary society on film... popularising... fictions of everyday life, extending cinema’s range of issues, characters, stories and settings’ (Lay 2002: 68) in a plurality of forms and style.

Although Meadows’ films may have antecedents in the politically-committed social realism of the 1950s and 1960s and 'do seek to engender a sense of social injustice', they do not carry 'explicit political messages' (Allen et al. 2001: 227), instead focusing on individual protagonists and their emotional interactions with their environment. For this reason, and taking into account the difficulty in classifying social realist works due to the mode's continuously changing form, my analysis of Shane Meadows' films will consist of a critical approach divorced from political interrogation. In his seminal essay 'Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice' David Bordwell describes art cinema as being motivated 'by two principles: realism and authorial expressivity' (Bordwell 2002: 95). He posits that this 'does not negate the possibility to engage with potentially problematic socio-political issues, and crucially... encourages us to interrogate the film's many subtleties and nuances' (Bordwell 2002:95). Bordwell's argument, along with David Forrest's suggestion that 're-evaluating the British social realist canon on the basis of art cinema style and authorship offers us the opportunity to strengthen and diversify the critical discourse surrounding the mode' (Forrest 2009: 192) gives credence to my decision to examine Shane Meadow's work from my intended angle. Whilst I will touch upon some artistic and stylistic attributes of his films, I will chiefly focus my filmic analysis on thematic threads which render Meadows' works emotionally realist. In doing so I hope to reach a conclusion as to how themes, characterisation, performance and style in Meadows’ films intertwine to create evocative and realistic films that resonate with audiences across boundaries of class and culture. Before this, however, I will look at Meadows' works in relation to recent movements in Social Realism, thus contextualising them further.

From the public to the private, the political to the personal

New Wave films and Kitchen Sink dramas of the 1950s and 1960s were typically concerned with the demise of the traditional working class 'in the face of growing consumerism' (Hill 2000: 178). The impact of this ‘growing consumerism’ was reflected in the changing mode of film exhibition; the period saw the decline of the British film industry as cinema-going drastically decreased (triggered predominantly by the withdrawal of American funding) while home consumption became commonplace and social realism’s integration into television schedules ensued. Drama strands such as ITVs Armchair Theatre (1956-1974) and BBC1s The Wednesday Play (1964-1970) which screened weekly contemporary social drama plays written for television (such as Ken Loach's landmark Cathy Come Home (1966)) marked the synthesis of the theatrical and filmic arts and, furthermore, their translation from a public to a domestic sphere. 'Television, it will be argued, from this point, became the 'natural home' of British social realism and sustained it throughout the hard time ahead in the following decades' (Lay 2002: 68), providing filmmakers with a medium whereby they could showcase their works when the big screen would not allow. It enabled their 'legacy' to be 'kept alive in British television drama throughout the 1960s and 1970s' (Hallam & Marshment 2000: 51) before it was able to re-emerge in the cinema in the 1980s.

Ken Loach and Mike Leigh are two filmmakers whose careers were boosted by the interrelation between the film and broadcasting industries that developed in the 1960s; ‘descendants of the realist flowering at the BBC … [they] assessed the impact of the consumer society on family life, charting the erosion of the welfare state and the consensus that built it’ (Armstrong 2011). While the New Wave devotion to representing the under-represented has continued in the realist films and television dramas produced by Loach, Leigh and their contemporaries, 'unlike [in] the earlier group of films, there [is less] sense of the corrupting effects of affluence or embourgeoisement. Rather it [is] the damage wrought by de-industrialisation, mass unemployment and poverty typical of the Thatcher years (1979)' (Hill 2000: 178) that is articulated through their observations of working-class life. Ken Loach’s television plays (Up the Junction (1965), Cathy Come Home (1965)) and more recent feature films such as Riff-Raff (1993) and My Name Is Joe (1998), along with Michael Winterbottom's landmark drama series The Family (1995) 'helped provoke cinematic interest in portraying life on the council estates where those who hadn't benefited from Thatcherite prosperity were confined' (Murphy 2000: 13). Meanwhile, Mike Leigh ‘established himself as a shrewd observer of social types' (Allen et al. 2001: 195) with his BBC television plays of the 1970s (which saw him satirise middle-class attitudes in dramas such as Abigail’s Party (1977)) and his later television and feature films (such as Meantime (1983), High Hopes (1988) and All Or Nothing (2002)) which focused more tightly on the daily struggles of the working-class family. Higson’s argument that a ‘changing conceptualisation of the relation between the public and the private… the political and the personal’ occurred (Higson in Barr 1986: 83) can be seen through Loach's and Leigh's work. This idea has been revisited by Samantha Lay in recent years; as she iterates, a ‘tighter focus on family life and individuals signals a major shift from the politics of the social and the public, to the politics of the personal and the private' (Lay 2002: 107).

Shane Meadows’ films also serve as apt examples of this shift. Often compared to Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, his unobtrusive film-making style visually renders his alignment to them (for example, the use of long takes, limited cutting and camera movement). Additionally, his employment of improvisational techniques, which ‘places the characters and their interaction at the centre of the work’ (Allen et al. 2001: 195), echoes those characteristically utilised by Leigh. But, while Loach’s and Leigh’s work is very much of the vein of the socio-political films of the New Wave (arguably ‘circumscribed by an often patronisingly sympathetic subjugation of the working-class experience’ (Brown 2007: 102)), Meadows’ diverges here; in marked contrast, Meadows’ ‘observations of lower-class losers and misfits are made from the perspective of a native insider rather than a sympathetic visitor’ (Macnab 1998). In interview, the director himself has, in fact, criticised how “a lot of the working-class characters were really over the top and not celebrated” in Leigh's work (Shane Meadows Interview 28/09/04). The ‘unflinching attention [Meadows] pays to the characters … and his willingness to embrace their complexity, regardless of what his own opinions are’ (Brown 2007: 84) would appear, then, to arise out of his personal connection with the stories that he is telling.

Shane Meadows: A Native Insider

The majority of Meadows’ films are semi-autobiographical and set in the Midlands where he grew up (born in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, he then moved to Nottingham in his twenties). His low-budget debut feature Smalltime (1996) (made with funding from the BFI), is a comedy following a group of petty crooks in Nottingham. Starring Meadows as Jumbo and with his friends making up the rest of the cast, ‘Smalltime had genuine origins in the (non-) working-class community it depicted’ and serves as an early indicator of Meadows’ interest in employing comic devices as a form of expressing emotion. One consequence of his positioning to the film’s subject matter is that, as Claire Monk comments, ‘[he] never idealises, sanitises or aggrandises its protagonists. Their swearing, sexual behaviour and limited criminal and intellectual horizons are all presented in hilariously unbowdlerised fashion’ (Monk 1999: 185). While his following feature films take on a more serious tone than Smalltime, Meadows’ roots remain central to his work, and his proximity to the working-class characters he represents impacts on his handling of them; for most part, he observes them with a non-judgemental, unpatronising, yet unsentimental eye and resists from portraying them as ‘the other’. He states, “No matter how dark a film is… I still care about even the darkest characters. When you’re inside, it’s different, someone that’s viewed from the outside as just a foul bastard has often got another side” (Shane Meadows Interview 28/09/04). This remark would indicate that the lack of political agenda across Meadows’ films is as a result of his affinity to the characters and environment he presents. While his films are concerned with the effects of social deprivation, his narratives do not focus on the repercussions of social deprivation in an explicitly political sense as a film-maker like Loach’s undeniably do; Meadows, in contrast, ‘refrains from portrayals of the underclass that discuss them as a [sic] either social victims or social problems’ (Brown 2007: 85).

By primarily paying attention to A Room For Romeo Brass (1999), Somers Town (2008) and This Is England (2006), I intend to illustrate how a blend of emotion, comedy and brutality in Meadows’ films effectively immerses the viewer, allowing audiences across class divides and cultures to access and relate to the characters and situations presented on screen. According to Brown, recent social realist works have ‘found a means of representing the working-class experience in a way that seems to encourage audience recognition and understanding, rather than simply resorting to a sympathetic regard for the underprivileged communities depicted’ (Brown 2007: 102). I propose that Meadows’ work epitomises this trend, the impact of his status as native insider on his work adding a new dimension to Higson’s (politically referenced) argument regarding the social realist shift in focus from the public and political, to the personal and private.

Boyhood interactions and comedic musings

Arguably, Meadows tackles serious subject matter with tenderness, and a light-hearted playfulness which, as Hall notes, ‘is rarely permitted to coarsen into parody or caricature’ (Hall 2006). In his thesis 'Laughing with Good and Evil' Stuart Duncan Brown proposes that the observance of laughter in his works ‘highlight[s] an overall concerted effort to provide the audience with a view from within; portraying a heightened interest in the potential for common experience and a common humanity to be established between audience and subject’ (Brown 2007: 102).

Meadows' investment in the emotional interactions between characters is at the forefront of his work. In his second feature A Room For Romeo Brass (1999) Meadows' thematic preoccupation with boyhood friendships, which recurs in his later films (particularly in This is England and Somers Town), is central to the narrative. Essentially a coming-of-age story, A Room for Romeo Brass centres around young neighbours Romeo Brass and Gavin ‘Knocks’ Woolley growing up on a Nottingham council estate. A chance encounter with twenty-something misfit Morrell occurs when he intervenes and saves Knocks from a beating by local thugs. It sees Morrell's swift insinuation into the duo's lives as he enlists their help to win the heart of Romeo's sister Ladine, with whom he develops an obsession after driving the boys home. Initially seemingly innocent and 'a figure of fun, [Morrell] is gradually revealed as a dangerous sociopath' (Hall 2006). His increasingly volatile behaviour drives a wedge between Romeo and Knocks, however, this is only temporary, and their bond resurfaces at the end of the film.

Whilst we witness the 'dark world of an emotionally sub-normal adult' (Bradshaw 2000) through the depiction of Morrell, the interaction between Romeo and Gavin provides a lighter meditation on the vicissitudinous relationship between two youths. Mirroring that between Meadows and his best friend (and co-writer) Paul Fraser, A Room For Romeo Brass 'begins with two young boys, and a sweetly comic, naturalistic evocation of their bantering childhood friendship' (Bradshaw 2000). Preceding their encounter with awkward loner Morrell, the nature of Romeo's and Gavin's friendship is cemented through a series of wryly observed scenes drawn from Meadows' and Fraser's own experience. At the opening of the film, the schoolchildren are first seen venturing to a local fish and chip shop (Meadows has a cameo here as the chip shop owner), where Romeo has been sent to fetch dinner for his family. Ordering a family-sized portion of chips but refusing Knocks’ request to have any on the grounds that they’re for his mother and sister, Romeo then proceeds to tuck into them himself. After finishing one portion Romeo starts eating from another as the boys sit outside en route back home. Romeo’s comeback to Knocks’ moaning about the amount of food he has consumed (“Shut up, I’m just doing this to even them out so no one complains”) is humorous, and sets out the jovial nature of their relationship. Additionally, the colloquial dialogue between the two (which paints an authentic portrait of playful interaction between adolescents), combined with their spatial positioning (the playground noticeable in the background is a visual reminder of their youth), reminds us that the duo are on the cusp of maturity, about to undergo a transition from childhood to adulthood. Here, a simple trip to the chip shop not only outlines the nature of Romeo’s and Knock’s friendship, but also promotes the notion that the minutiae of everyday lives and the provincial interaction between ordinary characters is of greater significance than it may appear on the surface, vitally influencing their identity formation as individuals. 

                  In Meadows' Somers Town (2008) he similarly presents this idea, charting an oddly incongruous cross-cultural friendship between two adolescents, tough-minded runaway Tomo and sensitive Polish immigrant Marek. After meeting in a local London cafe, Tomo’s mischievous teasing of Marek (about photographs of the waitress Maria that he has taken) establishes an unusual but endearing dynamic between two outsiders brought together by chance. Like A Room For Romeo Brass, Somers Town is loaded with humorous vignettes featuring the young boys’ escapades which evoke a sense that their boyhood interactions have notable connotations in informing their voyages of self discovery. Tomo's and Marek's partnership, similarly to Romeo's and Knocks', is so alluring because of their differences in character; their parallel dynamics are invocations of Meadows’ and Frasers’ own growing up. Tomo, like Romeo, puts on a confident front and is prone to unruly behaviour. Meadows’ filmic counterparts (as is Shaun in This Is England), their apparent waywardness is arguably the result of an absence of a father figure in their lives (Tomo has grown up in social care, Romeo is initially estranged from his father and Shaun’s father is revealed to have died fighting in the Falkland’s War). Knocks and Marek, in contrast, are more introverted characters with a quieter sensibility; the cinematic embodiments of Fraser, their sense of alienation echoes that experienced by Fraser when he was bedridden for two years following a back injury. While Tomo, Romeo and Shaun are accustomed to  putting on a bravado to mask their insecurities, Knocks and Marek are ill equipped to do so; bearing more awkward gestures and mannerisms, Knocks’ limp and Marek’s Polish accent are irrepressible reminders of personal obstacles they are faced with which signifies their detachment from the conventional norms of society. The mis-matched nature of the young couples is embraced by Meadows. Like Romeo and Knocks in A Room For Romeo Brass, Tomo and Marek ‘together, and sometimes in the company of Maria, form a solidarity that transcends … differences. Pushing their beloved through the streets in a customised wheelchair, swigging wine in a playground, they, like all young people, have created their own enchanted republic, one that will make audiences smile and laugh’ (Sandhu 2008). Meadows’ provocation of laughter through comic musings such as these, it would seem, is integral in his establishment of an intimate rapport between spectator and subject. He invites the viewer to take delight in the everyday exchanges between these young adolescents, crucially drawing upon his own experience to aid the realistic transcription of boyhood comradeship to screen.

                  This Is England shows another Meadowsian exploration into youthful relationships. Cited as his most personal work to date, protagonist Shaun Field's experiences throughout the course of the film are based on Meadows' growing up in 1980s Thatcherite England. As previously noted, the majority of Meadows' male protagonists are affected by the absence of secure patriarchal figures (although Knocks in A Room For Romeo Brass and Marek in Somers Town pose exceptions in that they both live with their fathers, their relationships with them are nonetheless presented as strained and uncommunicative). The marked lack of positive paternal role models and sense of familial fragmentation that is rife throughout Meadows' films inevitably inflects on the emotional spheres of the young male characters, driving their search for paternal substitutes. This is never more evident than in Shaun's longing for acceptance in This Is England.

                  At the beginning of the film eleven-year-old Shaun's giggling as he flicks through a comic book at the corner shop marks his childish innocence, yet his cheeky responses and colloquial language when the shopkeeper takes it off him (“I was fricking reading that”) and bans him from the store (“Oh, and you're a mong”) shows a determined attempt to appear older than he is. Following this, Shaun is seen launching himself at bully Harvey in the school playground after Harvey picks on him for his flared trousers (bought for him by his deceased father). Dragged to the headmaster's office to await his punishment for fighting, Shaun's confident demeanour is no longer visible as he sits in the hallway. Instead, as the camera draws back from a close up to a mid-shot of Shaun, his physical mannerisms signify his fear of the impending discipline; hunched over, he is revealed biting his nails, wincing and then covering his ears. Establishing sequences which draw attention to his age, they also expose him as a troubled child, unable to articulate his insecurities except through aggressive behaviour.

                  After meeting sympathetic Woody (Joe Gilgun) and his skinhead companions on his way home, Shaun's resulting amalgamation into the group sees him acquire a newfound sense of belonging. His transformation from lonely outsider to fully integrated member of the skinhead gang is punctuated by two poetic montage sequences. In the first instance, Shaun cuts an isolated figure. He is depicted playing alone after cycling to nearby waste ground, firing stones with a catapult he has just bought and sitting in a rotten boat eating sweets. The camera cuts to show him wandering through an abandoned warehouse overlooking the docks before he climbs over a sea wall and runs down to the empty beach; it then lingers to observe him as he ambles along the beach, stooping to pick up stones and throw them into the sea. This sequence (along with the one which closes the film) is strongly reminiscent of the ending in seminal French New Wave film Les Quatre Cents Coups (Truffaut, 1959). Also a coming-of-age story, it ends with young protagonist Antoine Doinel running along the shoreline to the ocean in search of freedom and escape. Truffaut's trademark cine- vérité style (handheld, shaky camera) coupled with the melancholy musical accompaniment has a poetic realist resonance which accentuates his character's inner sense of isolation and detachment from society. Meadows' assemblage of shots similarly functions in this way, with the unobtrusive camerawork and atmospheric adjoining soundtrack (an instrumental version of Gravenhurst's 'Nicole') evoking Shaun's loneliness.

                  The following montage (which Meadows terms his “Summer montage: (DVD commentary)) has a markedly different tone to it and falls after Shaun's initiation into Woody's gang. Here, Shaun is shown strolling around and hanging out with his comrades (playing football, jumping into a public swimming pool, splashing in puddles) to the upbeat ska sounds of Toots and the Maytals' Louie Louie. Preceding this, the audience has been led to witness Shaun's rite of passage transition from schoolboy to skinhead through his change of dress. Formerly mocked for his second hand flared trousers, his visual transformation is complete after Lol shaves his head and Woody presents him with a Ben Sherman shirt (to go with his newly acquired Doc Martens, braces and jeans). Shaun's altered style, and the warm reaction he receives from the gang members at this change draws attention to the apolitical side of the skinhead movement, concerned with culture and fostering community rather than engaging with politics. In his article on the film, Meadows reflects how the 1980s 'was a time of great music, brilliant fashion and a vibrant youth culture ... to be a skinhead, all you needed was a pair of jeans, some work boots, a white shirt and a shaved head' ('Under My Skin' 2007). His preoccupation with detailing a more progressive side of the subculture, removed from the right-wing political agenda often associated with it is evident in the subsequent montage featuring Shaun's escapades with the gang; employing a music-video aesthetic and utilising slow-motion shots he brings to focus their collective appearance and playful companionship.

                  As the gang take Shaun under their wing, the audience is simultaneously invited into their world. Meadows comments on how his 'fondest childhood memories surrounded human contact: mucking about with mates or going camping' ('Under My Skin' 2007). In This Is England, as in Somers Town and A Room For Romeo Brass, Meadows' fondness for such experiences is transmitted to screen through his investment in the emotional interactions between his characters. Through these, as Brown asserts, Meadows portrays a 'heightened interest in the potential for common experience and [for] a common humanity to be established between audience and subject’ (Brown 2007: 102). His interest in communities and their inhabitants at a personal, micro level rather than a public, macro (and political) level is also evident through his work ethic. Fradley posits that 'Meadows is a cinematic entrepreneur who has continued to employ family and friends as a way of cautiously maintaining his autonomy from the restrictive machinations of mainstream filmmaking. Eschewing the individualistic trappings of auteurism, Meadows' collaborative working method was founded upon a communal ethos' (Fradley 2010).

Meadows' devotion to developing characters that are believable and accessible to audiences can be seen through the preliminary stages of his filmmaking process. Employing improvisational methods similar to those used by Loach and Leigh, Meadows encourages his actors to engage with their characters’ environments before shooting, thus catalysing character development through an organic process of coalescence. After the cast are selected (Meadows often employs untrained or unknown actors) they undergo a lengthy workshopping process alongside Meadows which involves the de-construction of the characters as scripted, and re-construction of characters, as brought about by their own personal input. During this period his cast are able to familiarise themselves with their characters and their fellow actors in a relaxed atmosphere, one he believes fosters unforced creativity and chemistry. What occurs away from the cameras is the 'actors' melding of history and performance' (Allen et al. 2001: 197) which is then transmitted to screen through their resulting naturalistic performances. Meadows' emphasis on this process encourages a synthesis of the real and the fictional and, one could argue, results in 'an organic work, resonating with the colours and textures of personal history, interpersonal dynamics and socio-historical vibration' (Allen et al. 2001: 196). This process is made all the more effective due to the insight that the actors are able to gain from Meadows himself. As a native insider of the community whose stories he is telling, he can offer direction for which other filmmakers (such as Loach and Leigh) would be less equipped.

Andrew Shim, who plays Milky in This is England (and Romeo in A Room For Romeo Brass) comments how 'improvisation is [Meadows'] biggest weapon really. You'll read the script before shooting the scene and you'll know where it starts and where he wants it to end, but you give your own input to whatever goes in the middle ... It makes an actor feel like they're part of the actual making of the film and not just a pawn in the production' (qtd in Tilly 2007). The on-screen chemistry between the gang is believable because it has its roots in reality. Their endearing companionship immerses the viewer in their world, engineering a sense of comfort which is then fractured by an unexpected turn of events.

Veering Towards Violence

                  Shaun's integration into Woody's skinhead gang at the beginning of This Is England sees him form close bonds and friendships with affable figures that become his surrogate family (Woody most noticeably takes on the mantle of brotherly mentor, if not paternal substitute to Shaun). As noted before, Meadows prompts the viewer to become intimately acquainted with the group, carefully building up their dynamic and bringing to the fore their collective 'devot[ion] to sharp dressing, ska music and each other' ('Under My Skin' 2007). However, 'the warmth and harmony of their gang is threatened by the arrival of Combo' ('Under My Skin' 2007) – a thuggish older skinhead with English Nationalist and racist views. Fresh out of prison, he intrudes on their party, immediately disrupting the equilibrium of the gang. As Savage iterates, 'the whole atmosphere of the film changes with the ex-con’s entrance, as the newcomer subjects Milky – one of Woody’s gang, so called because he has brown skin – to a racist tirade. Nobody speaks up for him, and Combo seizes the moral advantage' (Savage 2007).

                  The following day, during a meeting at his claustrophobic bedsit, Combo tries to enforce further authority over the group, demanding that they join the National Front. The spatiality in this sequence is of significance. His decision to “take them into his domain”, as Meadows commentates, means that “they're sort of trapped there, they have to cross the threshold” (DVD commentary) and are forced to listen to his hateful rants. As the group sit on the floor, Combo stands, physically elevating himself in order to adopt a position of authority over them. Alongside this, his tone of voice and body gestures (for example, he points and rubs his hands together repeatedly in an aggressive manner) mark his determination to unsettle the group. The hand-held, jaunty camera focuses on Combo through varied close-up and mid shots. Here, his facial expressions and physicality, along with his proximity to the camera amplify the sense that he is invading the personal space of the characters around him. Although Pukey and Gadget laugh at his offensive jokes, the downward gaze of the rest of the group expresses their discomfort. Woody, refusing to be intimidated, takes the first stand against his former friend (“I aint being fucking brainwashed Combo”) and gets up to leave, provoking Combo to voice his ultimatum: “go your merry little way, or stay where you are, come with me”. Whilst the majority leave with Woody, impressionable Shaun remains behind, motivated by Combo's claims that he should fight for his father's memory (“If you don't stand up and fight this fucking fight that's going on in the streets man, your dad died for nothing”). The classical musical score by Ludovico Einaudi heightens the poignancy of Shaun's decision as he explains his reasoning behind it; “Woody, I wanna make my dad proud”.

                  Already Shaun has fallen prey to Combo's power trip, a victim of his new 'mentor's' manipulation. Antagonist Combo is irrational and unstable in contrast to the openly sensitive and level-headed Woody (who represents a new, alternative masculinity), but 'Combo's surface charisma and National Front rhetoric seduces Turgoose's unhappy naïf' (Fradley 2010), offering him a way to exorcise his grief over the loss of his father. Savage describes how, 'at the heart of this film is the battle for Shaun's soul between Woody and Combo, who epitomise the poles of the skinhead ethos. This struggle is played out among two wider issues: the attitudes and behaviour of youth in wartime and the nature of masculinity and, indeed, fathering.' (Savage 2007).  Although Combo exposes Shaun to a world of right-wing Nationalist violence, threatening to destroy his youthful innocence, Combo's intentions towards the youngster are not altogether malicious. In fact, away from his public displays of violence (attending rallies, beating up locals), Combo displays affection towards his young protégé. In one sequence, which takes place in the confines of Combo's car, the bond between the two is consolidated when they share a tender heart-to-heart. The underlying pain beneath Combo's cold exterior is expressed when he reveals to Shaun, “I know what it's like, to have people walk out on you, to have people just fucking leave you, honest lad- I know how you feel”. Close up shots which present him with tears welling in his eyes and making eye contact with Shaun makes his words appear all the more genuine; he continues “...You ever want anyone to talk to, someone to cry with, or just to have a fucking hug… I'll be there for you, I won't turn me back on you, promise you that". Intimate moments like this are key to Combo's characterisation, imbibing him with an emotional fragility which calls for the spectator to understand, rather than judge, his actions. Whilst it is painfully uncomfortable to witness Combo's escalating violence, especially the climactic sequence where he beats up Milky, the prior establishment of his insecurities suggests that his rage is a product of his past circumstances. Yet Meadows does not sentimentalise this to excess or, indeed, excuse his actions. Instead, he just tries to tell it how it is.

                  Combo may breed fear through his overbearing influence over his group, but this is as a result of his having been bred by fear. Suffering from loss and confusion, Combo embodies the disillusioned male figure synonymous with the Skinhead movement during the Thatcherite period; affected by mass unemployment (which coincided with an influx of immigrants) the disempowered white generation he represents were often seen to react through force, targeting ethnic minorities in an attempt to empower themselves again. As Fuller points out, 'Combo’s rage has grown out of his private disappointment rather than his secondhand belief in an all-white Britain' (Fuller 2007). His aggression, then, is symptomatic of the frustration and disillusionment with his place (or lack of) in society, not governed by purely racist tendencies and political beliefs (as was frequently portrayed by the media). The conversation prior to Combo's brutal act of violence towards Milky serves to illustrate how Combo's violence is not motivated by racial hatred, but rather jealousy- jealousy that Milky, unlike him, has a family (“fucking hell, you've got everything haven't you... perfect package”).

                  The core message of Oldman’s Nil By Mouth is echoed in Meadows’ film; based on Oldman’s relationship with his alcoholic father, it follows ‘a working class family doomed to repeat the cycles of abuse and violence from generation to generation in perpetuity' (Lay 2002: 111). Anger and hatred, abuse and violence, it insinuates, are learnt not inbuilt. Like Ray (Ray Winstone) in Nil By Mouth, the character of Combo in This Is England represents a crisis of masculinity: 'a charismatic but essentially weak man', he, too, is presented as 'a needy child in an adult's body' (Lay 2002: 112), gravitating towards the child in order to gain a sense of belonging.

                  Morrell (Paddy Considine) in A Room For Romeo Brass similarly possesses these characteristics. Presented as childlike through his absurd interactions with Knocks and Gavin (ten years his junior) his unusual behaviour initially seems to be of a harmless nature. He is 'gifted with some of the funniest dialogue of any character in Meadows' oeuvre' (Brown 2007: 88), yet the humour derives from the social faux pas he makes when trying to impress. In one instance, Knocks plays a practical joke on him, convincing him to dress in a way that will attract Ladine's attention (“50 percent is liking you, 50 percent is clothes.. you could probably get away with your hair but clothes like that- there's no way she's going to like you”). Wearing a ridiculous purple sports suit and visor, Morrell is shown to have been completely taken in by Knocks' fashion advice (“What I'm going to show you is bigger than Godzilla”). Following his rejection by Ladine as a result of his outlandish appearance and eccentric behaviour, Morrell reveals himself to be calculating and violent. During a day trip to the seaside, the full extent of Morrell's sociopathic tendencies become clear when he dramatically threatens Knocks after they are left alone by Romeo. He tells him “I know that you made me look a right fool ... well your little tricks have backfired man and it fucking starts here, this is just the beginning because it's going to go on and on… and I won't stop at you”, as he continues to threaten Knocks' family. Morrell's threats are not idle and are put into action later in the film. Regardless, our knowledge of his social inadequacies leads us to sympathise with him as a sad figure of parody. As with Combo, Meadows implies that his violent streak stems from persistent rejection throughout his life (“I know what it's like... I had my head smashed off every wall in this room” he tells Romeo at one point). He, too, is a victim of circumstance.

Conclusion

From the Free Cinema of the 1950s, through the New Wave cycle of the 1960s to the Brit-Grit films of the 1990s, 'a changing conceptualisation of the relation between the public and the private ... the political and the personal’ (Higson in Barr 1986: 83) took place in British Social Realism. However, the filmmakers of these decades 'only respond[ed] to a moment they helped construct but did not live' (Lay 2002: 112).

In 'From Documentary to Brit Grit' Samantha Lay proposes that 'we should be encouraging more working class film-makers to show us their social realities' (Lay 2002: 112). Meadows' work sits alongside Oldman's as an example of how 'class politics as a major preoccupation of British Social Realist texts have been abandoned in favour of autobiography and nostalgia' (Lay 2002: 122), their roles as indigenous directors giving gravitas to their meditations on working-class communities. Like Oldman, Meadows 'is both author of and part of the text, using the camera to 'look again' from a safe distance at his own remembered past' (Lay 2002: 112). He engineers the audience's attachment to the characters through his use of emotional realism, developed through a process of improvisation and interaction which takes place both off screen and on it. Meadows invites the audience to witness the underlying emotional fragility of even the most aggressive characters, fostering a sense of understanding and acknowledgement within the audience that the violence and antisocial behaviour displayed, albeit wrong, stems from deeper issues; in this way the former are more likely to make allowances for the latters’ brutal actions. As Brown states, ‘Emotional realism, via the synthesis between laughter and despair, has become an increasingly important element of this form’s ability to forge connections between audience and subject’ (Brown 2007: 103).

The work of Meadows indicates that the disenfranchised support each other and create their own community within society; they are often invisible through the acceptable strands of the fabric of the local community and society as a whole. Meadows makes no explicit political message. The strength of his films lies in the social and emotional commentary running through them, as has been outlined in the case studies above. Meadows’ stories are not about the implications of social instability brought about by political circumstances, but about the formation of identity through personal relationships and interactions of the characters. The characters and settings are like a commune, accepting, nurturing and supporting each other, even the most socially inept and emotionally crippled, whilst they drift on the fringes of society. The films are brutally honest and confront the viewer with the stark realities of life. Their socio-political backdrop is, in many ways, insignificant: regardless of their social standing, what informs the characters’ growth as individuals are chance encounters and experiences with others. In particular, the absence or lack of positive familial relationships or friendships is posited as a reason for the escalation of disturbing behaviour.  As Fradley comments, ‘the intimated link between social deprivation, self-destructive violence and mental illness is rarely far from the surface in Meadows oeuvre’ (Fradley 2010). Meadows bridges the gap between emotion, comedy and brutality with his honest portrayal of a society with which he is familiar, and manages to breathe new life into the clichéd and sometimes patronising representations of the working class.

              The thematic threads which are so integral a part of Meadows’ works are the key to his ability to create a powerful and lasting impact on his audiences and to bring them closer to the real and continuing effect emotional deprivation can have on the individual in our society. Through Meadows’ membership of the social group on which his films focus, he is able to strike a resonant chord with those who do not belong, providing the spectator with an intimate insight into a section of society with which they are unfamiliar and allowing them temporary access to witness events unfolding as if a neighbour in the community.

Word Count: 7858

Bibliography

Books

Allen, Cullen & Anderson (2001) (eds.), Contemporary British and Irish Film Directors: A Wallflower Critical Guide (London; New York: Wallflower, 2001)

Ashby & Higson (2000) British Cinema: Past and Present (London; New York: Routledge)

Dave, Paul (2006), Visions of England: Class and Culture in Contemporary Cinema (Oxford; New York: Berg Publishing)

Hallam & Marshment (2000), Realism and Popular Cinema (Manchester: Manchester University Press)

Higson, Andrew (1995) Waving the Flag: Constructing a National Cinema in Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press)

Hill, John (1986), Sex Class and Realism: British Cinema 1956-1963 (London: BFI Publishing)

Hill, John (1999), British Cinema in the 1980s: Issues and Themes (London: Clarendon Press)

Lacey, S (1995) British Realist Theatre: The New Wave in its Context (London: Routledge)

Lay, Samantha (2002), British Social Realism: From Documentary to Brit Grit (London: Wallflower Press)

Murphy, British Crime Cinema (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999) pp.172- 188

Murphy, Robert (2000), British Cinema of the 90s (London: BFI Publishing)

Murphy, Robert (2006), Directors in British and Irish Cinema: A Reference Companion (London: BFI Publishing)

Chapters in Books

Bordwell, David (2002), 'The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice' in C. Fowler (ed.), The European Cinema Reader (London: Routledge), pp.94-103

Hall, Sheldon (2006), ‘Shane Meadows’ in Murphy, Robert (ed), Directors in British and Irish Cinema: A Reference Companion (London: BFI)

Higson, Andrew (1986), 'Britain’s Outstanding Contribution to the Film: The Documentary- Realist Tradition' in Barr, C (ed.) All Our Yesterdays: 90 Years of British Cinema (London: BFI), pp.72-97

Higson, Andrew (1996), 'Space, Place, Spectacle: Landscape and Townscape in the “Kitchen Sink” film, in Dissolving Views: Key Writings on British Cinema (London: Continuum), pp.133-156

Hildebrandt, Melinda (2005), ‘Shane Meadows’ in Macfarlane, Brian (ed.), The Encyclopedia of British Film (London: BFI; Meutheun)

Hill, John (2000), ‘From the New Wave to ‘Brit Grit’: Continuity and difference in working-class realism’ in Higson & Ashby (eds.), British Cinema: Past and Present, (London; New York: Routledge), pp. 249-260

Hill, John (2000), 'Failure and Utopianism: Representations of the Working-Class in British Cinema of the 1990s' in Murphy, Robert (ed.) British Cinema of the 1990s (London: BFI Publishing) pp.178-187

Monk, Clair (2000), “Underbelly U.K.: The 1990s Underclass Film, Masculinity and the Ideologies of New Britain” in Higson & Ashby (eds.), British Cinema, Past and Present, (London; New York: Routledge) pp.274-287

Monk, Claire, “From Underworld to Underclass: Crime and British Cinema in the 1990s” in Chibnall & Murphy (1999), British Crime Cinema (Oxford: Clarendon Press)

Journals

Forrest, David (2009): 'Shane Meadows and the British New Wave: Britain's Hidden Art Cinema', Studies in European Cinema 6:2-3 (2010), pp.191-201, available online at: http://www.atypon-link.com/INT/doi/abs/10.1386/seci.6.2-3.191/1?cookieSet=1&journalCode=seci, [accessed 18 Nov 2010]

Articles:

Kermode, Mark (2000), 'A Room For Romeo Brass' in Sight & Sound (Feb 2000), p.67

Kermode, Mark (2004), 'Dead Man’s Shoes'  in Sight & Sound (Oct 2004), p.51

Macnab, Geoffrey (1998), 'The Natural' in Sight & Sound (March 1998), pp.14-16

Sinker, Mark (2008), 'Somers Town' in Sight & Sound (Sept 2008), pp.76-77

Electronic Media

Armstrong, Richard (nd), 'Social Realism' [online guide], available online at: http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/1037898/, [accessed 10 Jan 2011]

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Brown, Stuart Duncan (2007) 'Laughing with Good and Evil in Shane Meadows' Dead Man's Shoes' in The Subversion of Sympathy in British Social Realism [Unpublished thesis MPhil], Glasgow University, available online at: http://theses.gla.ac.uk/670/01/2007brownmphil.pdf, [accessed 16 Nov 2010]

Fradley, Martin (2010), 'Shane Meadows' in Yvonne Tasker (ed.), Fifty Contemporary Film Directors (London: Routledge), pp.280-288, available online at: http://staffs.academia.edu/MartinFradley/Papers/214926/Shane_Meadows, [accessed 15 Apr 2011]

Fuller, Graham (2007), 'Skinhead Memories, Violent and Vivid' in The New York Times [online], 22 July 2007, available online at: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/22/movies/22full.html, [accessed 11 Jan 2011]

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Sandhu, Sukhdev (2008) in The Telegraph [online], Aug 2008, available online at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/filmreviews/3558915/Film-review-Somers-Town.html, [accessed 12 Apr 2011]

Savage, Jon (2007), 'New Boots and Rants' in Sight & Sound [online], May 2007, pp.38-42, available online at: http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/feature/49369, [accessed 25 Nov 2010]

Sutton, Emma (2010), ‘Straight Outta Uttoxeter: Studying Shane Meadows’, [conference report], 15/16 Apr 2010, University of East Anglia, available online at: http://www.scope.nottingham.ac.uk/confreport.php?issue=18&all=true, [accessed 20 Apr 2011]

Tilly, Chris (2007) ' This Is England - Andrew Shim Q & A' in Time Out [online], 26 Apr 2007, available online at: http://www.timeout.com/film/news/1846/, [accessed Apr 29 2011]

Films/DVD

Les Quatre Cents Coups/The 400 Blows (1959, FrançoisTruffaut, France)

Nil By Mouth (1997, Gary Oldman, UK)

Smalltime (1996, Shane Meadows, UK)

A Room For Romeo Brass (1999, Shane Meadows, UK)

Dead Man's Shoes (2004, Shane Meadows, UK)

This Is England (2006, Shane Meadows, UK)

Somers Town (2008, Shane Meadows, UK)

Other:

Meadows, Shane (2006), Audio commentary in This Is England [DVD Commentary]

ryd22 (2007), Shane Meadows Interview 28/09/04 [video online], available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHhJezduqVU, [accessed 10 Dec 2011]