This is England

I went to see This is England last night - very good indeed. Very much a British film; set in the mid-1980s it began with lots of footage of the Royal Wedding, Roland Rat, the miners' strike and the Falklands War, setting the scene. It was set in an unspecified town, but seemed to be somewhere in the Midlands. It had the ultra-lucid hyper-reality of memory, and was indeed based on director Shane Meadows' own experiences as a skinhead. This personal touch gives the film an intensity and immediacy missing from other social-realist films
There were some excellent performances and Combo, who has come out of prison a bigoted neo-Nazi, is truly terrifying. Thomas Turgoose, the boy who plays Shaun is a real find, and never appears to be putting on a performance. I've never had any contact with skinhead culture so I've no idea how authentic the film was, but that doesn't matter. It's whether a film works dramatically or not that's important, and on the whole, this did. The end was nicely open-ended, as you have no idea what Shaun's next step is going to be after he leaves Combo's gang - has the violence he's witnessed and then rejected had a lasting impact? Will he turn into a film director like Meadows, or end up in jail - the film leaves it open by finishing on Shaun's blank gaze into the camera.
The music was fantastic, with tracks from Toots and the Maytals and the Upsetters which I'd never heard. The whole film, although a little rough around the edges, was evidence of a major talent in the making, and I'm glad I saw it on the big screen