Established 2005
Manchester(UK)
Manchester(UK)
PUBLISHED WRITING
BOOK REVIEW: David Archibald, ‘Tracking Loach’ (Edinburgh University Press, 2023)
by Brett Gregory
April 2023
by Brett Gregory
April 2023
David Archibald’s book, ‘Tracking Loach’, is an academic celebration of Ken Loach’s 60 year career in socialist filmmaking and political activism.
It is also an extremely timely publication in that Loach’s latest film, ‘The Old Oak’, will be receiving its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival 2023.
The author’s unique approach is to prioritise the contextual mechanics of film production studies over the theoretical speculation of critical screen studies, arguing that the reflective observation of the methodologies and logistics involved in preparing, shooting and exhibiting a feature film should elicit a complementary understanding of a filmmaker’s aesthetic.
This reminds me of a television interview with David Niven from the 1970s where he asks something along the lines of: ‘How can a critic write a decent review if he’s never actually made a movie himself?’
During Archibald’s ethnographic pursuit of Loach’s poetic and political process his primary sources of data are the annotations, interviews, shooting documents, digital footage and photographs he accrues while being physically present during the production and exhibition of Loach’s working-class comedy-drama set in Glasgow, ‘The Angel’s Share’ (2012).
It should be noted that to be granted access to such a complex and sensitive creative environment and its extremely busy and anxious workforce – its technicians and performers – and, in turn, to enjoy the company and trust of its leaders who have the weight of a major production bearing down on them – Ken Loach (Director), Paul Laverty (Screenwriter) and Rebecca O’Brien (Producer) – is a memorable achievement in itself.
To accompany him on his journey the author also draws on a wide variety of historical and theoretical secondary sources, including the BFI’s Ken Loach Archive, and I personally found a number of his scholarly citations to be just as illuminating as his on set observations.
For example, when working alongside his early screenwriting partner, Jim Allen, Archibald highlights that Loach’s television productions in the late 1960s and early 1970s were influenced by the political ideas of Leon Trotsky in that the UK’s established democratic system was seen to be inadequate with regards to the economic interests of the proletariat.
Following on from this it is argued that Loach’s films generally aim to reveal to the audience, either explicitly or implicitly, the harsh realities, exploitation and despair of working-class experience and, in turn, that capitalism is not a natural, normal or inevitable way of ordering or governing society.
With this in mind the socialist concerns of Loach’s oeuvre have generally transitioned from addressing issues such as organised labour in ‘The Big Flame’ (1969) and ‘The Rank and File’ (1971), to unorganised labour in ‘Riff Raff’ (1991) and ‘The Navigators’ (2001), and then on to unemployed labour in ‘Sweet Sixteen’ (2002) and ‘I, Daniel Blake’ (2016).
While such films could be viewed as a war artist’s mournful depiction of socio-economic casualties lying strewn across a neoliberalist battlefield, Archibald posits with reference to the Italian historian, Enzo Traverso, that they can also be understood as evidential ‘open wounds’ which the Left need to nurse so the embers of possibility can once again be reignited.
Aware of Raymond Williams’ contention that ‘to be truly radical is to make hope possible, rather than despair convincing’, the author proceeds to cite Newland and Hoyle’s view that in some ways Loach’s creative output in the 21st century has begun to move away from the wholly melancholic art cinema of, say, ‘My Name Is Joe’ (1998), and on towards the Ealing comedy tradition with films like ‘Looking for Eric’ (2009) and ‘The Angel’s Share’ (2012).
Indeed, as Loach himself states in a footnote, ‘not every film has to end with a fist clenched in the air.’
Loach is a social realist director with the eye of a sympathetic documentarian, influenced by, amongst other things, Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop, the Free Cinema Movement and the 20th century current affairs programme, ‘World in Action’.
Moreover, similar to the generic conventions exhibited in films from the Italian neo-realist movement such as ‘Rome, Open City’ (1945) and ‘Bicycle Thieves’ (1948), Archibald frequently underscores Loach’s overarching quest to, paradoxically, recreate spontaneity, authenticity and ‘truth’ in his fictional work by employing predominantly naturalistic filmmaking techniques.
By shooting on a ‘real’ location instead of within an ‘artificial’ studio Loach’s objective is to not only encourage the actors to respond to their surrounding environment like recognisable, everyday human beings, but to also display the historical power relations which are inscribed into, for example, the municipal buildings which overshadow them.
Echoing John Grierson’s principle of ‘actuality’, Loach tends to shoot static medium long shots with the filming apparatus and its crew as far away from the ‘action’ as possible, a tactical attempt to motivate the audience to decide what is important and what to focus on, as if they themselves are simply observing matters from across the street.
In turn, this sense of things ‘really happening’ is often reinforced by natural lighting during a shoot via the sky for exteriors or windows for interiors, and by way of continuity editing in post-production so as not to ‘interfere’ with the actors’ on screen performances and the linear story they are striving to tell.
Of course, to achieve ‘the illusion of the first time’ casting is crucial, and Loach’s production team frequently enlist non-professional or amateur actors as a consequence. David Bradley as Billy Casper in ‘Kes’ (1969), Crissy Rock as Maggie Conlan in ‘Ladybird, Ladybird’ (1994) and Martin Compston as Liam in ‘Sweet Sixteen’ (2002) are just three notable examples.
As well as providing a real world opportunity for a filmmaker to collaborate, explore and develop a character more or less from scratch, Jennifer Beth Spiegel points out that casting non-professional or amateur actors is also good for marketing in that it draws the attention of the popular press by way of the presumption that these ordinary individuals are pure and unsullied by the elbow grease of the film industry and the ego of show business.
An important factor in this process is, unlike most other independent British production companies, Ken Loach and Rebecca O’Brien’s ‘Sixteen Films’ has become well financed and self-sufficient over the decades and so, as a result, they have the time to carry out lengthy scouting missions in order to locate and secure the right actor for the right role.
That is, to achieve a sense of verisimilitude on screen and in the minds of the audience, Loach et al seek out and cast performers who, besides their physical appearance, not only share similar personality traits with the characters they are pencilled in to play, but who also originate from similar socio-economic backgrounds or circumstances.
This approach is exemplified by the casting of Paul Brannigan as Gareth O’Connor in ‘The Angel’s Share’ in that the film’s screenwriter, Paul Laverty, first encountered him while conducting research at Strathclyde Police’s Violence Reduction Unit. As Archibald relates, in line with his on screen character, Brannigan, born in Glasgow’s East End, had been imprisoned for violent crimes and gangland feuding, but was also ‘attempting to go straight’.
Of course, critics will argue that the casting of non-professional actors undermines the history and craft of acting, the experience involved, the knowledge accumulated, the techniques learned, the talent nurtured. For example, in an interview with the author, the actor Roger Allam points out that amateur actors ‘would be at a loss in a Molière play’.
While this may be true, a reasonable response would be: what other practical routes are there available in the UK for the working-class to climb up on to the silver screen and represent their identities, communities and histories fairly?
In an industry predominantly based in London and owned, run and populated by the middle class and their superiors, the costs involved to train as an actor are astronomical to an ordinary person and the distance to travel, particularly for those in the North, preposterous.
Indeed, the few British working-class actors who are lucky enough to enjoy a public platform have consistently highlighted this socio-cultural system of privilege, prejudice and exclusion over recent years.
While Christopher Eccleston asserts that the ‘working-class … are not wanted in the arts anymore’, James McAvoy argues that the dominance of privately educated British actors in the 21st century is ‘damaging for society’. In turn, Gary Oldman has stated that he is unable to direct a follow-up to his incendiary ‘Nil by Mouth’ (1997) because ‘They don’t want another one. They want ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’’.
In light of these socio-economic and ideological realities, Loach’s casting of non-professional and amateur actors – together with the working-class stories he tells and the working-class worlds he creates – should be regarded not simply as an aesthetic choice or even socialist posturing. That is, under the stifling, reductive right-wing administration we are all currently enduring in the UK, enabled on a day-to-day basis by numerous obsequious and self-serving cultural institutions and organisations, it could be reasonably argued that such an approach is, in truth, a revolutionary act.
In his epilogue Archibald includes an apposite quote from the Spanish filmmaker, Luis Buñuel:
‘A writer or painter cannot change the world but they can keep an essential margin of non-conformity alive. Thanks to them the powerful can never affirm that everyone agrees with their acts.’
In ‘Tracking Loach’ there is so much more to discover and learn from its unique, rigorous and genuinely heartfelt exploration of one of the maestros of modern British cinema and modern British politics, Ken Loach.
It is highly recommended.
It is also an extremely timely publication in that Loach’s latest film, ‘The Old Oak’, will be receiving its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival 2023.
The author’s unique approach is to prioritise the contextual mechanics of film production studies over the theoretical speculation of critical screen studies, arguing that the reflective observation of the methodologies and logistics involved in preparing, shooting and exhibiting a feature film should elicit a complementary understanding of a filmmaker’s aesthetic.
This reminds me of a television interview with David Niven from the 1970s where he asks something along the lines of: ‘How can a critic write a decent review if he’s never actually made a movie himself?’
During Archibald’s ethnographic pursuit of Loach’s poetic and political process his primary sources of data are the annotations, interviews, shooting documents, digital footage and photographs he accrues while being physically present during the production and exhibition of Loach’s working-class comedy-drama set in Glasgow, ‘The Angel’s Share’ (2012).
It should be noted that to be granted access to such a complex and sensitive creative environment and its extremely busy and anxious workforce – its technicians and performers – and, in turn, to enjoy the company and trust of its leaders who have the weight of a major production bearing down on them – Ken Loach (Director), Paul Laverty (Screenwriter) and Rebecca O’Brien (Producer) – is a memorable achievement in itself.
To accompany him on his journey the author also draws on a wide variety of historical and theoretical secondary sources, including the BFI’s Ken Loach Archive, and I personally found a number of his scholarly citations to be just as illuminating as his on set observations.
For example, when working alongside his early screenwriting partner, Jim Allen, Archibald highlights that Loach’s television productions in the late 1960s and early 1970s were influenced by the political ideas of Leon Trotsky in that the UK’s established democratic system was seen to be inadequate with regards to the economic interests of the proletariat.
Following on from this it is argued that Loach’s films generally aim to reveal to the audience, either explicitly or implicitly, the harsh realities, exploitation and despair of working-class experience and, in turn, that capitalism is not a natural, normal or inevitable way of ordering or governing society.
With this in mind the socialist concerns of Loach’s oeuvre have generally transitioned from addressing issues such as organised labour in ‘The Big Flame’ (1969) and ‘The Rank and File’ (1971), to unorganised labour in ‘Riff Raff’ (1991) and ‘The Navigators’ (2001), and then on to unemployed labour in ‘Sweet Sixteen’ (2002) and ‘I, Daniel Blake’ (2016).
While such films could be viewed as a war artist’s mournful depiction of socio-economic casualties lying strewn across a neoliberalist battlefield, Archibald posits with reference to the Italian historian, Enzo Traverso, that they can also be understood as evidential ‘open wounds’ which the Left need to nurse so the embers of possibility can once again be reignited.
Aware of Raymond Williams’ contention that ‘to be truly radical is to make hope possible, rather than despair convincing’, the author proceeds to cite Newland and Hoyle’s view that in some ways Loach’s creative output in the 21st century has begun to move away from the wholly melancholic art cinema of, say, ‘My Name Is Joe’ (1998), and on towards the Ealing comedy tradition with films like ‘Looking for Eric’ (2009) and ‘The Angel’s Share’ (2012).
Indeed, as Loach himself states in a footnote, ‘not every film has to end with a fist clenched in the air.’
Loach is a social realist director with the eye of a sympathetic documentarian, influenced by, amongst other things, Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop, the Free Cinema Movement and the 20th century current affairs programme, ‘World in Action’.
Moreover, similar to the generic conventions exhibited in films from the Italian neo-realist movement such as ‘Rome, Open City’ (1945) and ‘Bicycle Thieves’ (1948), Archibald frequently underscores Loach’s overarching quest to, paradoxically, recreate spontaneity, authenticity and ‘truth’ in his fictional work by employing predominantly naturalistic filmmaking techniques.
By shooting on a ‘real’ location instead of within an ‘artificial’ studio Loach’s objective is to not only encourage the actors to respond to their surrounding environment like recognisable, everyday human beings, but to also display the historical power relations which are inscribed into, for example, the municipal buildings which overshadow them.
Echoing John Grierson’s principle of ‘actuality’, Loach tends to shoot static medium long shots with the filming apparatus and its crew as far away from the ‘action’ as possible, a tactical attempt to motivate the audience to decide what is important and what to focus on, as if they themselves are simply observing matters from across the street.
In turn, this sense of things ‘really happening’ is often reinforced by natural lighting during a shoot via the sky for exteriors or windows for interiors, and by way of continuity editing in post-production so as not to ‘interfere’ with the actors’ on screen performances and the linear story they are striving to tell.
Of course, to achieve ‘the illusion of the first time’ casting is crucial, and Loach’s production team frequently enlist non-professional or amateur actors as a consequence. David Bradley as Billy Casper in ‘Kes’ (1969), Crissy Rock as Maggie Conlan in ‘Ladybird, Ladybird’ (1994) and Martin Compston as Liam in ‘Sweet Sixteen’ (2002) are just three notable examples.
As well as providing a real world opportunity for a filmmaker to collaborate, explore and develop a character more or less from scratch, Jennifer Beth Spiegel points out that casting non-professional or amateur actors is also good for marketing in that it draws the attention of the popular press by way of the presumption that these ordinary individuals are pure and unsullied by the elbow grease of the film industry and the ego of show business.
An important factor in this process is, unlike most other independent British production companies, Ken Loach and Rebecca O’Brien’s ‘Sixteen Films’ has become well financed and self-sufficient over the decades and so, as a result, they have the time to carry out lengthy scouting missions in order to locate and secure the right actor for the right role.
That is, to achieve a sense of verisimilitude on screen and in the minds of the audience, Loach et al seek out and cast performers who, besides their physical appearance, not only share similar personality traits with the characters they are pencilled in to play, but who also originate from similar socio-economic backgrounds or circumstances.
This approach is exemplified by the casting of Paul Brannigan as Gareth O’Connor in ‘The Angel’s Share’ in that the film’s screenwriter, Paul Laverty, first encountered him while conducting research at Strathclyde Police’s Violence Reduction Unit. As Archibald relates, in line with his on screen character, Brannigan, born in Glasgow’s East End, had been imprisoned for violent crimes and gangland feuding, but was also ‘attempting to go straight’.
Of course, critics will argue that the casting of non-professional actors undermines the history and craft of acting, the experience involved, the knowledge accumulated, the techniques learned, the talent nurtured. For example, in an interview with the author, the actor Roger Allam points out that amateur actors ‘would be at a loss in a Molière play’.
While this may be true, a reasonable response would be: what other practical routes are there available in the UK for the working-class to climb up on to the silver screen and represent their identities, communities and histories fairly?
In an industry predominantly based in London and owned, run and populated by the middle class and their superiors, the costs involved to train as an actor are astronomical to an ordinary person and the distance to travel, particularly for those in the North, preposterous.
Indeed, the few British working-class actors who are lucky enough to enjoy a public platform have consistently highlighted this socio-cultural system of privilege, prejudice and exclusion over recent years.
While Christopher Eccleston asserts that the ‘working-class … are not wanted in the arts anymore’, James McAvoy argues that the dominance of privately educated British actors in the 21st century is ‘damaging for society’. In turn, Gary Oldman has stated that he is unable to direct a follow-up to his incendiary ‘Nil by Mouth’ (1997) because ‘They don’t want another one. They want ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’’.
In light of these socio-economic and ideological realities, Loach’s casting of non-professional and amateur actors – together with the working-class stories he tells and the working-class worlds he creates – should be regarded not simply as an aesthetic choice or even socialist posturing. That is, under the stifling, reductive right-wing administration we are all currently enduring in the UK, enabled on a day-to-day basis by numerous obsequious and self-serving cultural institutions and organisations, it could be reasonably argued that such an approach is, in truth, a revolutionary act.
In his epilogue Archibald includes an apposite quote from the Spanish filmmaker, Luis Buñuel:
‘A writer or painter cannot change the world but they can keep an essential margin of non-conformity alive. Thanks to them the powerful can never affirm that everyone agrees with their acts.’
In ‘Tracking Loach’ there is so much more to discover and learn from its unique, rigorous and genuinely heartfelt exploration of one of the maestros of modern British cinema and modern British politics, Ken Loach.
It is highly recommended.
This book review originally appeared in Culture Matters in April 2023 and in The Morning Star in May 2023.
INTERVIEW:: Mike Quille, editor of Culture Matters, interviews Brett Gregory about his debut feature film and the role of social class in British Cinema
December 2022
December 2022
Q: Can you tell us a bit about the background to making the film?
My best friend and cinematographer died from Sudden Adult Death Syndrome in 2013. He was 26 years old.
In turn, following decades of absence and estrangement, I was abandoned by my mother’s working class family in Nottinghamshire and my long-lost father’s middle class family in Oxfordshire in 2014.
They just didn’t want to know.
Moreover, following the UK government’s unprecedented £141bn bail out of the corrupt British banking system in 2008, austerity cuts finally sank their teeth into the education sector in 2015.
As a consequence, after 11 years of service, I was made redundant from my position as a lecturer in A Level Film and Cultural Studies.
This tragic succession of events, which literally left me with no one to turn to, ultimately coalesced into an intense period of angst, depression and sense of utter worthlessness.
In turn, with the stench of Brexit in the air, I slowly began to realise that I didn’t understand my country anymore; I didn’t understand its people; and I didn’t understand myself.
I had lost my focus and I had lost my faith.
With my redundancy money I spent months and months reading and writing and, now and again, glancing over at the large print of Hieronymus Bosch’s, ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’, that hung on the living room wall in my rented flat in Manchester.
It then finally dawned on me, after yet another drunken stupor, that my only way out of this existential nightmare was to expel a full-throated, blood-curdling ‘Wilhelm Scream’: a semi-autobiographical screenplay based on Bosch’s 15th century painting in relation to the tragedy, trauma and truth of Broken Britain, i.e. the 1980s under Thatcher, the 1990s under Major and the 2000s under Cameron and Johnson.
Q. What’s the film about? What are its main themes?
In terms of plot we find Old Jack in his gloomy flat in Hulme in 2020 under Boris Johnson’s rule as he appears to awake from a fever dream about sex and murder in Manchester, overshadowed by the city’s Gothic architecture, civic statues and towering skyscrapers.
Still half-asleep and hung-over in bed he then reads an old text from the wife of a good friend who informs him that her husband is on a ventilator with COVID and that she is struggling to breathe herself.
In turn, in the mausoleum which is his study, Old Jack discovers that he has an unwelcome voicemail on his phone from his long-lost grandmother in Oxford who wishes to secretly meet up with him after four decades before she dies.
All of this proves too much for him however, and he takes a fistful of anti-depressants and washes them down with a mug of vodka.
Thus begins his descent into his own private rabbit-hole wherein he meets himself as a young boy in 1984, living on an abusive council estate under Margaret Thatcher during the Miners’ Strike, and fantasising about escaping into a world of fiction and illusion.
He is then later confronted by himself as a university student in 1992 during John Major’s tenure, riddled with Class A drugs, alienated from his peers and his studies, and questioning his purpose and sanity in violent messianic outbursts.
Moreover, these arduous, psychotic visitations are intercut with imagined interviews with a number of women from Old Jack’s past who seem to appear not only as witnesses, but also as judge and jury: his half-sister, his old English teacher, his former college manager, his ex-girlfriend’s Christian mother, and his nervous next door neighbour.
Overcome by the weight of his own history in a country where he doesn’t believe he belongs, Old Jack finally embarks on a pilgrimage to the historical Stoodley Pike monument in West Yorkshire, on the outskirts of society, to find some sort of answer which will put an end to his existential misery.
In terms of themes the film can primarily be understood to be about morality and ethics, about how those in power treat us and about how we treat each other.
In turn, it is also about abandonment, loneliness, mental health and a breakdown in communication between the working and middle classes.
Furthermore, the film’s narrative focuses on the socio-political cost of the North/South divide: how this is continually reinforced by right wing ideological forces in order to distract and weaken any serious collective opposition to the systematic asset stripping of what remains of the United Kingdom.
Q. What were you aiming for with the film, and how did those aims change in the making of the film?
A crucial aim of the film was to represent the Northern working class on screen, externally and internally, with intelligence, authenticity and dignity in direct opposition to the demeaning stereotypes and caricatures which are regularly churned out by the corporate mainstream media based in London.
Such a genuine independent creative decision directly challenges the popular status quo currently being maintained by the ideological state apparatus and so, understandably, we received no funding or investment or support from any public or private organisation at all.
As a result, what changed was not only the timescale of the production from one year to six and half years, but also my personal finances.
Even though every one of the cast and crew members committed their time and talents for free – a testament to the ongoing industriousness and inventiveness of Greater Manchester by the way – the production still left me around £56,000 in debt by way of personal loans, two credit cards and two overdrafts.
Q. Can you tell us a bit about reactions to the film from critics and from working-class people?
Since its release on Amazon Prime in May 2022 we have won over 50 international film festival awards and nominations, and received over 100 informed and passionate reviews on IMDb, Letterboxd and various arts and culture websites.
In the main these reviews praise the film’s anger, insight and originality, its production values, its performances and its soundtrack, comparing it to the works of Ken Loach, Mike Leigh, Alan Clarke and even Theodor Dreyer.
Standout quotes such as ‘A Searing Portrait of Modern Britain’ are incredibly validating and prove that a large international audience – who are also going through their own individual horrors under this self-serving global capitalist system – need authentic stories like this to remind them that they’re not alone and they’re not going mad.
We hosted a free screening of the film on a working class Manchester housing estate in Moston, for instance, and while a number of attendees still strongly believed that cinema should be ‘entertaining’ and ‘escapist’, many others recognised the role poverty, alcoholism, drug use and domestic abuse has played in their day-to-day lives.
Q. What do you think of British cinema, the kind of films that get made and the roles these play in our society?
In my personal experience, due to the deeply embedded hierarchical character of the United Kingdom’s social system, and the real world advantages and disadvantages this creates for different social groups in different parts of the country, the history of British cinema can primarily be understood in terms of the presence, or absence, of class and class division.
Many of us alive today first learned of the existence and influence of the rules and rewards of social class as children while watching, for instance, David Lean’s ‘Great Expectations’ (1946), Carol Reed’s ‘Oliver!’ (1968) or Richard Fleischer’s ‘The Prince and The Pauper’ (1977).
Repeated screenings of these movies usually took place in a school assembly or in the family living room over the Christmas period and, I would argue, such public exhibitions contributed to a cultural normalisation of social prejudice, inequality and exclusion by disguising these conditions as simply an inevitable part of British history and tradition.
While the 1960s’ new wave ‘Angry Young Man’ arrived and blew a plume of cigarette smoke in the face of authority, articulating alternative expectations and aspirations for white working class British males, such insubordination was given short shrift.
Despite dynamic and memorable performances from Richard Burton in ‘Look Back in Anger’ (1959), Albert Finney in ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’ (1960) and Richard Harris in ‘This Sporting Life’ (1963), it is telling that their character arcs always concluded with them being either abandoned or emasculated as punishment for not knowing their place.
Against the childish backdrop of the ‘Carry On’ franchise and its production line of pathetic proletariats, the trajectory of Michael Caine’s filmography throughout the 1970s provides an interesting counterpoint in that his commercial success rested largely upon the re-appropriation of his Cockney origins, persona and on-screen roles.
For example, only five or so years after the incendiary, anti-establishment release of ‘Get Carter’ (1971), he was suddenly battling on behalf of Queen and Country in ‘The Eagle Has Landed’ (1975) and ‘A Bridge Too Far’ (1976).
In turn, it is no surprise that, when he left to further pursue the capitalist dream of Hollywood fame and fortune later in the decade, he was more or less deified by the country’s mainstream media.
Of course, everything exploded when Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979 and cultural war was openly declared on the men and women of the labour movement and their representation across Britain’s sterling silver screens.
In the blue corner were David Puttnam, Richard Attenborough and Merchant-Ivory, and in the red corner were Mike Leigh, Dennis Potter and Alan Clarke.
Noticeably, state school kids were far too busy reciting profanities in the playground from ‘Scum’ (1979) and ‘Made in Britain’ (1982) to give a toss about the posh swag bag of Academy Awards accrued by state-supported nostalgia narratives such as ‘Chariots of Fire’ (1981) or ‘Ghandi’ (1982).
I should note here that Michael Caine did go some way to redeem himself in this decade by supporting Julie Walters’ wonderful working class lead in Willy Russell’s intellectually aspirational ‘Educating Rita’ in 1983.
Under the tenures of John Major and Tony Blair in the 1990s the changing of the guard necessarily took place, and Richard Curtis and Kenneth Branagh dutifully took up their well-financed positions with ‘Four Weddings and A Funeral’ (1994) and ‘Notting Hill’ (1999), ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ (1993) and ‘Hamlet’ (1996).
Meanwhile, as a reflection of the ongoing embourgeoisement of mainstream British culture and society, authentic working class cinema not only had to search for its roots and values in the iconography of the underclass, it had to also search for its funding abroad.
Films such as Mike Leigh’s ‘Naked’ (1993), Danny Boyle’s ‘Trainspotting’ (1996), Gary Oldman’s ‘Nil by Mouth’ (1997) and Ken Loach’s ‘My Name is Joe’ (1998) highlighted that the remnants of working class togetherness and community could now only subsist on the margins by way of the narrative ritualisation of petty crime, drugs or alcohol.
Indeed, during the 21st century, as the British Empire suffers its death throes and the country’s post-Elizabethan standing on the world stage rapidly dwindles away, the Establishment has reacted accordingly in its attempt to remain in power by re-asserting outmoded notions of cinematic representation that are increasingly reductive, intolerant and undemocratic.
While commercially successful film franchises like ‘Harry Potter’, ‘James Bond’, ‘Downton Abbey’ and ‘The Crown’ continue to suffocate the growing diversity and demands of our shared culture, the mediated elevation of privately educated white male screen actors such as Benedict Cumberbatch, Eddy Redmayne and Tom Hiddleston has seemingly transported us back to the post-war performances of Lawrence Olivier, Alec Guinness and David Niven.
To end, it is no coincidence that the working class white male protagonist in my self-funded ‘Nobody Loves You and You Don’t Deserve to Exist’ (2022) has no community at all: he sleeps alone, he drinks alone and he weeps alone.
In turn, during the film’s climax, and in response to a wider right-wing society that continues to disrespect, mock and ignore working people’s invaluable economic and cultural contributions to the nation, it is somewhat inevitable that he finally disappears.
Q. How could trade unions and their activists get involved with ‘Nobody Loves You …’?
A first step would be for trade unions to show active support for ‘Nobody Loves You and You Don’t Deserve to Exist’ by directly recommending it to their members, their friends and their families.
The film explicitly explores in detail the human consequences of redundancy, unemployment and the debilitating process of claiming Universal Credit, for example.
Of course we have no marketing budget whatsoever, and so if there are any trade union activists out there who genuinely believe in the film and wish to help spread the word across social media, via email and beyond, then please contact me at brett@seriousfeather.com and hopefully we can sort something out.
Co-producer Jack Clarke and I have been doing exactly this for over 8 months now and, I can assure you, it is a very frustrating and mind-numbing process.
Moreover, if there are activists who have access to screening facilities, I’ll be more than happy to send them a free copy of the film for exhibition if they discuss with me the details, promote the event positively and, ideally, provide photographs and audience feedback which can then be shared with our cast, crew and online followers via the Serious Feather website and our social media channels.
In relation to this, if anyone is in the Greater Manchester region in January, we are holding an exclusive free screening at the Leigh Film Factory in Wigan on the 20th from 7pm onwards.
Book your seats here on Eventbrite and come along to see what all these film fans abroad are buzzing about, and what the frightfully conservative UK is blatantly ignoring.
In turn, if people are situated further afield, they can always watch the film right now on Amazon Prime for about 5 quid.
As mentioned above, I have debts to pay.
Such a public display of support and solidarity from the trade unions and their activists would of course alert other filmmakers and documentarians up and down the country that there exists a real-world alternative to the ‘colour-by-numbers’ period dramas, CGI extravaganzas and quirky lifestyle stories plopped out by the BBC, Sky, Channel 4 and the British Film Institute.
It will inspire them to work together in creating challenging and humane narratives from a non-corporate perspective so the effects of, say, austerity cuts, COVID corruption, the cost-of-living crisis and industrial strike action etc. can be faithfully and memorably dramatised as we continue to suffer under this nice and shiny neo-liberalist kleptocracy of ours.
Just look at the ruckus RMT leader, Mick Lynch, has been causing on a weekly basis on inane television programmes like ITV’s ‘This Morning’ or ‘BBC Breakfast’, and the real hope this has inspired within everyday people who are sitting at home right now, worrying about switching their heating on.
Just think about what else we could do?
Just think about how much further we could go to bring back honour, dignity, fairness and intelligence back to the British Isles?
My best friend and cinematographer died from Sudden Adult Death Syndrome in 2013. He was 26 years old.
In turn, following decades of absence and estrangement, I was abandoned by my mother’s working class family in Nottinghamshire and my long-lost father’s middle class family in Oxfordshire in 2014.
They just didn’t want to know.
Moreover, following the UK government’s unprecedented £141bn bail out of the corrupt British banking system in 2008, austerity cuts finally sank their teeth into the education sector in 2015.
As a consequence, after 11 years of service, I was made redundant from my position as a lecturer in A Level Film and Cultural Studies.
This tragic succession of events, which literally left me with no one to turn to, ultimately coalesced into an intense period of angst, depression and sense of utter worthlessness.
In turn, with the stench of Brexit in the air, I slowly began to realise that I didn’t understand my country anymore; I didn’t understand its people; and I didn’t understand myself.
I had lost my focus and I had lost my faith.
With my redundancy money I spent months and months reading and writing and, now and again, glancing over at the large print of Hieronymus Bosch’s, ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’, that hung on the living room wall in my rented flat in Manchester.
It then finally dawned on me, after yet another drunken stupor, that my only way out of this existential nightmare was to expel a full-throated, blood-curdling ‘Wilhelm Scream’: a semi-autobiographical screenplay based on Bosch’s 15th century painting in relation to the tragedy, trauma and truth of Broken Britain, i.e. the 1980s under Thatcher, the 1990s under Major and the 2000s under Cameron and Johnson.
Q. What’s the film about? What are its main themes?
In terms of plot we find Old Jack in his gloomy flat in Hulme in 2020 under Boris Johnson’s rule as he appears to awake from a fever dream about sex and murder in Manchester, overshadowed by the city’s Gothic architecture, civic statues and towering skyscrapers.
Still half-asleep and hung-over in bed he then reads an old text from the wife of a good friend who informs him that her husband is on a ventilator with COVID and that she is struggling to breathe herself.
In turn, in the mausoleum which is his study, Old Jack discovers that he has an unwelcome voicemail on his phone from his long-lost grandmother in Oxford who wishes to secretly meet up with him after four decades before she dies.
All of this proves too much for him however, and he takes a fistful of anti-depressants and washes them down with a mug of vodka.
Thus begins his descent into his own private rabbit-hole wherein he meets himself as a young boy in 1984, living on an abusive council estate under Margaret Thatcher during the Miners’ Strike, and fantasising about escaping into a world of fiction and illusion.
He is then later confronted by himself as a university student in 1992 during John Major’s tenure, riddled with Class A drugs, alienated from his peers and his studies, and questioning his purpose and sanity in violent messianic outbursts.
Moreover, these arduous, psychotic visitations are intercut with imagined interviews with a number of women from Old Jack’s past who seem to appear not only as witnesses, but also as judge and jury: his half-sister, his old English teacher, his former college manager, his ex-girlfriend’s Christian mother, and his nervous next door neighbour.
Overcome by the weight of his own history in a country where he doesn’t believe he belongs, Old Jack finally embarks on a pilgrimage to the historical Stoodley Pike monument in West Yorkshire, on the outskirts of society, to find some sort of answer which will put an end to his existential misery.
In terms of themes the film can primarily be understood to be about morality and ethics, about how those in power treat us and about how we treat each other.
In turn, it is also about abandonment, loneliness, mental health and a breakdown in communication between the working and middle classes.
Furthermore, the film’s narrative focuses on the socio-political cost of the North/South divide: how this is continually reinforced by right wing ideological forces in order to distract and weaken any serious collective opposition to the systematic asset stripping of what remains of the United Kingdom.
Q. What were you aiming for with the film, and how did those aims change in the making of the film?
A crucial aim of the film was to represent the Northern working class on screen, externally and internally, with intelligence, authenticity and dignity in direct opposition to the demeaning stereotypes and caricatures which are regularly churned out by the corporate mainstream media based in London.
Such a genuine independent creative decision directly challenges the popular status quo currently being maintained by the ideological state apparatus and so, understandably, we received no funding or investment or support from any public or private organisation at all.
As a result, what changed was not only the timescale of the production from one year to six and half years, but also my personal finances.
Even though every one of the cast and crew members committed their time and talents for free – a testament to the ongoing industriousness and inventiveness of Greater Manchester by the way – the production still left me around £56,000 in debt by way of personal loans, two credit cards and two overdrafts.
Q. Can you tell us a bit about reactions to the film from critics and from working-class people?
Since its release on Amazon Prime in May 2022 we have won over 50 international film festival awards and nominations, and received over 100 informed and passionate reviews on IMDb, Letterboxd and various arts and culture websites.
In the main these reviews praise the film’s anger, insight and originality, its production values, its performances and its soundtrack, comparing it to the works of Ken Loach, Mike Leigh, Alan Clarke and even Theodor Dreyer.
Standout quotes such as ‘A Searing Portrait of Modern Britain’ are incredibly validating and prove that a large international audience – who are also going through their own individual horrors under this self-serving global capitalist system – need authentic stories like this to remind them that they’re not alone and they’re not going mad.
We hosted a free screening of the film on a working class Manchester housing estate in Moston, for instance, and while a number of attendees still strongly believed that cinema should be ‘entertaining’ and ‘escapist’, many others recognised the role poverty, alcoholism, drug use and domestic abuse has played in their day-to-day lives.
Q. What do you think of British cinema, the kind of films that get made and the roles these play in our society?
In my personal experience, due to the deeply embedded hierarchical character of the United Kingdom’s social system, and the real world advantages and disadvantages this creates for different social groups in different parts of the country, the history of British cinema can primarily be understood in terms of the presence, or absence, of class and class division.
Many of us alive today first learned of the existence and influence of the rules and rewards of social class as children while watching, for instance, David Lean’s ‘Great Expectations’ (1946), Carol Reed’s ‘Oliver!’ (1968) or Richard Fleischer’s ‘The Prince and The Pauper’ (1977).
Repeated screenings of these movies usually took place in a school assembly or in the family living room over the Christmas period and, I would argue, such public exhibitions contributed to a cultural normalisation of social prejudice, inequality and exclusion by disguising these conditions as simply an inevitable part of British history and tradition.
While the 1960s’ new wave ‘Angry Young Man’ arrived and blew a plume of cigarette smoke in the face of authority, articulating alternative expectations and aspirations for white working class British males, such insubordination was given short shrift.
Despite dynamic and memorable performances from Richard Burton in ‘Look Back in Anger’ (1959), Albert Finney in ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’ (1960) and Richard Harris in ‘This Sporting Life’ (1963), it is telling that their character arcs always concluded with them being either abandoned or emasculated as punishment for not knowing their place.
Against the childish backdrop of the ‘Carry On’ franchise and its production line of pathetic proletariats, the trajectory of Michael Caine’s filmography throughout the 1970s provides an interesting counterpoint in that his commercial success rested largely upon the re-appropriation of his Cockney origins, persona and on-screen roles.
For example, only five or so years after the incendiary, anti-establishment release of ‘Get Carter’ (1971), he was suddenly battling on behalf of Queen and Country in ‘The Eagle Has Landed’ (1975) and ‘A Bridge Too Far’ (1976).
In turn, it is no surprise that, when he left to further pursue the capitalist dream of Hollywood fame and fortune later in the decade, he was more or less deified by the country’s mainstream media.
Of course, everything exploded when Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979 and cultural war was openly declared on the men and women of the labour movement and their representation across Britain’s sterling silver screens.
In the blue corner were David Puttnam, Richard Attenborough and Merchant-Ivory, and in the red corner were Mike Leigh, Dennis Potter and Alan Clarke.
Noticeably, state school kids were far too busy reciting profanities in the playground from ‘Scum’ (1979) and ‘Made in Britain’ (1982) to give a toss about the posh swag bag of Academy Awards accrued by state-supported nostalgia narratives such as ‘Chariots of Fire’ (1981) or ‘Ghandi’ (1982).
I should note here that Michael Caine did go some way to redeem himself in this decade by supporting Julie Walters’ wonderful working class lead in Willy Russell’s intellectually aspirational ‘Educating Rita’ in 1983.
Under the tenures of John Major and Tony Blair in the 1990s the changing of the guard necessarily took place, and Richard Curtis and Kenneth Branagh dutifully took up their well-financed positions with ‘Four Weddings and A Funeral’ (1994) and ‘Notting Hill’ (1999), ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ (1993) and ‘Hamlet’ (1996).
Meanwhile, as a reflection of the ongoing embourgeoisement of mainstream British culture and society, authentic working class cinema not only had to search for its roots and values in the iconography of the underclass, it had to also search for its funding abroad.
Films such as Mike Leigh’s ‘Naked’ (1993), Danny Boyle’s ‘Trainspotting’ (1996), Gary Oldman’s ‘Nil by Mouth’ (1997) and Ken Loach’s ‘My Name is Joe’ (1998) highlighted that the remnants of working class togetherness and community could now only subsist on the margins by way of the narrative ritualisation of petty crime, drugs or alcohol.
Indeed, during the 21st century, as the British Empire suffers its death throes and the country’s post-Elizabethan standing on the world stage rapidly dwindles away, the Establishment has reacted accordingly in its attempt to remain in power by re-asserting outmoded notions of cinematic representation that are increasingly reductive, intolerant and undemocratic.
While commercially successful film franchises like ‘Harry Potter’, ‘James Bond’, ‘Downton Abbey’ and ‘The Crown’ continue to suffocate the growing diversity and demands of our shared culture, the mediated elevation of privately educated white male screen actors such as Benedict Cumberbatch, Eddy Redmayne and Tom Hiddleston has seemingly transported us back to the post-war performances of Lawrence Olivier, Alec Guinness and David Niven.
To end, it is no coincidence that the working class white male protagonist in my self-funded ‘Nobody Loves You and You Don’t Deserve to Exist’ (2022) has no community at all: he sleeps alone, he drinks alone and he weeps alone.
In turn, during the film’s climax, and in response to a wider right-wing society that continues to disrespect, mock and ignore working people’s invaluable economic and cultural contributions to the nation, it is somewhat inevitable that he finally disappears.
Q. How could trade unions and their activists get involved with ‘Nobody Loves You …’?
A first step would be for trade unions to show active support for ‘Nobody Loves You and You Don’t Deserve to Exist’ by directly recommending it to their members, their friends and their families.
The film explicitly explores in detail the human consequences of redundancy, unemployment and the debilitating process of claiming Universal Credit, for example.
Of course we have no marketing budget whatsoever, and so if there are any trade union activists out there who genuinely believe in the film and wish to help spread the word across social media, via email and beyond, then please contact me at brett@seriousfeather.com and hopefully we can sort something out.
Co-producer Jack Clarke and I have been doing exactly this for over 8 months now and, I can assure you, it is a very frustrating and mind-numbing process.
Moreover, if there are activists who have access to screening facilities, I’ll be more than happy to send them a free copy of the film for exhibition if they discuss with me the details, promote the event positively and, ideally, provide photographs and audience feedback which can then be shared with our cast, crew and online followers via the Serious Feather website and our social media channels.
In relation to this, if anyone is in the Greater Manchester region in January, we are holding an exclusive free screening at the Leigh Film Factory in Wigan on the 20th from 7pm onwards.
Book your seats here on Eventbrite and come along to see what all these film fans abroad are buzzing about, and what the frightfully conservative UK is blatantly ignoring.
In turn, if people are situated further afield, they can always watch the film right now on Amazon Prime for about 5 quid.
As mentioned above, I have debts to pay.
Such a public display of support and solidarity from the trade unions and their activists would of course alert other filmmakers and documentarians up and down the country that there exists a real-world alternative to the ‘colour-by-numbers’ period dramas, CGI extravaganzas and quirky lifestyle stories plopped out by the BBC, Sky, Channel 4 and the British Film Institute.
It will inspire them to work together in creating challenging and humane narratives from a non-corporate perspective so the effects of, say, austerity cuts, COVID corruption, the cost-of-living crisis and industrial strike action etc. can be faithfully and memorably dramatised as we continue to suffer under this nice and shiny neo-liberalist kleptocracy of ours.
Just look at the ruckus RMT leader, Mick Lynch, has been causing on a weekly basis on inane television programmes like ITV’s ‘This Morning’ or ‘BBC Breakfast’, and the real hope this has inspired within everyday people who are sitting at home right now, worrying about switching their heating on.
Just think about what else we could do?
Just think about how much further we could go to bring back honour, dignity, fairness and intelligence back to the British Isles?
