Between the music, clothes, accents, fierce attitudes, and specific socio-political context, This Is England transports viewers into a time and place of the not-so-distant past often shrouded in contempt and misunderstanding. Without being overly political, writer/director Shane Meadows approaches such issues as the loss of friendships and “coming-of-age.” He takes us into the streets of working-class England during the ’80s in order to delve into the personal life of 12-year old protagonist, Shaun, and a myriad of slightly older, punker skinheads whose lives are altered by the state of their beloved country and the domineering opinions of their “brothers.”

 

Meadows himself was born in Uttoxeter, East Staffordshire, England in the early ’70s. Driven by a love of cinema, he began to direct feature-length films largely based on his own experiences, including the semi-autobiographical This Is England. Set in the Midlands of England in the year 1983, the film is convincingly retrospective and comes off like a cross between Penelope Spheeris’ gritty punk-rock classic, Suburbia, and an actual documentary. Similar to Suburbia, and perhaps intentionally so, there is even a scene where the skinheads walk down the street, dressed in their requisite Dr. Martens, tight jeans, tiny cross tattoos and shaved heads. In order to show this “gang” of kids as potentially threatening, anti-establishment, and closely bonded to one another, Meadows borrows Spheeris’ techniques of a front shot coupled with slow motion, and the result is poignant, chilling, and also very cool.

The drama starts when pre-pubescent Shaun, bullied by “mods” on the last day of school for his bellbottoms, is welcomed by Woody to join his crew of countercultural teenage boys hanging out in an underpass. They attempt to cheer up Shaun by including him in their playfully destructive antics and boozed up parties, where they also mingle with the girls of the group. Soon enough, Shaun’s head is buzzed, he begs his mother to buy him black boots, and he is outfitted in tighter paints, suspenders, and a button-down shirt. Shaun’s relationship with his mother is tender and natural; although she is a bit wary of his new friends and scolds Lol, Woody’s girlfriend, for cutting Shaun’s hair without permission, she accepts the group and their lifestyle because Shaun seems happier—his father was a soldier who died in the Falklands Conflict, fought between Argentina and The United Kingdom.

Now that the punchy Shaun is fully ingrained in the skinhead circle, he even bags himself a gothed-out, glammed-up girlfriend, “Smell” (for Michelle), several years his senior. All seems to be going well until Combo, just released from prison after serving three years for Woody, invades one of their parties and positions himself in the group again. He offends Milky, the only black member, but then atones for the blunder in a meeting he sets up by asking Milky whether he considers himself Jamaican or English, to which Milky, after some contemplation, proudly answers, “English.” Combo rants and raves in a painfully impassioned manner as he attempts to lure the boys into joining his nationalistic fight. Although none of them were previously racist and, rather, integrated black music and culture into their ethos, Combo speaks of the immigrants taking over jobs and encroaching on their territory. When he talks about soldiers who stupidly lost their lives in the Falklands for nothing, Shaun becomes enraged and beats him with his fists, saying, “Shut up, my father died in that war.” Combo tells Shaun that the memory of his father lives on in his heart and that he must make it known that his father didn’t die in vein. This conversation bonds Shaun to Combo and his cause, while Woody and Milky refuse to buy into the racist tirade, thus dividing the original crew.

By offering both sympathetic and objective perspectives on his various characters’ mental states, choices, and beliefs, Meadows is able to transcend the skinhead stereotype and present a more accurate and sensitive portrayal without demonizing any one character. He is also able to culturally link the skinhead movement to the effects of the Falklands War on the English economy and national pride. While a film like American History X dramatically focuses on American skinheads and their “revolutionary” destruction in order to make an impact, This Is England foregoes the direct approach of promoting tolerance and equality and simply presents realistic characters and their personal struggles, friendships and loyalties. The film does not concern itself with karma, nor does it revel in the disturbingly dramatic. Instead, it rests on the sheer weight of the acting and the script, along with attention to detail in order to present scenes that could have easily been shot twenty years ago.

After Combo brings three of his new members to a National Front meeting, he subsequently kicks one out for mildly questioning whether or not he believes all of it. Shaun, in the thick of Combo’s new group, begins to graffiti racial slurs, terrorize young Middle Eastern boys, and rob a deli owner who once kicked him out for reading comics. Shaun, who now wears a long black coat and allows himself to be tattooed, even calls the man a “Paki fuck.” The scene is painful to watch, but Meadows doesn’t overstate victimization. In one touching moment, Combo tells Lol that he loves her and gives her a box that he made for her in prison, proving that he is a complex character and not simply the token skinhead. In another scene, Combo talks to Shaun about the loss of his father, almost as if to take over the role.

Toward the film's end, Combo invites Milky, who, like the rest of Woody’s group, is keeping away, to his place so they can smoke marijuana together. When Milky talks about his loving extended family, it sends Combo into one of his violent bursts of rage. He beats Milky so severely that we, at first, assume he is dead. Shaun is thrown out of the room hysterically crying and, when he returns, Combo is crying as well. Shaun finally realizes the dangers of Combo’s racism and personality. He walks to the sea alone to toss his Saint George’s flag, which he’d been displaying in his window, into the waters, thus abandoning the National front and striking out on his own.