Somers Town, 2008: Dir: Shane Meadows

Somers Town, 2008: Dir: Shane Meadows

Good to see that Shane Meadows has released another film Somers Town after his success with This is England which successfully represented the feel of the Northern (post)-industrial working class youth in Britain at the time of the Falklands war and its problems of dcoming to terms with identity in this rapidly changing society. Somers Town again  stars Thomas Turgoose who played the pre-teen skinhead in This is England.  I haven't had a chance to see it yet but this time the setting is  London in the Somers Town area which you are unlikely to find on a map of London however it is situated in the St. Pancras / Kings Cross part of London. The film is sponsored by Eurostar and started life as a short which mutated into a full-length feature film.

The film was entirely shot on digital video and is mostly in black and white. It won the Michael Powell award for best new British feature film. Generically it is something of a 'coming of age film' in which Tommo (Thomas Turgoose) is a young runaway from Nottingham.  After some trouble on arrival in London Tommo meets Marek the  son of a Polish construction worker on the rebuild of King's Cross as it turns into the hub for the Eurostar train. It is a story of scams and adventures and there is a love interest over the French waitress Maria in cosmopolitan London. The film is in a much lighter vein than This is England.  The Sight and Sound review  spends a lot of time  drawing comparisons  with  the British film culture of the 'Swinging Sixties' which turned from social realism / kitchen sink drama into a lighter vein via Billy Liar. A slight puzzle in this review is the notion that Thomas Turgoose is:

...a Rita Tushingham for our more tangled times...

I would have thought a Julie Christie might have been a better analogy. In Billy Liar she does make the break to London whilst Billy Liar signally doesn't. Christie's character then tranmutes into the 'Darling' girl in Schlesinger's next film called Darling with Christie's switch to swinging London. Tushingham goes from holding the social realist baby in Tony Richardson's  Taste of Honey to Richard Lester's The Knack which was her switch to the swinging sixties. In terms of directorial interest perhaps  this signals a shift in  Meadows'  approach, for  most of the  social realists of the late fifties early 1960s produced films in a lighter vein later on  but  with  a strong political satirical edge.  Richardson's Tom Jones, and then Charge of the Light Brigade, and Karel Reisz's Morgan a Suitable Case for Treatment and of course Lindsay Anderson's 'If' all moved from the somewhat dour British social realist paradigm for film making to  political satires. By comparison Lester as an American initially linked with the Beatles films came from a rather different background. Here the satire was absent and the films were far more straightforwardly celebratory reflecting a surface mood. Realism of course does try to look under the surface to expose and critique the underlying processes of society.

Certainly the reviews linked to below have quite different takes upon the film. The Independent review is perhaps the most insightful one and isn't afraid to cut through the nostalgia and whimsey which by the sounds of it suffuse the film. If it is more like The Knack than the work of the post-social realist British directors of the 1960s then as the Independent puts it the lack of dramatisation:

...should bother anyone who claims Meadows as one of the great hopes of British film-making.

At this point I'm unable to comment on whether Meadows has managed to bring in some useful insights to bear into the globalised economy which has led to diasporas in the labour markets in a way that Ken Loach did in It's a Free World for example. However these are important issues to bear in mind when viewing Somers Town. Currently analogies to the Knack seem to indicate that Meadows has missed an opportunity here. I shall develop this debate further once I've seen the film. In the meantime hopefully the links will be of use to readers and provoke some general thoughts about issues of representation of the global working class and the role of British cinema within this.

Official Trailer of Somers Town

Webliography

Sight & Sound review of Somers Town

Shane Meadows' Somers Town takes top Edinburgh award: Guardian June 30th 2008

Guardian Video Review of Somers Town

Independent review of Somers Town. Downloadable trailer available.

Timesonline on Somers Town

Nottingham Evening Post on Somers Town

Financial Times Somers Town Review

: 25 Aug 2008 18:48 |  Tags: British Cinema Eurostar Michael Powell Award Shane Meadows Somers Town Thomas Turgoose |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Shane Meadows

British Directors: Shane Meadows (1973 -)

Introduction  

Along with many other British director entries this entry is 'work in progress' nevertheless it will provide a basic signposting to other available resources on the web in the first instance until I'm able to make a fuller evaluation. 

There are some useful links in the webliography including an extract at the BBC Film Network site.  

Filmography

2008: Somers Town

2006: This Is England

2004: Dead Man's Shoes

2002: Once Upon a Time in the Midlands

1999: A Room for Romeo Brass

1997: TwentyFourSeven

1996: Smalltime 

Film availability: These DVDs are available

Webliography 

BBC Film Network interview with Shane Meadows. (Viewable extract available).  

Screenonline Biography

BFI: Twenty Four Seven

Screenonline: Smalltime (Debut Feature)

Guardian interview with Shane Meadows 

Shane Meadows on Guardian arts blog

Time Out interview Shane Meadows 

RETURN TO BRITISH DIRECTORS HUB PAGE 

: 24 Dec 2007 17:19 |  Tags: A Level Media Studies British Cinema British Cinema From 1990 Contemporary British Cinema Contemporary British Directors Shane Meadows |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Directors for Contemporary British Cinema

British Directors in Contemporary British Cinema

Return to Contemporary British Cinema Hub

All active links lead to in house pages on the specific director. Some are still under construction and may not be currently accessible. Please try again soon.

Each page will have a specific webliography and will also have both internal and external links to a range of their films. Obviously this is a major development undertaking and there are currently 30 directors listed below with some more who need to be added. 

Apologies for any shortcomings. British contemporary cinema is going to be a key development area in the coming weeks as many visitors are likely to be having an exam on it in the summer. It is recommended that you vist the relevant pages reasonably frequently as there will be quite a lot of change. Pages will be opened as soon as possible and the priority will be to provide a range of the best possible current web links which are considered as good quality.  

I hope you will find the system useful.  

Introduction

This posting is aimed at the interested general viewer in keeping up to date with British Films and film makers. It also functions as a core resource for the current OCR A2 Unit on Contemporary British Cinema.

Please note the term British Cinema is not the same as British Films. Cinema refers to the industrial systems of production, distribution, and exhibition as a whole. It can also refer to the criticics and reviewers who are employed at any given moment. Directors and the films they make here are only a small part of the industry as a whole.

The list below is primarily taken from the BFI Screenonline Directors on British and Irish Cinema.  There are a couple of inclusions of directors who don't really make films in the UK or about the UK. Sir Ridley Scott being one of these and Sir Alan Parker being another. They tend to prove the rule that Hollywood is the global centre of filmmaking which is both American and yet has an extra dimension to it which proves highly attractive to the most successful filmmakers in the world in terms of gaining audiences at least. There are some surprising omissions from the Screenonline listings such as Paul Greengrass. Here I have linked to Wikipedia in the first instance.

List of Contemporary British Directors

Arnold Andrea (1961 -).

Attenborough, Richard (Lord) (1923 - ) 

Bird, Antonia (1959 - ) 

Boyle, Danny (1956-) 

Branagh Kenneth (1960 -) 

Broomfield, Nick (1948 -) 

Chadha, Gurinder (1960 - )

Corbijn Anton

Dibb Saul (?) 

Daldry, Stephen (1961 - )

Davies, Terence (1945 - )

Figgis Mike (1948 -)

Forsyth, Bill (1946 -) 

Frears, Stephen (1941 -) 

Gavron, Sarah (    ) 

Gilliam, Terry (1940 - ) 

Greenaway, Peter (1942 -)

Greengrass, Paul (1955 - )

Hodges, Mike (1932 - )

Herman, Mark (1954-)

Joffe Roland (1945 - ) 

Jordan, Neill (1950 -) 

Julien, Isaac (1960 - )

Kapur, Shekah (  )

Leigh, Mike (1943 - )

Loach, Ken (1936 - ) 

Madden, John (1949- )

Meadows, Shane (1973 -) 

Minghella, Anthony (1954-2008)

Parker, Alan (Sir) (1944-) 

Pawlikowski Pawel (?)

Poliakoff Stephen (1952-)

Potter, Sally (1949 -) 

Ramsay Lynne (1969 -)

Ritchie Guy (1968 - )

Scott, Ridley (Sir) (1939 -) 

Williams Paul Andrew (?) 

Winterbottom, Michael (1961 - ) 

Wright Edgar (1974 -   ) 

Wright Joe (1972- )

TO VIEW OTHER CINEMA DEVELOPMENTS IN BRITAIN AND EUROPE PLEASE GO TO THE CHRONOLGY OF EUROPEAN CINEMA HUB PAGE

Return to Contemporary British Cinema Hub

: 16 Jun 2007 07:43 |  Tags: Andrea Arnold British Cinema From 1990 British Film Directors Contemporary British Cinema Contemporary British Directors Hub Danny Boyle Gurinder Chadha Guy Ritchie Hub Page Ken Loach Kinoeye Lynne Ramsay Michael Winterbottom Mike Figgis Mike Leigh Nick Broomfield Ocr Media Studies Ors Paul Greengrass Peter Greenaway Sally Potter Sarah Gavron Shane Meadows Stephen Frears |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem