For me, this is the first must see film of the year. It's one of those films in which the characterisation is so rich, the performances so convincing, and the texture of the society shown so solid and believable that other films just seem flimsy and flat by comparison. It's going to be really hard to view the supposedly dark and gritty Spiderman 3 as anything but candy floss after this.
Basically the story is about 12 year old Shaun who falls in with a bunch of skinheads who offer him a sense of identity and support after the death of his father in the Falklands war. Things turn sour when older skinhead Combo turns up, released from prison, and moves the group towards neo-nazism. Meadow's sympathetic treatment of Combo, who is by any standard a complete bastard, is one of the highlights of the film. In fact I think this is the key to the films greatness; by refusing to treat even the most abhorrent characters as anything but human beings Meadows offers the strongest argument possible against extremism.
This Is England is tremendously socially and politically relevant but that makes it sound a bit dull, it's not, the film is as gripping and emotionally involving as anything I've seen. The obvious points of comparison are Meadows' own earlier films with which This Is England shares a natural feel and a fundamentally optimistic view of human nature, but I was also thinking of Lukas Moodysson's early films, (Show Me Love and particularly Together) showing the inconsistent nature of personal beliefs and the collision between ideology and real life.
Really, you should see this.
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