Interview

SHANE MEADOWS

Part teen-rebel flick, part psychodrama, part social critique, This Is England (see On Screen page 28) could scarcely have been made by someone who didn't grasp the intricacies of both skinhead culture and of 1980s Britain. Shane Meadows does, because he was there. A personal, brutal and lovingly detailed movie about racial hatred that Meadows based on his own boyhood experiences, the director's eighth feature closes the book on his string of semi-autobiographical tales of life in the Midlands. Meadows spoke with EYE WEEKLY about complex characters and misplaced anger.

You find an interesting balance in This Is England between the joy of skinhead culture – right down to the music and the fashion of your characters – and the emotional terror at the core of the drama. Was either a product of having experienced things first-hand?
There were two things going in: my memories were vivid and I knew [the film] was going to reflect the times accurately, and the dynamics of the gang were based on real people. But as the project developed from the initial idea to the way we shot it, the cast started to bring their own identities in. As they took ownership of their roles, the characters evolved. The details always had room to develop and move.

The audience gets to share in the high felt by the youngest character, Shaun, as he gains acceptance in the gang, but then feels the weight of Thatcher's Britain as represented by Combo, the corrupting influence who moves into the centre of the story. Tragedy suddenly seems inevitable, and it all happens quickly.
Yeah, we used to have these things called the six-week holidays – the summer break was six weeks. Some kids would hang around together, others might go stay with a grandparent or get a job, and people came back different after that relatively short period of time. Every year that you took that summer break, something big happened. You got moments that were charged and fantastic and it was important to show that, but light and dark co-exist: it is in effect only two weeks later that Shaun is witness to the most horrific side of things.

That said, this film clarifies some of the skinhead identity because you point out that it was a multicultural movement, steeped in West Indian music, that got perverted by the National Front and the racist right.
So many films have portrayed skinheads as racist louts, and for me that wasn't what it was about – it was about Trojan reggae. But the fact was that skinheads were easy for the far right to penetrate – when you've got angry, working-class young men it's easy to manipulate them and say, “This is the reason you haven't got a job. It's their fault.”

Rather than create a gang of cartoonish thugs, you subtly establish a group of three-dimensional characters, right down to Combo, who could've simply been a monster.
It was crucial that there be a range of personalities in the gang. There had to be a very strong black character in the gang; the leader of the gang, Woody, is not the toughest one but the funniest one. And Combo obviously didn't go into prison with his racist views – he was one of the gang – but he's come out with those views. We did workshops and rehearsals before shooting where we didn't rehearse scenes from the film – a lot of times we'd just improvise scenes that give the characters their history.

You don't apologize for Combo but you show that he's been damaged by experience. There is some sympathy there.
He's a product of anger being directed in the wrong places. People question whether or not his actions [in the film's climax] are premeditated – it's all because of Stephen Graham's unbelievably complex performance. I believe that good characters can be bad and bad characters can be good. I believe that there is some warmth in Combo – I don't think he wanted to be the person he is.

KIERAN GRANT

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