Director Shane Meadows gives us a slice of his own life in This Is England, the story of barely teenage Shaun Fields (Shaun Fields/Shane Meadows -- get it?) who loses his father in the Falklands War.
It's 1983/Thatcher England, and there's violence and racism everywhere he looks among the legions of disenfranchised teens. Perhaps inevitably, he falls in with a skinhead gang. And from there, a coming-of-age story in which innocence plays little part.
This is England is in many ways a smaller, more personal film than Meadows' extraordinary Dead Man's Shoes. But it's well worth seeing for the burgeoning talent of Mr. Meadows, surely one of England's most noteworthy directors right now.
written on Monday Jul 16, 2007
skinheads,
1980s,
movie.
