Shane Meadows makes the appeal of a skinhead gang painfully understandable through Thomas Turgoose’s Shaun. The political lessons can be too neatly arranged, but the warmth, humour and frightening performances earn our strong recommendation.
This Is England is a persuasive, troubling drama because Shane Meadows takes the pleasures of belonging seriously. Shaun is a lonely boy in 1983 England, and the skinhead gang offers company before it offers anything resembling a political education. We recommend it warmly, with a reservation about how neatly Meadows sometimes connects a child’s needs to the adults’ beliefs. For much of the film, though, he lets us understand why Shaun would want to be there.
Thomas Turgoose gives Shaun a stubbornness that saves him from becoming a child supplied for our pity. The pleasure he takes in being accepted is enough to make the gang attractive, and Meadows allows its humour and idle companionship to take up space. We were moved by how much that welcome means to him. The performance makes us feel the value of being noticed when loneliness has become ordinary, and gives us a reason to fear for Shaun before the politics become explicit.
Stephen Graham’s Combo makes the politics frightening. We can understand why a boy might look to him for authority, and Graham makes that possibility disturbing without asking us to admire the man. His performance keeps personal need close to the racist beliefs, so the hatred feels capable of entering an ordinary conversation. This is where the casting matters most: Turgoose makes Shaun’s hunger for attention credible enough that Graham does not have to make Combo likeable.
Danny Cohen’s cinematography serves the performances well; we keep watching people for signs of acceptance, amusement or unease. Mark Leese’s production design makes the working-class setting persuasive, while Jo Thompson’s costumes help us believe in the gang’s shared identity. The recreation of the 1980s does not become an invitation to admire the period detail. These people seem at home in their surroundings, with the young ensemble allowed to suggest friendships that began before Shaun arrived.
Chris Wyatt’s editing makes the passage from humour to menace feel increasingly difficult to escape. The early idleness is important: we need time to enjoy the gang before the film asks us to examine it. Ludovico Einaudi’s score helps us feel the change, although its emotional guidance can be a little too insistent when the performances have already made the point. At 102 minutes, the film has room for this shift without making the companionship seem like an extended introduction.
The larger reservation is with Meadows’s screenplay. At times, its account of a lonely child’s susceptibility to nationalism is so orderly that we can see the lesson arriving before the people have finished talking. The performances keep disrupting that neatness, but it remains a limitation in a film otherwise so attentive to the untidy ways people behave. We would have welcomed more room for the gang’s different loyalties to remain difficult to explain, rather than being made to serve Shaun’s education.
As a coming-of-age drama, it asks a child to make sense of adult grievances he should never have to carry. Turgoose keeps Shaun recognisable even when the writing loads too much significance onto him. Watch it when neither of you has to be good company afterwards.
