noisefromthevoid

I originally posted the trailer for this movie on here a good while ago. Last night I finally got the chance to see the whole thing..

I was especially hyped to see it because of the era it’s set in - Thatcher’s Britain. An era in which I, like the characters in the movie, grew up and came of age. I’m not gonna pull punches, it was generally a period of widespread alienation, cultural desolation, and divisive politics as the right-wing conservative government of the time not only fought an unnecessary war with Argentina, but also fought an underhanded class war with it’s own people - the “enemy within” to quote the prime minister Margaret Thatcher at the time. I’d say it was not unlike the McCarthy witchhunts of the 50’s here in the States, but it was now the late 70’s and the enemy wasn’t a small number of ‘commies’ and ‘pinkos’, it was a whole class of organised working people.

I remember it all so vividly: joining the dole queue as unemployment soared to 1 in 10 of the population, while the government destroyed industry after industry and instead pandered to the newly emerging yuppie culture. Of getting organised to fight back, for instance going door to door through my neighborhood and panhandling on the street with buckets, to collect food and donations for the country’s coal miners, who at the time were on strike fighting a painfully long, drawn out and ultimately losing battle with the Thatcher government..

But politics aside - it was also a time when youth culture was thriving. Punks, mods, skinheads, new romantics, greebos, goths and all kinds of subcultures came and went at breakneck speed, all overlapping each other, along with their associated music, styles and attitudes. This film focuses almost exclusively on the skinheads - the mostly working class white kids who reacted (in part at least) to the middle class hippy culture of the 60’s by for instance cropping their hair off instead of growing it long, and wearing their jeans tight and tucked in their boots instead of loose and flared.

Those original skinheads were also heavily inspired by Jamaican culture & the rude boys and girls who had brought ska and rocksteady music to the shores of Britian during the post-war boom of the late 50’s and 60’s. Unfortunately over time the skinheads gained a reputation for being extremely violent, nationalistic and racist, but this movie focuses mostly on the original skinheads who were a different breed. The movie does however still deal with the issue of race, quite bluntly and violently at times, but it does so authentically, not in an over sensationalized or glamorized hollywood way like some other movies I wont bother to mention.

And watching this film I could relate - as a teenager I grew up in a mostly working class white community where a majority of the kids my age were aligned with either rude boy or skinhead culture. And although the skinheads I knew weren’t particularly interested in politics or racial aggravation, there were still other right-wing skinheads & agitators aggressively flyering and recruiting outside our school gates whenever they felt like it. It was scary back then - at times anyways - especially being into punk rock, constantly wondering I was gonna be attacked for being different. But like most folks I made it through relatively unscathed, and a little wiser and stronger to boot.

And I have to say this movie really nails the mood, feel, and look of those times. The music, the clothes, the run down council estates, the overgrown and abandoned buildings, even the old World War II relics littering the beaches, as they did where I lived. I watched the whole movie without taking my eyes off the screen, entranced like I was in some kind of time warp, the various characters so often reminding me of old friends, even down to the smallest details like their facial tattoos and vicious humor..

And I cant help but add that this movie, along with the memories it invokes stands in stark contrast to my first experience bumping into a gang of Bay Area skinheads on Haight St way back when I first moved to San Francisco. For a moment that afternoon I thought I was gonna get the sh*t kicked outta me, but they turned out to be the mellowest, friendliest and cuddliest skinheads I’d ever crossed paths with in my life. Ha, ha.. They may have adopted the look of working class England in the 70’s but they certainly hadn’t lived it. And with that in mind I hope that they or anyone else for that matter who finds themselves drawn to British culture and style finds time to see this movie. It’s beautiful, funny, poignant, harsh, sad and moving, in a way that captures the truth of those times, and the truth of growing up white in working class Britain..