In the city: An interview with British director Shane Meadows

August 6, 12:09 AMLA Alternative Movie ExaminerMarvin Miranda

"How beautiful is youth! how bright it gleams with its illusions, aspirations, dreams! Book of Beginnings, Story without End, Each maid a heroine, and each man a friend!”

        --"Morituri Salutamus," Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

To experience British director Shane Meadows' trio of young lad films (A Room for Romeo Brass, This is England, and now, his latest, Somers Town) is to experience the most bittersweet pill (you ever had to swallow).  Prone to tell small, intimate stories conveying large, universal experiences, Meadows' work feels broken into, worn, as if the emotional landscape had already been traveled by its audience regardless of the films' period and setting or, one dare say, the audience's gender.  In Meadows' last film, This is England (for my money, one of the ten best films of the decade), that setting was The Midlands, the period the early '80s, and the protagonist a pint-sized wannabe Skinhead played by newcomer Thomas Turgoose, who, with just one look into his old soul eyes, simultaneously breaks your heart with disappointment and mends it with possibility. 

In Somers Town, the setting is London, the period now, and the absolute beginners are Tomo (once again played by Turgoose, looking more world-weary than ever) and Marek (played  by Polish newcomer Piotr Jagiello).  And like the lines from the Longfellow poem, a beginning is cracked open, illusions, aspirations, and dreams all make appearances, the maid sits up high on a pedestal, each man becomes a friend, and the story ends without an end, rather, the ultimate schoolboy fantasy come true.  Or maybe just a fantasy.  Oh, and, yes:  beautiful is youth.

Meadows was kind enough to take some time out from filming his next project to answer a few questions about his latest movie.

Marvin Miranda:  You know, one of the things I've found uncannily fascinating about these two last films, This is England & Somers Town, is that it feels a little bit like I'm reliving my childhood and adolescence, respectively, when watching them (here's hoping they're part of a trilogy extending into young adulthood!).  Beyond the movies' surfaces, their themes are very universal, especially for anyone raised by a single parent and trying to balance that out with elements outside the home.  This is England was very much a personal account, but how much of your personal experiences inform Somers Town?

Shane Meadows:  Somers Town is certainly less of a personal story than This is England or Romeo Brass, if only because it’s obviously contemporary and set in London not the Midlands where I come from.  But I guess it is true that the film is about trying to make sense of what can be a bewildering and – on the surface at least – hostile environment.  In that way it reflects my view of the world and my experience of adolescence. It’s a strange and wonderful time of life – when everything begins to seem possible and yet still can stay out of reach. The desperate desire for independence and the even more desperate obsession with girls who just seemed to be these perfect but impossible beings from another planet are certainly things I remember very clearly from my teenage years. I think the film’s main theme about making relationships which allow you to make sense of the world are absolutely about my own experiences.

MM:  Despite the fact that both movies (and I do apologize for referring to both movies instead of just your latest, Somers Town, but their kinship seems so organic that it's hard for me not to at the moment) are very "male-centric," there's an exploration of that masculinity that is not typically found in your average movie. In fact, I'd go as far as saying that Somers Town is a small masterpiece concerning the complexities of male fraternity much more than it is about anything else.  It seems like such a natural depiction that it oftentimes resembles a documentary-style type of filmmaking, the most common comparison being to a couple of your elder statesmen, Mike Leigh and Ken Loach. I suspect that improvisation had a big part in capturing that authenticity. But, as a filmmaker, how are you guiding those relationships so that they end up revealing ultimate truths?

SM:  I do use improvisation in all my films and it’s a technique I find more and more powerful.  The script for Somers Town ran to about 38 pages instead of the 100 or so you would expect for a film.  So we know what the structure and the narrative of the film is when we start, but so much more is still left to improvisation.  I insist on shooting my films in story order (rather than having someone impose the most “efficient” schedule).  It’s a bit of a nightmare for production, but it gives so much more freedom to me and the actors. It means that if a new idea emerges from a scene we can adapt the rest of the film to include it.  If you have already shot a scene that precedes it you can’t change anything because suddenly all continuity is blown out of the water.  When you look at it like this it actually seems crazy to make a film in this way.  I also do a lot of improvisation at the rehearsal stage both around story and character so that by the time we are on set there’s load of background detail in our heads that informs the scene.  Then for me, to be honest, it’s a question of doing what I do.  I’ll keep working with the actors until it feels true and honest.  I don’t let the technical demands of film-making get in the way.  For me it’s about performance and the role of the crew is to capture that – not to dictate to the actors how something has to be done. It’s tough on the crew sometimes but they all know what I am trying to do and believe in this way of working.

MM:  But that relationship and those truths are also reminiscent of Scorsese's work, in particular his early films. Similar to Scorsese's films, there's an intense energy running through Somers Town that can either turn into a sudden display of violence or a sudden display of poetry.  For you, how important is it for those extremes to coexist in such a personal film?

SM:  Scorsese is one of my favourite film-makers and his early films are some of my all time favourites.  I don’t think I consciously structure these extremes you talk about, it’s more that they emerge as I make the film.  I also think it’s true to life – or at least it’s a kind of concentrated version of life.  We think we are in control, that everything is ordered and sorted and then suddenly something hits you that you could never have imagined or foreseen.  It seems to me that everything is quite fragile, that things more or less hold together but that you never know when they're going to suddenly explode. That’s all I am trying to reflect in my films. There’s an underlying violence to life which is always waiting for us.

MM:  A son's relationship with his father plays prominently in both films.  In This is England the absence of the father takes its toll on the young protagonist.  While in Somers Town, that father being the only parent also brings forth distress.  It's almost like either one of those situations is really the same situation.  Can you elaborate on that complex love-hate relationship between father and son that is clearly evident in Somers Town?

SM:  I’m not sure I can elaborate on it.  It’s not so much a love hate relationship it’s just how teenage boys are with their parents, particularly their fathers.  There is so much going on – a clash of ego, that need for the boy to prove his independence, and yet an inevitability that he’ll imitate so much of what his father is about.  We all want to be different in some way from our parents and yet need to impress them and get their approval.  It’s a recipe for anger, intimacy and bad behaviour.  I’ve just become a father and I already know I will do anything for my son, but I also know that the time will come when he has to meet me head on.  It’s inevitable.

MM:  Deep friendship oftentimes begins with great hostility.  Such is the case with Somers Town's two young protagonists, Tomo and Marek, who are both in their early teens.  They're also the two halves of one single unit, complementing each other and perhaps fully realized only with each other's company.  Why was it important to tell the story of Somers Town through their eyes and experiences?

SM:  Inner city areas are in a permanent state of change – new patterns of immigration, building development and demolition – so it seemed to be right to see this through the eyes of characters who are themselves going through the most dramatic periods of change in their own lives.  I also wanted to get away from the doom and gloom that change is always bad and the old days were always better.  The endless invention, enthusiasm and opportunism of kids was a way of making this point.

Somers Town opens August 7 at Landmark’s Nuart Theatre for a one-week engagement.

For more info:  visit http://www.landmarktheatres.com/Films/films_frameset.asp?id=70273