Screen Two at the Curzon Renior
Peter Mullen returns after eight years since his last directorial outing with the brash, hard-hitting Neds. John McGill (played by newcomer Connor McCarron) is a bright, young Catholic schoolboy who hold highs aspirations of a University education and life away from the brutal gang violence his notorious brother is embroiled within. McGill's ambition is undermined by the violent figure of his alcoholic father, the overt class prejudice he suffers at school and his close family ties to local ne'er-do-wells of the sink estate he grows up on. His decline into a knife welding 'Ned' is an inevitable one and to many will seem too abrupt and simplistic. However with Mullen's now well-established, bold and brash cinematic style at its most confident and brooding this tale of gang violence makes for compelling, essential viewing.
Mullen has described the film as 'personal, but not autobiographical'. He elaborates, 'I would say that maybe 10% of it actually happened and the other 90% is fiction; little anecdotes I've heard over the years, stories I've been told and things I've just made up'. 1 Indeed drawing upon his own experiences Mullen's third film would appear on first hand to belong firmly within the social realist traditions of Ken Loach and Alan Clarke. However, Mullen is clearly uneasy at being placed within such a realm,
'I get bored with naturalism and social realism... I get restless with it. If one has an imagination, one should use it... Towards the end of the story I thought 'Let's let go of any form of social realism. Let's go more towards Greek tragedy and - fuck it - pantomime''. 2
Unfortunately although Mullen's eagerness to break away from such realist traditions is commendable, for it's adventurousness if nothing else, it at these points where the films takes upon a strangely disjointed and fragmented feel. The final sequence in particular is a bewildering affair that some may be able to pull interesting allegorical readings from but on the whole seems significantly at odds with the brilliantly brash portrayal of McGills rise within the Glasgow underworld. In many ways I would love to see Mullen follow Shane Meadows (Somers Town) and rush out a straight forward social realist drama that'd come in under an hour and a half, and be devoid of the frankly irritating religious symbolism that's so prevalent in his work.
The cinematography on display here is nonetheless, nothing short of breathtaking. As with his debut Orphans, Mullen makes full use of a dynamic, bold colour palate to portray a heightened sense of drama, one that's hard to envision the likes of Loach employing but one that never conflicts with the realist elements on display. The film is peppered with scenes of brutal gang confrontation and violence; there are two scenes in particular one involving a paving stone and another with two knives strapped to our protagonist hands that will remain with the most hard faced of audiences. However, for me, there is something annoyingly cliche at the sight of two gangs of feral youth running full pelt at one another on the big screen, more often than not accompanied by a pounding 'pop' soundtrack. Mullen's film doesn't glamourise these battles in the way the recent football hooligan cycle of films does (Awaydays, Football Factory) but perhaps as a result of the lazy treatment these films give to such voilence the credibility of these sequences becomes questionable at times. This is of course me picking holes in what is a thoroughly enjoyable, significant and honest British film one that can proudly sit alongside the work of Clarke, Loach and Meadows in it's depiction of the limited social mobility open to working-class males. Whilst it is clearly set in past the story is as significant in today's climate as it would have been in the 1970s. Indeed rather depressingly, a remake with today's track suited Neds taking a starring role would be far from a difficult film to make.
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1 Peter Mullen, Screen International, September 4th 2009, p. 15
2 Demetrios Matheou, Sight and Sound, February 2011, p. 41
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