I finally got around to watching This is England the other night. Although Shane Meadow's name has been inescapable in the Brit scene I admit to not being at all familiar with his work so I came to this wanting to know more about that too; quite often with these "wunderkind" directors that pop up you find yourself just detesting them, I wondered if this was some deep seated jealousy, like although Guy Ritchie is the biggest one trick pony in the history of filmmaking maybe I was just missing something and blinded by the fact my short film didn't land me an amazing producer to ge me loads of money to make exactly the same film for the rest of my career.

Shane though, I had absolutely none of this resentment for, and having digested some of his work I'm pleased to report that I do only hate the talentless directors and am thrilled to see the UK is still producing some genuine talent.

TIE is everything you'd expect it to be, from scanning the net it seems a lot of Americans don't really get it and it is incredibly rooted in British culture, but speaking as a Brit this is beyond  a doubt the best film I have seen in many years. The acting, writing, dialogue, everything was so beautifully played and and so true to life, I didn't grow up on a shitty estate in Nottingham but this was still a trip down memory lane of key 80's events, politics, music, styles, shit like the scene in the shoe shop was just priceless.

The story is of course a personal and semi bigraphical one and tells the viewer a lot about growing up working class in the north during Thatcherism; I'm no big fan of "it's grim up north" filmmaking, for all his talents Mike Leigh films often leave me feeling disconnected and like I'm meant to feel sorry for a lot of unlikeable people, I think Meadows really got it right though, this was like a documentary rather than a film, this really is England in the 80's.

I need to ruminate longer on it to feel sure about parallels with todays England or overriding messages, we're at a time of heavy immigration and rising racism once again, fighting another war so many of us feel disconnected to (personally I don't see the Falklands as a pointless war, that's a bit like France invading Kent and us saying "oh lets just let it go, it's just a few farms and fields"), but the middle east is something else altogether, mired in politics and agendas that reach a long way beyond "getting the oil money".

What does the film tell us to think about all this? In a way the film itself feels torn in what the "right" answer is; throughout the film the Falkland's rages and we hear the rising racist and anti Thatcher cry along with that; war is bad, immigration is bad, England is dying, but at the end the lead skinhead is shown to be a hippocrite or a nut or just not in control of himself and we see the Falkland's war ending and the cheering crowds welcoming the soldiers home, so perhaps we should see the war through and accept immigrants with open arms even though one is helping cause the other? It just doesn't quite add up to a clearly definable view.

Perhaps, much like South Park's more meaningful episodes, the message is that there is no right answer, no clear cut solution, society will always be a harried confusion no matter what colour or religion or status the individuals are; the film lets us take a step back in time to our younger selves when solutions were so much more simple and come down to little more than wanting ourselves to be happy, and our friends and family to be safe, and for all this adult society bullshit to just go away (interesting that people find that perceptive in a child but naiive in an environmentalist).

Like I said, it's one to make you think for a bit, especially if you grew up in 80's England, it is a little bit like American History X, it does bring the expected anti-racist message but it delivers a lot more about people and society on top of that.

Next time you feel like watching a real film, watch This is England, and know that British film really does have a future even if it lies entirely in the hands of Shane Meadows.