132) Made in Britain

Made in Britain (1982)


Director: Alan Clarke

Starring: Tim Roth, Eric Richard, Bill Stewart, Terry Richards


We continued our bouncing around in Screens, Images, Ideas, this week landing in Thatcher's England with Alan Clarke's television movie Made in Britain.

16 year old skinhead Trevor (Roth) is found guilty of throwing a brick through the window of a Pakistani shopkeeper and is sent to Hooper Street Residential Assessment Centre where his punishment is to be determined. His social worker, Harry Parker (Eric Richard), and the staff at the assessment centre want to work with Trevor, encouraging him to conform to the norms of society, so as to avoid having to send him to prison, but Trevor is not interested in changing.

Made in Britain was the fourth in a series of four TV movies written by David Leland based loosely around the theme of education in the time of Thatcherism. Combined with Alan Clarke's interest in exploring the English working class, what you end up with is quite a damning view of of the influence of Thatcherism on the working class youth of England, and the rise of skinhead and Oi subcultures.

Tim Roth made his screen debut in the film. Apparently he got the part by accident, coming into the theatre where the auditions were being held in search of a bike pump. For a debut performance it has amazing power and intensity. Trevor is a confronting character. He is violent, rude, racist and completely uncompromising in his mindset.

It is important to note that we are again and again reminded that Trevor is an intelligent boy. This was in itself a political statement. At the time skinheads were largely assumed to be marauding idiots, whereas Clarke and Leland go to great lengths to show that Trevor's personality is actually a considered response to the society he finds himself in.

The natural point of comparison is with Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. Both films deal with an extremely antisocial youth in conflict with an establishment that wants to try and force them to conform. Kubrick's film is much more didactic than Clarke's though. A Clockwork Orange has the feel of a parable to it. It is set in this fantasy version of London and uses the story to make a statement about the importance of individual freedoms in the face of total state control. Made in Britain is much more grounded in reality. We also aren't encouraged to side with Trevor in quite the same way that we are with Alex in A Clockwork Orange. As a viewer you are unsatisfied with the way some people choose to respond to Trevor, but at the same time you are well aware that at no point is he the good guy or even the innocent party.

On a slightly different note, one of the first things which caught my attention about this film was that when the title slides came up at the beginning Made in Britain was credited as a film "By David Leland" rather than by Alan Clarke. I'm so used to seeing the authorship of a film being credited to the director ("A Martin Scorsese film", "A Spike Lee Joint", etc) that it seemed strange to see this authorship credit go to the screenwriter. It is often said that film is a directors' medium and television is a writers' medium, and with Made in Britain being a television movie I guess there was evidence of this mindset.

This is one of those films that is difficult to enjoy just because the central character is such an unlikeable individual. It is a powerful and aggressive film, almost as uncompromising as its central character, but this is a political statement film rather than an entertainment film and that political statement is no longer a relevant one.