Film Review Brassed OFF

FILM REVIEW BRASSED OFF

Probably my favourite British comedy drama of recent years, and ultimately, its drama and political edge over-shadows its humour. However, it is the Brass Band music that really makes the film extra-special.

In the early 1980’s the Thatcher Government smashed the British coal mining industry apart, breaking the last true militant strike in the country in 1982, before shutting pit after pit after pit a decade later in favour of nuclear fuel, plunging thousands out of work, and devastating the proud towns that depended on the industry.

The film looks at the impact of the redundancy programme on the town of Grimley (a thinly disguised take on the Grimethorpe Colliery), and how the impending closures meant the end of the line not only for the pit but also for the town’s brass band, comprised mostly of miners from the pit. Their doom comes as the band gets a serious chance to become a national champion band due to regional, and then national competitions.

The humour comes from the interaction of the film’s characters, a miner who sees his wife only as they come and go to their respective jobs of a morning and night, their flirtations with a young lady who arrives in the town (Tara Fitzgerald) (until they realize that she has management connections), and some of the bar-room banter in the film.

The politics gradually takes over to give the film a darker edge. Pushed to redundancy, as the bandleader, Danny, played magnificently by Peter Postlethwaite, goes down with coal-related lung cancer, the band is reduced to in fighting and bitterness. Ewan McGregor’s relationship with Fitzgerald gains him the contempt of his friends until she is able to show that she was more sympathetic to the workers than to the heartless asset stripping management team sent in to destroy them.  Peter Tomkinson, as the son of Danny, watches helplessly as bailiffs take away every ounce of furniture from his house, and his wife takes the children away. He is reduced to gaining a secondary income as a not very good clown, to entertain children, only to lose his mind at one such party and loudly denounces God for allowing Thatcher and her party to live while his Dad lies dying. His failed attempt at suicide, in full clown outfit is a very memorable image, for being funny and sadly desperate at one and the same time.

When the band gets to the finals and plays at London’s Albert Hall, the tensions are maintained. Winning the competition, (a foregone conclusion, given that we are not even shown the opposition playing), their leader, Danny, having discharged himself from hospital, refuses the award and cup, and uses the platform to further denounce the government for leaving the community in hopeless despair.

The other miners take the cup anyway and the film ends with them performing a very sardonic take of Elgar’s Land Of Hope And Glory right outside the Houses of Parliament, an indication of the complete absence of any hope, or glory in Britain in the post-Thatcher era.

The music is simply wonderful, and for me, the views of the actual settings in Saddleworth, Uppermill & Delph, are local which helps to make the film very relevant to my own life and times.

Arthur Chappell