Brassed Off.

In 1984 Mineworkers in the Britain went on strike, not for more money or for better working conditions but to save their jobs, their way of life and their communities. The threat came from Margaret Thatcher and her Tory government. It was her aim to shut down the coal industry by closing pits, something that was denied at the time but has since been proved to be correct. Before the strike in 1983 there were 174 working pits, by 2009 there was only six and now there are no working pits in any part of Britain mostly due to one rather cruel and heartless woman.

 

A long lost breed of working men. 

Brassed Off (1996) was set during the pit closures the Tory Governments were determined to implement following the end of the miners strike in 1985. Its now 1992 and the miners of Grimley Colliery North Yorkshire are facing a very uncertain future when the closures threaten their small mining community. Because many of the mine workers believe that the redundancy offer will be excepted there is no point in keeping the local Colliery Band alive, but their passionate band leader Danny (Peter Postlewaite) is having nothing of the kind and wants to enter the band into the National Brass Band Championship to take place at the Albert Hall in London. Help to achieve this end comes from a surprising source. The beautiful and talented young granddaughter of a former bandleader returns to her hometown and is invited to join the band, raising the spirits of its members. Gloria (Tara Fitzgerald) also rekindles her relationship with Andy her childhood sweetheart. But when Andy (Ewan McGregor) and the other members discover that she works for the British Coal Board and is researching the pits viability to see if it makes financial sense to keep it open they ostracise her.

Danny leads the Colliery Band.

In hindsight we now know that that even if a coal mine was financially viable Thatcher’s masters wanted the pits closed. At its heart Mark Herman’s film, although there are some very humorous moments, has an underlying story about the hardships that were deliberately put upon the working men and women and their families along with the ruination of the industrial bedrock of the UK and the abolition of the organisations that represented the worker by an uncaring government and their wealthy cohorts only interested in the profit motive and power.

Still proud of their heritage (Durham 2016) 

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A very emotionally  poignant story whose cast is a credit to Herman’s script, acting out their roles with great feeling so much so that you can easily believe that they are committed to the underlying message that I believe the film sends out. If you have never seen this wonderful example of British filmmaking then I urge you to put that right immediately.  Either you have a heart of stone or think that the sun shined out of Thatcher’s backside not to empathise with what was happening. The workingmen and women of this country are still suffering with an extreme right wing government inflicting never ending austerity, zero hours contracts and a minimum wage that is so low it has to be topped up with in-work benefits. 

T2 Trainspotting.

Twenty years have passed since Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor) run off with the proceeds of a drug deal that was meant to be divvied up between himself, Spud Murphy (Ewen Bremner), Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller) and hard man Begbie (Robert Carlyle). The only person who did receive his share was Spud who wasted no time in shooting-up £4K of heroin. Now Renton has returned from Amsterdam where he has been living since leaving Edinburgh. His first task is saving Spud from suicide and then he teams back up with his best friend Simon repaying the 4K he owed him and offering to help him, and his beautiful East European girlfriend Veronica (Angela Nedyalkova), convert the pub his aunt left him into a brothel. Although his relationship with Simon is still not what it was before he left it’s when Begbie escapes from prison and discovers that he is back that his life expectancy starts to deteriorate.

 

Mark and Simon celebrate setting up a business with Veronica.

Reuniting the original cast with another great screenplay from John Hodge and with most of the filming taking place in Edinburgh, Boyle has succeeded in obtaining a believable 20-year gap between the two films. Scotland has changed since the time of the first film, with a diluted form devolution arriving since the original films release and a close run independence referendum taking place in 2014 (and another about to be announced). Its not the same country it was when Rent Boy and the others ran down Princes Street, even the movies premier took place in Edinburgh and not Leicester Square. But both the characters and Scotland are still victims of a system that neither like nor respect but both are working hard to change this. Even more so that we are being forced out of Europe against our will and being informed that we have to be grateful for scrapes from the table of a man that is the political version of Begbie.

 

Still as fit as ever - or are they?

This sequel to Danny Boyle's 1996 movie is absolutely cracking piece of adult entertainment and a credit to its predecessor. How anybody can fail to enjoy T2 Trainspotting (2017) is beyond me.

Trainspotting 1996.

21 years ago a very black comedy drama film was released that was said to have captured what it meant to be Scottish for a generation of twenty something’s which is summed up in Mark ‘Rent Boy’ Renton’s famous Rannoch Moor speech:

“It's shite being Scottish! We're the lowest of the low. The scum of the fucking Earth! The most wretched, miserable, servile, pathetic trash that was ever shat into civilization. Some hate the English. I don't. They're just wankers. We, on the other hand, are colonized by wankers. Can't even find a decent culture to be colonized by. We're ruled by effete arseholes. It's a shite state of affairs to be in, Tommy, and all the fresh air in the world won't make any fucking difference!”

 

The famous Rannoch Moor speech.

This movie could never be mistaken for anything other than a Scottish film and was adapted by John Hodges from the Irvine Welsh 1993 novel of the same name, never an easy task. Trainspotting (1996) is a starkly bleak warning about the drug culture at that time offering very little hope for the youth of Edinburgh let alone the rest of Scotland. At that time most of the rural small towns and villages were having problems with drug taking and in some instances serious addiction. You only had to glance at a local paper to see the results of drug related crime, possession and even the obituary column included the death of young people due to excess drug taking and related illnesses.   

The nightmare of drug addiction.

Unless you have been living on a far away planet for the past twenty plus years I’m sure your quite familiar with the story which revolves around various character’s involved in or on the periphery of Edinburgh’s 1980/90’s drug scene. The main man is Mark Renton known as Rent Boy (Ewan McGregor in what I still think is his best role) an addict who tries desperately to give up his habit, the problem is he shares his life with like minded people who will do anything for a hit. There’s casual dealer Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller) and Spud (Ewen Bremner) a natural born loser.  Also involved is the psychopath and small time villain Begbie (Robert Carlyle) a man who gets his kicks from acts of violence. 

 

Can we really run away from our responsibilities? 

Never my favourite director Danny Boyle must be given credit for what was at the time angry cutting edge cinema with a soundtrack to match that included some grand pop tunes from the 1980’s and 90’s including Iggy Pops Lust for Life, Lou Reeds Perfect Day and the Underworld anthem Born Slippy.  It’s a cinematic experience that makes you bulk at the disgusting, ‘the worse toilet in Scotland’ and the ultra sad death of a baby at the same time as admiring the wit that eases out of Hodges non-judgemental script. It has a great supporting cast including Kevin McKidd, Peter Mullan, Shirley Henderson and Kelly Macdonald in her first film role. Now quite rightly regarded as one of the best British films of the nineties and certainly worth a revisit if for no other reason than to realise how the wankers are still treating the Scottish people. Hopefully the new film T2 is just as brilliant and gives us more hope?

Miles Ahead.

 Don Cheadle's biographical movie about Miles Davis takes its title from Davis's 1957 album Miles Ahead, an album that was one of the most famous recordings of the music genre known as Third Stream a term coined in 1957 by American composer Gunther Schuller described as "a new genre of music located about halfway between jazz and classical music'. Cheadle stars as Davis in the movie but also directed, produced and co-wrote both the story and screenplay.

Make no mistake the best thing about this movie is the music which is taken from various albums including Kind of Blue, released in 1959 and considered to be the best selling jazz album of all time, its 1960 follow up album Sketches of Spain and the rock influenced Bitches Brew, Davis's first gold record released in 1970.

The timeframe for the movie follows the period 1975 to 1979 when Davis virtually withdrew from public eye during health problems including drug addiction, ulcer related hospitalisation, diagnosis of a hernia and exhaustion. The story depicts the musicians attempts to get his career back on track and his troubled marriage to Frances Taylor (Emayatzy Corinealdi) the dancer who can be seen on the cover of the Davis album Someday My Prince Will Come (1961), along side some fictional nonsense about a journalist Dave Braden (Ewan McGregor) who wants to profile him and recover a lost music tape.

Although an enjoyable movie, mainly down to Cheadle’s performance, to a certain extent it’s a wasted opportunity. As an admirer of Miles Davis work I would have liked the movie to be more of an in depth look at his life and demons and completely dispense with McGregor’s character. But do try to catch the movie on DVD if for no other reason than to listen to some great music.