| Film Festival Report : BERLIN 2008 |
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 ONE of the highlights of this year's BAFTA ceremony came right at the very start, when Sylvester Stallone - in town promoting his latest Rambo sequel - handed over the Best British Film prize to Shane Meadows for This Is England. But Meadows, justifiably basking in his semi-autobiographical film's emphatic popular and critical success, should really have also been nominated for the Queen's Award for Industry as well. Because in stark contrast to those auteurs who spend half a decade mulling their projects and complaining about the iniquities of arts-funding, Meadows' follow-up feature wasn't merely already 'in the can', it had in fact screened, 24 hours beforehand, to an enthusiastic paying audience.At a brisk Said unveiling took place at the 58th 'Berlinale' - as Berlin's film festival is universally known - an event founded (with significant help from the USA) to provide Berlin with a major cultural focus in the grim days of post-WWII reconstruction. Over the decades Berlin quickly grew into one of Europe's "Big Three" alongside Cannes and Venice - though its traditional winter slot gives it rather more bracing kind of atmosphere than its French and Italian rivals. The biggest prize is the Golden Bear - awarded in recent years to the likes of Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia), Paul Greengrass (Bloody Sunday), Michael Winterbottom (In this World) and Germany's own Fatih Akin (Head-On). In terms of merit, Meadows' Somers Town would have made a fine addition to such a roster - but it wasn't even included in the 21-strong Official Competition lineup. This was apparently because it was only completed three days before the festival began - even though there are precedents for "eleventh hour" candidates to be added to competition slates, as with eventual winner Still Life at Venice in 2006. But Somers Town wasn't to be found in either the festival's 'second' selection, known as the Panorama, nor in the main 'alternative' sub-section, a semi-independent programme entitled the Forum. Instead, it languished in relative obscurity in the 'Generation' section - the only part of the whole Berlinale, remarkably, for which under-18s are allowed to purchase tickets.  Somers Town was presumably included in 'Generation' - formerly the 'Kinderfest' - because its two protagonists are teenagers. But, as trade-bible Variety pointed out, "in quality, it far exceeds some of the films in this year's competition": admittedly, not sky-high praise in what was near-universally regarded as a particularly weak year for Golden Bear candidates (the eventual winner, Brazilian favela expose Elite Squad by Jose Padilha, was excoriated "a recruitment film for Fascist thugs" by Variety.) One title that did stand out of the competition pack was Lance Hammer's admirably downbeat debut Ballast, a muted tale of family strife set in a corner of the Mississippi delta that - on this evidence at least - rivals north Lincolnshire in terms of bleakness, flatness and depopulation. A marvel of cobalts, greys and muddy browns - via cinematographer Lol Crawley's tightly-controlled palette - Ballast arrived with no little hype from the January's Sundance Film Festival, where Crawley and Hammer won prizes for their contributions. A starker contrast to the other American movie in competition, Paul Thomas Anderson's caocophonous, crazily ambitious There Will Be Blood, can scarcely be imagined - and while Anderson won the Berlinale's Best Director prize (and picked up a 'Special Contribution' Bear for Jonny Greenwood's experimental score) Hammer went home empty-handed this time. Ditto Shane Meadows, although the aim of bringing Somers Town to Berlin wasn't to win prizes and acclaim - instead, the goal was to test the waters and see if the picture should be given theatrical exposure or go direct to Channel 4. The noisily enthusiastic response of the sell-out crowds, plus the very positive reaction from the critics, would seem to strongly point towards "plan A". This is very much the least that the film deserves - notwithstanding its quaintly bizarre origins as a short film funded by Eurostar to advertise their new St Pancras rail-links. It would be a major mistake, however, to dismiss Somers Town either as a "hack-for-hire" job or as a bit of a "quickie" project made in the immediate afterglow of This Is England. Though shot on digital video, (mainly) in black-and-white and on what's evidently a minimal budget, this is by no means a "minor" Meadows. Indeed, in terms of tonal consistency, concision and cumulative emotional wallop, it's in several ways a more satisfying enterprise than its bigger, BAFTA-winning "brother". There have been few more moving films from any director since Meadows' own Dead Man's Shoes - though in this instance it's very much a case of joyful rather than sorrowful tears. This is a delightful, quietly topical, deceptively slight miniature about teenage friendship and first love - scarcely new subjects for cinema, but handled with sufficient sensitivity, humour and spirit to emphatically justify such a choice of material. Meadows and his scriptwriter Paul Fraser, meanwhile, deserve particular credit for so deftly maintaining such a delicate balance between the bouncily engaging story and its sad, even tragic subtexts. The focus is on two lads of around 14 or 15*: quietly-spoken, self-effacing Polish immigrant Marek (Piotr Jagiello) and scrappy Nottingham runaway Tomo (Turgoose), the former a resident in the London district which gives the film its title, the latter a visitor. Somers Town is wedged between two major railway termini, Euston and King's Cross/St Pancras. The rail-link has been a major construction project for several years, and Marek's father Mariusz is one of the labourers on the site. Further Euro-flavour is provided by Marek's French "girlfriend" Maria, with whom Tomo rapidly becomes smitten... Various hi-jinks duly ensue - nothing earth-shattering in its import, but all of it charming, wry, down-to-earth, true. The two leads, sort of 'Jules et Jim junior', are marvellous - Turgoose confirming that This Is England was most definitely no fluke. And it's also great to see Meadows, after a frustratingly uneven start to his career, so effortlessly now establishing himself in the front rank of younger European directors. Berlin will undoubtedly welcome again - and what odds it's on the red carpet next time? Neil Young 19th February, 2008 for Tribune magazine * Postscript: It turns out that, eerily enough, Turgoose and Jagiello were born on the exact same day!!! (NY 17.8.08)  REVIEW-BY-REVIEW COVERAGE (in slow progress) |
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